Cheers Vaughny

Michael Vaughan made many astute decisions as England captain, and the one he’s just made to retire from first class cricket is just about as good as any of them.

Much better that he bows out now before he became a liability to Yorkshire and suffered the ignominy of being dropped by his county, and risk tarnishing his reputation by continuing to scratch around for whatever runs he can find on the county treadmill. Where, as his record shows, he never really made many runs even when he was on top of his game.

Vaughan will be remembered as the best England captain of the modern era, and as one of the top batsmen we have produced in recent times.

The other great thing this announcement achieves is putting an end to the phoney war coming from the Aussies…. Warney et all kept coming out with patently ridiculous claims about how Vaughan should still be in the England side, and that he is still second only to KP in our line up!

It was obviously rubbish, and probably designed to try and pile pressure on the man who has taken his number three slot in the England line up, Ravi Bopara.

Team of the tournament

Here goes my team of the tourney, a lot of the players pick themselves to be honest, but hopefully there's a good bit of balance to this team.

Tillakaratne Dilshan (Sri Lanka)

Man of the tournament, the top run scorer and the best batsman by a country mile.

Kamran Akmal (Pakistan)

Stumpings galore keeping to Ajmal and Afridi, he might not hang around for long with the bat, but would get the innings off to a flyer.

Jacques Kallis (South Africa)

A model of consistency, he scored 238 runs at an average of 59.5 – something that will please him. The rest of the batting line up would be built around this slightly more stoic performer.

Kevin Pietersen (England)

Peerless boundary hitter and a man for the big occasion

Younis Khan (Pakistan), captain

Younis held the Pakistan batting together through the early stages of the tournament, scoring 299 runs. Also captained Pakistan to victory superbly.

Shahid Afridi (Pakistan)

Like Pakistan, he started slowly and built into the tournament, taking the whole competition by the scruff of the neck from the semi final onwards.

Dwayne Bravo (West Indies)

Up there in both the wicket taking and run scoring charts, all done with panache and enthusiasm, a go-to guy in tough situations, he turned in one of the performances of the tournament in victory against India.

Umer Gul (Pakistan)

The leading wicket taker, and almost impossible to score quickly off his swinging yorkers at the death, would warrant selection for his 5-6 against New Zealand, the best bowling figures ever in international Twenty20.

Lasith Malinga (Sri Lanka)

Like Gul, a massive wicket taking threat and very difficult to score off of. His slower ball full toss / yorker was simply unplayable.

Ajantha Mendis (Sri Lanka)

Outbowled the more illustrious Murali in taking 12 wickets at 9.08, all at less than five an over. Kamran Akmal managed to get after him in the final, but otherwise no batsman looked comfortable against his fast spinners.

Wayne Parnell (South Africa)

I’d have Parnell taking the new ball. Fast, straight and adding variety with his left arm over action. A big breakthrough for the nineteen year old.

Credit where it's due for the T20

Ok, England still sometimes look like they’re playing a slightly different game to everybody else, and yes, our specialist six hitting all-rounder is scratching around making 25 from 27 balls, but I’m loving the Twenty20 World Cup.

After the diabolical fifty over World Cup held in England in 2007 I’ve got to be honest, I was half expecting a bit of a damp squib from the T20 version, but I’ll happily hold my hands up as being wrong. The only time I can remember cricket capturing the public imagination in the same way was during the once in a lifetime 2005 Ashes series, but travelling around, whiling away hours in the pub, and actually going to the games, I don’t remember hearing so many people excited about the game.

Previous World Cups have seemed to last a couple of lifetimes, but the format of this tournament feels just about right. Only using three grounds has given the tournament a hub - although the large ethnic communities in Leeds, Manchester and Birmingham for example suggests that having two of the homes in London is misguided.

Scheduling two games a day at the same venue has also helped build the momentum – encouraging larger, more diverse crowds and ensuring excitement is held even when one of the games doesn’t quite match the billing. The short three-week format also works beautifully with games every day, the vast majority of which have a real purpose to them. While whether by design or serendipity the timing of the competition between the end of the football season and the start of Wimbledon has helped keep cricket at the centre of the sports media – only interrupted by the latest vulgar goings on with the Portuguese clown and the British and Irish egg chasers competing for attention.

On top of all that the cricket has been terrific, with a sprinkling of upsets, some exceptional individual performances (Umer Gul and Dwayne Bravo spring to mind) and of course Australia being unceremoniously dumped early out of the competition is a Delia Smith-esque recipe for success.

It’s pretty rare they get things right, but credit where it’s due and hats off to the ECB, and the ICC for the competition. I hope it holds up right through to the final.

Oh Lanka, Lanka. Lanka, Lanka, Lanka, Lanka, Sri Lanka

After getting marmalised by South Africa yesterday, England now have a fair idea how far behind the very best we are at Twenty20. I doubt anyone was surprised that we lost, but so soon after the humiliation against the Netherlands it was pretty demoralising. We’ll know more after the game against India this weekend, but at the moment I’d suggest the thrashing we gave Pakistan was probably more of a one off than the clogging we got from the Dutch.

As usual in (2020) hindsight of defeat I think we made some pretty basic selection errors, most obviously with the batting. Comparing our line up with any other test playing side in the tournament, we just don’t bat deep enough. As soon as KP was third wicket down in the sixth over the game was up, with Collingwood, Foster and MascarAnus batting at five, six and seven. The problem is we’ve got too many medium pace bowling all rounders, and not enough specialist batsmen that can consistently hit the ropes.

Of the eleven that took the field, only Foster is a complete non-bowler - even Shah has been known the turn his arm over), while I’m not sure of the merits of bowling Colly ahead of Mascarenhas, Bopara or Luke Wright, I do know that we sure as hell don’t need all of them if they’re not contributing with the bat. As Colly is captain, the fall guy should be Dimitri who only seems to get picked because Shane Warne championed his cause about three years ago (and it worked for KP) – although I notice he didn’t get too many games for Warney’s Rajastan Royals.

James Foster also looks a bad shout, we’re not getting enough benefit out of him standing up to the stumps to compensate for his batting. Haddin, Sangarakarra, Kamran Akmal, Dhoni, Brendon McCullum and Fletcher are all contributing in a big way at the top of the order for their teams, Foster well, isn’t. Steve Davies gave us a bit of a flier in his only Twenty20 game against the Windies so I’m not sure why he got jettisoned. Hell, even Colly looked ok when he took over from Prior in the recent test match. Why not?

With the current squad all we can probably do is bring Morgan – we identified him as a specialist, so let’s back the judgement - in for Warney’s mate and keep our fingers crossed Bopara and Wright get us a good start. Can’t see it worrying India too much though.

England aside, South Africa were very impressive yesterday, especially their fast bowling and fielding – and to be fair their batting wasn’t given much of a challenge. It’s clear to see why they’re most people’s favourite, but having seen Sri Lanka twice I’m backing them to win the trophy.

Two factors in particular swing it their way, they’ve got by far the best spin bowling attack with Mendis and Murali backed up by Jayasuriya. And with games being played on used pitches expect spin to come into play even more as the tournament progresses. Secondly they’ve got the best opening partnership to launch the innings. Dilshan has been the tournament’s leading batsman to date, and we all know what Jayasuriya can do when the mood takes him.

With the supporting cast including class acts like Malinga the Slinga, Jayawardene and Sangarakkara, and a few big hitters down the order they make a pretty compelling case.

O.K. Riiight, what went wrong there then?

Even in the undistinguished annals of English one day cricket that was just about as embarrassing as defeats come.  Entering the game we were on something of a high after a comprehensive series of victories over the West Indies, and England were actually being talked up in some quarters as potential World Twenty20 Champions.  Hmmm.

Now we’ve really managed to usher in our own tournament with a real bang, by managing to orchestrate an almighty cock-up, which no doubt has gone down brilliantly across the rest world game. 

At one stage with Ravi Bopara and Luke Wright going well, England were 100-0 after eleven overs – so without indulging in too much hyperbole how did we manage to turn such an overwhelmingly dominant position into ignominious defeat?

 

Foot off the gas

Having worked their way serenely into a strong position against a team of ‘minnows’, England thought the game was won, and the intensity was lost in the batting 62 runs were scored in the last nine overs as the middle order failed build on the early impetus.   No problem, we got to 162, and after all it was only the Netherlands wasn’t it?

 

Spinning heads

I haven’t heard why Adil Rashid played ahead of Graeme Swann, but if was a conscious decision rather than injury related, it smacks of huge complacency.  Swanny’s an experienced cricketer who has been bowling superbly for England in all forms of the game, whereas Rashid is a very young man just making his initial steps in international cricket.  If the idea was to give the newby a gentle introduction into the tournament against the whipping boys of the group it was sadly misguided as four overs for 1/36 reveals.  If he was picked on merit it was just plain daft.

 

Throwing it away

I saw one of the county sides in the domestic Twenty20 (I forget which) talked about targeting two run outs in every innings, I lost count the number of times a direct hit in the field would have added a crucial wicket – including several times in the last over.  They all missed, It’s a basic skill, but hugely important.  Add in a couple of dropped catches and it all adds up to double fielding practice tomorrow.

 

What’s important now is not to over react, if England can beat Pakistan we should still qualify for the Super Eights on run rate, the line up won’t change dramatically (although we need KP and Swann back in the side), and we’ve still got some strong performers, but what’s clear after this shambles is that there’s absolutely no margin for error now.