In the T20 match that India played against Australia, they put up a great fight in the end but still lost. In all the recent talk about match fixing and corruption allegations surrounding T20 cricket it is easy to forget that sometimes teams actually lose lots of wickets without any shady stuff going on. Sometimes a team loses a lot of wickets not by playing badly but just because the other team is playing very well. And when you are playing against Australia you have to bring your ‘A’ game or they will eat you alive.
What makes a good cricket match? Two strong teams, one team making a good total, the other team doing good bowling, then the second team making a good chase of that total. If all this fails you can still have a good game because one team can pound the other team so badly that it is a one sided match but sometimes these kinds of matches are good to watch too. But you have to be supporting the team that is winning otherwise it sucks for you. The truly great matches though are those that go down to the wire, where you don’t know who will win until the very last ball.
Those are the best types of matches, people watching the match at home all gather round the TV, start screaming in support of the team and make their voices hoarse. Or maybe that was just my crazy loud family and everyone else just quietly sat around and watched the match in silence.
I can remember watching some very exciting matches on TV with everyone rooting for the same team and then the cheering and jubilation that would happen when our team would win was an amazing feeling. But I also remember watching matches where the team we were supporting would lose so badly; losing in a manner that everyone starts saying that the match has been fixed, and we would all have long sad faces sitting on the couch.
Today’s match though between India and Australia looked like it was going to become a long faces type match where everyone is sitting on the couch in silence. Then entered Rohit Sharma who made a stunning 79 not out and managed to salvage India’s score to some extent. It went from being a very one-sided match to suddenly becoming a very interesting match. Even though there seemed no possible way India could win, they still put up a great fight and went down swinging. To be 50-7 and then make a small comeback with Sharma leading the charge to get all out for 135 is a very good feat indeed. A lot of the top order batsmen of India could take a page out of Sharma’s book and up their performances.
This looks like another aspect of the strangeness of T20 cricket because who knows at what place in the batting order someone will suddenly start to perform and who knows when a bowler will suddenly get 4 wickets in one over. In most T20 matches that I have seen it seems like the wickets and the big hitting start towards the very beginning of the match. The match that is currently on TV as I write this; West Indies against Sri Lanka, the first wicket fell in the second over and the first six was hit in the third. This is what makes T20 matches so exciting; all the action starts as soon as the teams get out onto the field. I can see how it is so appealing to watch. Looking at the fans in the stands, it seems they are basically having a party. That could have something to do with the fact that the tournament is going on in the West Indies, which to me seems like the coolest place in the world. I can imagine people always smiling and dancing in the streets at anytime of the day. I may be massively stereotyping but that is one reason why I would love to be there at this moment watching the World Cup. It looks like everyone from the people playing the game to the people in the stands are having the best time of their lives.
It looks like it is going to be a great tournament and I can’t wait to see who wins. Someone needs to step it up though and stand against the onslaught that is Australia and bring them down a peg or two, then all the other teams will have a fighting chance.
Tags: