Update on World T20 tournament


In the tournament being played in Bangladesh, Sri Lanka beat West Indies in the first semi-final and India beat South Africa in the second to set up the final on Sunday between the two sub-continent nations. (Update: For those who don’t understand cricket, I wrote a post back in 2006 that explains the game as briefly as I could.)

In the first game on Thursday, Sri Lanka batted first and started slowly but managed to score 160, which is at the low end of the range of defensible scores. When the West Indies went to bat, they started off with a flourish but then seemed to get bogged down in the middle and inexplicably batted as if they were not concerned that they were falling further and further behind the required run rate to win. When a sudden downpour accompanied by hail put an abrupt end to the game, they lost according to the controversial Duckworth-Lewis system for adjudicating incomplete games but there was no doubt that they deserved to lose.

In the other game played earlier today, South Africa batted first and put up a decent score of 172 but India put on a tremendous batting display to reach the total quite easily.

I think India has to be favored in the final to be played on Sunday at 9:00 am Eastern US time. They are a good all-round team and have not lost a single match in the tournament so far and seem to be playing with confidence. Sri Lankan fans will be hoping for an upset because this could well be the last international tournament for their veteran players Kumar Sangakkara and Mahela Jayawardene, players who have rendered outstanding services to cricket, and to go out with a world championship would be a nice reward for them.

Comments

  1. Hercules Grytpype-Thynne says

    One of these days I’m going to learn enough about cricket to be able to understand this post.

    I found myself at loose ends in a London hotel room about 18 years ago and spent a bunch of time watching cricket on the telly. There was a lot of cricket to watch because the match went on, if I recall correctly, for 2 or 3 days. I actually found it oddly enjoyable in an inscrutable sort of way.

  2. Mano Singham says

    @Hercules,

    I added an update to the post linking to an old post of mine that briefly explains the game.

    Also, international games last for five days so you may have watched a match between two English counties. Those last three days, unless they changed it recently.

  3. moarscienceplz says

    Thanks so much for that explanatory post, Mano. I once has an Irishman try to explain it to me, but I think he didn’t really understand baseball, so we didn’t have a lingua franca to aid communication. Yours is a much better explanation than Wikipedia has.

  4. DsylexicHippo says

    @ #3: I understand and follow both baseball and cricket. While baseball can be used as explanatory lingua franca, it is a much cruder game compared to cricket and lacks the nuances that goes into cricket. Watching a baseball game after watching cricket is like watching cavemen hitting balls with a club.

  5. Al Dente says

    The important part of 1st Class cricket is the “Tea Interval” when both teams and the spectators drink massive amounts of beer to fortify themselves for the next innings.

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