The ICC Champions Trophy matches are going on in England right now, featuring the eight highest ranked cricket playing nations in the world. I have been watching the games from time to time, especially the ones involving Sri Lanka. [Read more…]

After I came to the US in 1983 and before the internet became available to keep up with events worldwide, I lost touch with cricket news. One of the things that happened in the interim is that it has become increasingly popular with women and now there are women’s teams that compete internationally. [Read more…]

West Indies had a convincing victory over Sri Lanka in the final game, despite the latter having a huge home-field advantage.

West Indies won the toss and chose to bat first. This was not unexpected since batting first has turned out to be a good thing in this tournament. But the Sri Lankan bowlers and fielders, who had been a little sloppy in their semi-final game against Pakistan, were brilliant, especially early on in the game where they tied up the West India batsmen in knots, especially the dangerous Chris Gayle who had destroyed the Australians in their semi-final game. [Read more…]

In the second semi-final game in the Twenty20 World Cup tournament taking place in Sri Lanka right now, West Indies easily beat Australia, setting up a contest with Sri Lanka in the final on Sunday. [Read more…]

In the first semi-final game against Pakistan in the Twenty20 world Cup tournament, Sri Lanka scored 139 in their 20 overs. This was lower than the 160 or so runs that teams feel gives them a pretty good chance of winning but according to the analysts, the quality of the pitch (an important factor is cricket where the ball bounces before reaching the batsman) was such that this was a reasonable score. And they were proved right when Pakistan was able to score only 123 runs in their 20 overs. [Read more…]

The Twenty20 World Cup cricket tournament is currently going on in Sri Lanka. The original 16 teams were whittled down to eight in preliminary group matches. Those eight were then reduced to four (West Indies, Sri Lanka, Australia, and Pakistan) in another set of group matches. These teams will now play in a sudden-death format to see who emerges as the winner. [Read more…]

My post yesterday about Afghan cricket generated some comments about people’s bewilderment about the rules of the game. This is understandable since the rules are not obvious to anyone who happens to just watch it. For those who would like to understand it and are looking for a quick primer, I recommend my 2006 post on it, followed by this video.

The news from Afghanistan tends to be uniformly depressing and so I perked up when I read that Afghanistan has taken up the sport of cricket and currently has a national team playing against the Netherlands in Sharjah. It is true that neither team is an international powerhouse in the sport, but it is surely a welcome sign of a possible return to normalcy for a country to indulge in such a leisurely activity like cricket. [Read more…]

There is perhaps no more graceful sight in cricket than to see a great fast bowler in action. The long flowing run up, the planting of the feet and the swiveling of the body before the arms wheel and delivers the ball at high speed, is really something to see.
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The World Cup final will be played in India on Saturday between Sri Lanka and India. The teams are fairly evenly matched. Although I am rooting for Sri Lanka, I think India is the slightly better team and given that they have the home field advantage, they have to be considered the favorites. You can see a live video stream of the game here, with the game starting at 5:00 am Eastern and ending around 1:00 pm. That pretty much takes care of my Saturday morning.
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