The World T20: India Prove Generous Hosts

 

The World T20

India Prove Generous Hosts

 

March 31^st  2016

 

Both sides provided a surfeit of generosity, but it was India’s that, in the end, killed their chances of making the Final. Had the West Indies not, incredibly, missed running out Virat Kohli three times in two balls, the Indians would probably not have managed such a substantial total that they should have been able to defend – although any affirmation of what might have happened in T20 tends to be dangerous. However, given that he is the only Indian batsman to pass 90 runs in the tournament and has scored 41% of all the runs off the bat by India in their five matches, his loss on 1 could well have proved decisive.

It must be one of the strangest incidents ever in a cricket match. Kohli was beaten by a Bravo delivery and tried to run a bye to the ‘keeper.

Chance 1: Ramdin only needed to walk up to the stumps and break them with Kohli stranded half way up the pitch. He decided to roll the ball onto the stumps and missed.

Chance 2: Bravo picked the ball up in the middle of the pitch, with Kohli still well out of his ground. He threw and missed them on the other side. Kohli then scrambled back. Two simple runout chances missed off a single delivery.

Chance 3: Next ball, clipped to Deep Square Leg. Kohli decides to run two. The throw comes in to Ramdin, who fails to collect cleanly with Kohli well out again. A despairing dive and, by the time Ramdin has cleaned up the fumble, Kohli is safe.

Given these let-offs, India will be disappointed to have not got past 200. Despite running a lot of ones and twos, there were surprisingly few boundary hits and even fewer maximums: 17x4, 4x6.

The West Indies had a dreadful start: 19-2 after 3 overs, with both Gayle and Samuels out. That should have been the end of the match. When the asking rate got to 73 from 36 balls it only needed clear heads to see India home. However, to show their generosity as hosts, if Kohli was reprieved three times, Lendl Simmonds had to be too: twice with front-foot no balls and once when the fielder touched the rope taking a catch. You can blame the dew for bowling loosely at the death: all sides have struggled with it, but giving a key batsman two let-offs with front foot no balls is unforgiveable.

The West Indies decided that running twos was a bit too much like hard work and went for Route 1 instead: 20x4 and 11x6 – 146 in boundaries. When you do that, you can allow the occasional dot ball. Even though India only allowed 26 dot balls to pass and bowled an impressive 47 dots themselves, they forgot the basic premise that bowling three dots in an over is pretty meaningless if the other three balls all pass the boundary rope at great speed.

That is a pretty amazing number: the West Indies failed to score off almost 40% of deliveries, but still sustained 10-an-over.

India fail to break the hoodoo on hosts winning the title. The reasons are fairly clear. Although only Tamim Iqbal of Bangladesh, who played one match more and who faced several Associate attacks, aggregated more runs than Virat Kohli, we have to go all the way down to 36^th place to find the next highest Indian run-scorer (in contrast, England have Root, Roy and Buttler in the top six and the West Indies, three in the top sixteen), while the top Indian bowler is joint 18^th in the wicket table.

So now, we are left with a West Indies v England Final: not quite what the locals expected, or hoped, to see.

England were poor in their first match of the tournament: their defeat to the West Indies. Since then, England have just made one change to the side: Reece Topley has been replaced by Liam Plunkett and, suddenly, the balance of the attack has changed – there is no longer the sameness of pace, the lack of new ball threat (although Plunkett has not taken the new ball). There are plenty of bowling options based on pace, seam, swing (if on offer) and spin in both directions. But, as in the Semi-Final, they face an attack that has an attack that has performed outstandingly well: two of the five best economy rates for bowlers who have bowled at least 8 overs in the tournament belong to Badree and Benn.

The Final will be hard to call. Most neutrals will be rooting for the West Indies, but it will be interesting to see how they deal with an England team that is on the up. Whatever happened in the early stages of the competition will have little bearing on the result and remember, when England won in 2010, they were well-beaten by the West Indies in their opening game and barely scrambled out of their group.