Day: Mar 29, 2016

If a Tree Falls and No One Hears it…

thelegglance2 Comments

One of the fundamental problems with working for a living, is that it thoroughly gets in the way of other things – like watching cricket.  This is even more the case when that work involves travelling.  So it was that the first week of the tournament was spent in Berlin, which didn’t really matter that much given how the ICC were trying to keep those awful associates out of the way as much as possible.  The second week was spent back here in the UK, except with a ludicrous schedule whereby the defeat to the West Indies was spent either on the tube or eventually in a car heading to Bristol – which would have been fine but for the presence of a German colleague for whom the delights of a cricket match on the radio probably wouldn’t have been the centre-piece of his trip.

The win over South Africa was spent in Cambridge, a five hour meeting which was productive, but not really the time to be checking Cricinfo to see what was happening.

Afghanistan was missed by dint of what in truth was a fairly pleasant lunch in Mayfair, although my lack of familiarity with such places was evidenced by my (silent) reaction to the presentation of the bill.  Free advice to you all:  Do not ask someone who works in Mayfair where they fancy going to lunch.  They will tell you, and then you’re stuffed.

Sri Lanka – ah yes I watched the Sri Lanka match.  I’m pretty sure I was back home by then, and after four overs of their innings texted a friend to say that surely even England couldn’t screw this one up, only to watch them try awfully hard to do just that.  Still, they won, and the nature of T20 is that it often gets close simply because of the shortness of the format.

And so England are in a semi-final of a tournament that has largely passed me by.  And here’s where Dmitri’s preview hits the nail on the head, because I’m a cricket fan, I watch it routinely and yet by not getting to see it, it’s barely registered as a competition.  Worse than that, the women are also in the semi-final and haven’t even had all their matches broadcast on Sky.  There have been mealy-mouthed justifications that it’s out of their hands, but that’s a nonsense – if they wanted to show them they would have made a point of ensuring there was coverage.  They didn’t.

Dmitri’s preview is here:

https://beingoutsidecricket.com/2016/03/29/world-t20-semi-final-england-v-new-zealand/

And now I am back in the land of TV coverage I’ll put up a review tomorrow.

 

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World T20 Semi-Final – England v New Zealand

LordCanisLupus26 Comments

Tomorrow an England cricket team will play a major World Semi-Final and it provides us with a chance to move towards a second world title in this format. It will be played out, the drama, the big hits, the slower balls, the yorkers, the running between the wickets behind a pay TV wall. As far as I am aware, there are no plans to share the coverage with those not in possession of a Sky subscription. Oh well. Internet highlights it is.

Has this game registered on the public conscience here? Has anyone outside your normal cricket circle expressed any sort of interest? Not with me it hasn’t and all my colleagues and friends know I’m that blogger.

But there’s not a problem.

New Zealand are unbeaten in the competition, have a game plan, or several plans, and yet if we could choose a team to play at this stage of a competition, we’d probably be grateful to be playing the Black Caps rather than Kohlishire. But again, they are not to be underestimated.

From a misery guts point of view, England are probably playing with house money now for the powers that be. They’ve reached the semi-final so even if they go out here, the ECB have some tangible progress to report. In many ways they have, but this still looks a flaky team to me. It could chase down pretty much anything, but it could also be chasing pretty much anything. It definitely looks more comfortable chasing rather than setting.

Comments on the match below.