T20 World Cup Preview
The T20 World Cup is here...
The official T20 World Cup warm-up games have kicked off in Australia. That is as good an indication as any that the tournament is here. Writers are prepping their preview articles.
If you are not yet a subscriber of Stumped!, join more than a thousand other professional athletes & ex-pros, coaches, commentators & analysts and casual sports fans that receive the newsletter in their inbox each week — it’s free:
Tournament previews are a scam. Sportswriters pretend to have crystal balls that help them peer into the future and predict potential tournament winners, the teams with an outside chance to win and might do it, and the dark horses - the underdog that has the potential to cause huge upsets. It’s a stroke of genius. The less bold writers who want in on the action aggregate the views of two or three big names, and ‘form an opinion.’ Social media vultures simply copy and paste.
We write previews because there is not much that one can write under the title, ‘anything can happen.’ That’s not what readers want. You say anything can happen enough times and you lose credibility. Readers want insights. Some don’t want insights, some want confirmation of their biases. That’s why you are here, either for insight or confirmation bias. Sadly, I provide no insight. I don’t know the future, I have no crystal ball.
So, what is the point of this preview? None, because it is not a preview. But you have come too far to turn back. Continue reading…
Hey, if you feel like it, I’d love if you’d share this post with your friends!
ICC events are fun. A bunch of nations congregate to compete, how could that not be fun? They are way better than bilateral series, which have lost lustre. That's why everyone loses money when they host a bilateral series. Unless, of course, they are hosting India, then suddenly you have around a billion people watching. The Ashes do well. The golden age of international cricket is gone.
A new era is here. The T20 era. 19 years after its invention, the 'purists' are banging their heads against the wall and still insist on calling T20 cricket 'hit and giggle.' But, they forget that cricket has always been evolving. Overs used to be four balls long, then they took eight deliveries to complete. The six-delivery over only became universal in 1980.
The one thing that hasn't changed is the length of the pitch. It was measured using Edmund Gunter's chain in 1677, it is still measured by Gunter's chain. 66 feet, 22 yards or 20.12 metres
Cricket is closely mimicking football - international tournaments are the only reason why nations play against each other. These days, bilaterals only serve as preparation for ICC events. The only thing that would make ICC events better is having more nations take part, like football.
Anyway, going into ICC events, I like to have a heel. A team that I actively root against. Not just any team, but a good team to root against. There is no point in rooting against a team that gets knocked out in the group stages.
There was a time when Australia was the best team to hate. Rooting against Australia was easy. Back then, Australia was absolutely the best team in all of cricket to hate. Do you know why? They embraced it. They enjoyed it. They thrived on it. They played the heel as well as Ric Flair - if you watched WWF you get this reference. They were pricks.
They ruthlessly sledged the opposition. They were masters at the craft. The craziest bit is that they appointed themselves as arbiters who determined where the line that should not be crossed was. They never found themselves on the wrong side of that line. You cannot beat that level of arrogance. Yes, they were pricks.
As recently as 2015, for instance, the Australian team declined England captain Alastair Cook’s invitation for a drink in the Cardiff dressing room after the first Test of an Ashes battle. They were proper pricks. It was not just the players, it was everyone involved with Australian cricket.
There was something magnificent about those Australian teams, something that made them a great team to love to hate. Then Australia decided that they no longer wanted to be the heel in international cricket. After 2018, the sandpaper incident, hating Australia was no longer fun.
This Substack column exists thanks to patrons and readers that leave tips. Stumped! is wholly supported by Readers Like You. To keep the weekly posts coming and keep the lights on here, consider leaving a tip or supporting monthly on Patreon. You won’t regret it!
Don’t forget to share the post with friends.
Yes, Australia are the hosts and the defending champions, and they have Mitch Marsh, they have Glenn Maxwell, the big show and they have Tim David, the even bigger show. That's a lot of fireworks. They also have a great bowling attack. But, they do not wear the heel tag well. It doesn't suit them anymore. Glenn Maxwell is a good guy, Tim David keeps his head down and is polite with everyone and Mitch Marsh is the player whom Australians did not like very much. How can you hate that?
The second problem with finding a heel is this: things have changed. There was a simplicity to things back in the day. There were teams you liked and teams that you did not like. Things were black and white. Not anymore. The lines are blurred now.
Franchise cricket has commodified cricketers. They are now more like golfers, freelance contractors moving from opportunity to opportunity. They now run themselves like mini-corporations with their own support systems of coaches, trainers and psychologists, as Jon Hotten put it.
The West Indies pair of Andre Russell and Sunil Narine have been spending more time at the Kolkata Knight Riders training facility in India than they do in the West Indies.
We no longer watch ICC events to merely support our home teams. We now also watch to enjoy the skill of our favourite players from the various leagues. A Royal Challengers Bangalore fan will watch Sri Lanka play Namibia because Wanindu Hasaranga is playing. Namibia also has David Wiese - Lahore Qalandars, Northern Superchargers and so on.
Bhuvneshwar Kumar and Aiden Markram play together at Sunrisers Hyderabad. They train together. They have tactical conversations. At the World Cup Bhuvi bowls at Markram. I want to see who comes out on top. They are adversaries and they are teammates elsewhere. It's a tantalizing match-up. David Miller versus Rashid Khan. Rashid Khan versus Hardik Pandya. They just won a trophy together…
For a while, it looked like my quest for a heel was going nowhere fast. Then England came to my rescue. They did a weird thing.
Deepti Sharma ran out Charlie Dean and the England teams, men and women, went bonkers. They didn't have to, but they did. Ben Stokes, Stuart Broad, James Anderson and everyone with a voice invoked the spirit of the game in outrage. Somehow, they managed to make Dean look like a victim, unfairly dismissed by legal means. It doesn’t make sense.
It appears the English have a different definition of what the spirit of cricket is. Everyone else considers the spirit of cricket to be rooted in abiding by the rules of the game, respecting the opposition and umpires, and competing hard but fairly. As far as the English are concerned, the spirit of cricket is a moral question, and they get to decide what is moral and what is not. Australia from the noughties, is it you in disguise?
Jos Buttler went as far as drawing a line in the turf and declared that if one of his bowlers ran out non-striker ala Deepti, he will decline the wicket. They circled the wagons and formed a laager. The tantrum by the English was unnecessary. It smacked of entitlement. It had the maturity of a teen who feels they are unfairly treated when they are grounded for repeatedly breaking the rules.
But, it was helpful. England provided me with the perfect heel. They are also good. Almost every previewer worth their salt has them penned down as one of the favourites to win the world cup, which is good.
My favourite response to England’s reaction was from Ellyse Perry. Perry is not a big fan of the dismissal, but she urged those comfortable with it, “If you’re going to do it, do it to England."
If you still want that preview here it is: It should be a fun tournament. Most of these teams have a shot at winning the whole thing. According to CricViz, no team has more than a 16% chance of winning the tournament. No overwhelming odds. Anything can happen.