T20 World Cup starts with a big upset

When the inaugural match of the 2nd ICC T20 World Cup began today, bookies were giving odds of 1 to 20 on the Netherlands - meaning if you put 100$ on the dutch and they win, you stand to win 2000$!!! The odds further improved as the England openers piled up the runs and crossed the 80 mark without losing a single wicket at the end of 10 overs. Who would have ever thought of then that the match was about to see a historic upset? But such is the nature of Twenty20 cricket.

England scored a very healthy 162 runs off their allotted 20 overs and when the Netherlands began their chase they lost a couple of early wickets, and it looked like the match was headed in only one direction. But slowly and steadily the runs came, and it was not long before England began to get a little jittery. Rain and Duckworth-Lewis only added to the drama on the first day of the T20 World Cup at Lord's. In spite of the dutch heroics, if the Englishmen had held onto their nerves and avoided even 20% of the many silly errors they committed, they could have saved themselves the blushes. But that was not to be, and England now find themselves in an unexpected do-or-die situation in their next match against Pakistan.

Mumbai Blasts derail India-England Series

The English Cricket Board's request for a postponement of the final 2 India vs England ODIs because of the terror strikes in Mumbai has been accepted by the BCCI. In all likelihood, the final 2 One Dayers would be called off, though a call on the 2 test series will be taken later.

The 2nd India-England Test Match is in fact scheduled for Mumbai, and the Taj Mahal Hotel, the scene of the crime might have been the hosts for the two cricket teams.

The fidayeen strikes have also jeopardised the holding of the Champions Twenty20 League which again had Mumbai as one of its venues. Rickey Ponting, the Australia captain and Shane Warne have both already called for the Champions T20 League to be shifted out of India.

Pictures of Matt Prior's wife sitting on Allen Stanford's laps -

Imagine Mrs Dhoni sitting on IPL chief Lalit Modi's lap! Thankfully Mrs Dhoni is still an imaginary being, and Modi is not Stanford. Else you could be guaranteed a milion non-stop videos of that on India TV and the many other idiotic news channels. But the T20 for 20 is real and so is Mrs Matt Prior, and Allen Stanford did manage to get the wife of the English wicket keeper on his lap, during a T20 for 20 match in Antigua.

Yes, that indeed is the Texan Billionaire Allen Stanford with Matt Prior's wife on his lap and surrounded by the wives and girlfriends (WAGs) of the English cricketers who are in Antigua for the T20 for 20 million $ Cricket Super Series. Imagine the shock of Matt Prior, Kevin Pietersen and other English cricketers when they saw this images being flashed live on the screen in the ground.

Stanford has since personally apologised to the English players, saying he was unaware they were the English cricketers' WAGs. "The girl who was stood up plopped down on my knee. I did not put her on my knee or sit here on my lap, she just plopped down. It was strictly an innocent thing. I apologised to Matt and to Kevin (Pietersen, the England captain)," he said.

The Importance of Lalit Modi

" There are a whole nest of issues around this appointment, and you have to wonder how Lalit Modi will respond as well. "
- Sean Morris, Chief Executive of the Professional Cricketers' Action (PCA), reacting to the appointment of Mushtaq Ahmed as England's spin bowling coach.

Collingwood goes Bang-Bang

Antonia (second from left) hails from Romania. She is 23 yrs old and her bust size is 34 c. Louisa is from Ukraine and so is Yara. Jasmine is..........

Aren't they all pretty and ooh-so-attractive? The Maverick Revue Bar in Capetown has 90 such stunning beauties and the England cricket captain is a man after all. Surely this is a better place to drown your sorrows than the Caribbean Sea that Freddy had chosen for himself earlier this year. And poor dear Paul Collingwood had gone there for just a beer and not for something that rhymes with his score the next afternoon (in case you are getting any ideas) !! A 1000 £ fine is too much for such minor transgressions!

What's making me feel worse is that i can't even sincerely wish him good luck for his next match - England take on India tomorrow. The match is happening in Durban, more than a thousand miles away from the temptations of Maverick Reveue and Bang-Bang Bars of Capetown. English fans can only hope that with Jasmine, Yara and gang too far away from the Kingsmead, their captain will concentrate on the job at hand. So what if his shots are greeted by the Indian fans with shouts of "Yara, kya hai mara"!!!

Ashes and War

Two pairs of arch rivals will fight T20 battles tomorrow in the much drenched cricket-fields of Capetown and Durban. Tommorow's afternoon fight promises to be one exciting one with the most fiercesome of the four warriors back against the walls having suffered a gory loss to an unfancied outsider in the 1st Battle-of-Capetown. Will the giant be able to brush apart its bruises and scars and finish victorious in the do-or-die clash tomorrow? In yesterday's encounter Ponting's soldiers started off with the intetion of blitzkrieging the men from Zimbabwe. The strategy backfired with heavy early casualties, a position of weakness from which the Australians never could recover. What will be their game plan for the morrow? Afterall the English castle is only stronger than the Zimbabwean one, and unfocussed heavy shelling may not be a prudent idea. However a planned artillery attack to weaken the enemy before the final hand-combat might just do the trick.

Translated: Gilchrist and Hayden will need to avoid the tempation to go firing on all cylinders all the time. Give Freddie the respect if he bowls like the way he did today againt Zimb. It is possible to reach a 190-200 score even if one bowler ends up with figures of 4-1-29-2. T20 is slam-bang but not as slam-bang as Ponting thought/thinks it was/is!!

When the sun sets tomorrow in Durban, the stars will rise - to shine, and fight. A new general is in charge of the Hindoostan army and unlike the previous incumbent he is no Wall. To the contrary, Mahendra Singh Dhoni is a 'Wall-Demolisher'. He dislikes minor skirmishes prefering instead to wage mounted battles or launching missiles. In an earlier avatar as an ordinary soldier, he had once brought the same enemy to its knees in a battle on the eastern coast of India. In that magnificient battle, Dhoni single-handedly shot down 148 men of the Pakistan navy - most remarkable were those four sensational shots when he drowned naval ships carrying 6 men with a single fire. 15 other times he shot down ships carrying 4 men apiece. But that clash is now history and tomorrow is a new day. The Pakistani army is also under a new dynamic and multi-talented leader - Shoaib Malik. For General Malik the primary task will be to marshall his own unruly troops. He knows that he has a bunch of great individual fighters, but can they stop the in-fighting to focus their energies on wiping out the opposition?

Will Dhoni's men be able to put it across Pakistan then? I suspect the key may lie in INS Sehwag, that old warship which has seen much battle but rusty now for lack of use. INS Pathan faces a similar predicament. If these two old war-horses can kick off that rust and manage to shimmer, the Blue stars can definitely outshine the Green ones tomorrow night.

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Twenty20 World Cup: 14 September 2007

Afternoon, 1200 GMT : Australia vs England, Capetown

Evening, 1600 GMT : India vs Pakistan, Durban