Author: Matt

So much.

Just this summer:

The Ashes — which really if the series is competitive is cricket at its zenith. All 3+ Test series are great, but this is the granddaddy of them all.

Plus:

The ICC Women’s Championship
The Women’s Ashes
A Test between Ireland and England
India’s tour of the West Indies
New Zealand’s tour of Sri Lanka
All the fantastic domestic cricket in England

And that’s just this summer!

Looking farther ahead:

South Africa travel to India in the fall, Pakistan and New Zealand both tour Australia in the winter/fall, and India visit New Zealand right after that. Plus both the women and men have a T20 World Cup in 2020 — in February and October, respectively.

Welcome to the show that never ends.

“I played against Ross Taylor in the first World Cup I played, in 2007, and now, in the blink of an eye, I am playing him at Lord’s.” – Liam Plunkett, 15 July 2019

On April 3, 2007, I quit smoking. After smoking almost two packs of Marlboro Reds a day for 13 years, I crumpled up the pack I had in my pocket while sitting at my cube at the toy company in downtown Minneapolis and tossed it into the wastebasket and never looked back. I haven’t smoked a cigarette since.

That was 12 years ago.

A few days after quitting, I somehow stumbled onto the sport of cricket. Looking back, it was probably via a fark.com thread. All I remember is following the World Cup via the BBC and Cricinfo and feeling like I had found the world’s perfect game. I didn’t smoke. I followed cricket. And it was wonderful.

You probably remember that tournament. It was a farce. From beginning to end. If you bring the 2007 World Cup up around any cricket fan, they will roll their eyes and scoff. But all I remember is joy.

And the final.

Two days before, my wife, Niki, called Brit’s Pub in downtown Minneapolis to make sure they would be showing the game. They would be. And so on that Saturday we drove down and parked nearby and walked into the bar and they were showing the game in the main bar area and the host tried to seat us there, but then I saw the game was on in the Long Room and we went in there and the game was on a big projection screen and the room was packed with cricket fans.

It was the first live cricket match I would ever watch.

I was in heaven. I’d found my home.

We found stools along the wall with a shelf and we ordered beers and watched the game. If you have ever quit smoking — or quit anything, really, anything terrible for you — you know the exhilaration of those first few weeks. The knowledge that you are squashing a demon is a powerful drug in its own right. And as my wife had also quit smoking when I did we were both flying. Having this wonderful, perfect day. A little tipsy, taking in the cricket match, Niki asking questions about the rules. We made pals with the guy standing next to us. The match was at the gorgeous Kensington Oval in Bridgetown. After rain the sun came out. It was the last vestiges of those great Australian teams — Gilchrist and McGrath — against Sri Lanka who featured players of supreme joy, Malinga, Dilshan, Sangakkara.

You remember it from there, probably. After early rain the match was reduced to 38 overs a side. Ponting won the toss and chose to bat. Gilchrist put a squash ball in his glove and batted forever. Sri Lanka tried to chase it down but wickets kept falling. And then the farcical ending. The players were brought off due to poor light. Then the overs were reduced again. Then they played the final overs in almost complete darkness, with Australia agreeing to only bowl spin.

Australia won by 53 runs, winning their third straight World Cup.

A few days before the match, my wife had a drawn up a new budget, allotting a certain amount to spend on the weekends. When we got the bill that day at Brit’s we had blown over the budget on the very first weekend of the new budget. I was a jerk. She was upset. We fought. We left without saying goodbye to our new friend, without seeing the trophy presentation. It was a beautiful day outside, despite being only April. We fought in the sun on the walk to the car. Later, though, we were okay. We went to a friend’s house and sat in their backyard. The fight forgotten. We could always do that. Find a way to be okay. It was what made us great. What made us work.

Four years later we went to England for the first time. Neither of us had ever been overseas before. We packed up and flew to London and took the train to the city center and checked into our hotel and fell in love with the city. In a bar in Covent Garden we were having pints in the afternoon and ‘Don’t Look Back in Anger’ came on and we started quietly crying to ourselves, overwhelmed with how far we had come, where we were, and where we had been. This was near the end of February. And so the World Cup was happening in India. The games were on in various bars. We’d look up and there would be the cricket. It was almost surreal. Like we were on another planet. For cricket to just be right there. We left for home on March 1. On March 2 I watched via a stream Kevin O’Brien hit 113 off of 63 to beat England in one of the most bonkers bits of cricket I have ever seen.

A few weeks later I watched the final, staying up half the night as India beat Sri Lanka to lift the trophy on home soil. I remember you could feel the whole of India willing MS Dhoni along. Literally feel it. It was this energy put out into the either that filled the whole world. At the end of the match one in every five televisions in India was tuned to the game. After the match the Indian team carried Sachin Tendulkar on their shoulders in a victory lap around the stadium.

The 2015 version of the World Cup was in Australia. I paid very little attention to it. The US stream was expensive and I can be a bit of a miser. And the matches were on in the middle of the night and I was working a new job and couldn’t stay up all hours like I could in 2011. This was a grand time for my wife and I. After so many years of hating my job I had one I liked and paid well. We bought a new car. We started talking about going back to London again. Something we never thought we would do. Life was quiet and happy and calm. There wasn’t much to it. But that was fine. We were okay. Like we always were.

I bought the discounted streaming package so I could watch the final. Hosts Australia versus co-hosts New Zealand. With all apologies to my Australian readers, I was pulling for New Zealand with all my heart. I went and bought MOA beer from the liquor store. And I set up my laptop to watch the match in the kitchen, the spot I would describe to my wife quite often as my most favorite spot in all the world. My seat looked out over our big beautiful expanse of backyard and it’s where I would write, and read, and eat dinner with my wife, celebrating birthdays or anniversaries, or just sharing a quiet moment, her with her puzzle, me with my book, our dog on his bed in the corner.

As the game was on so late my time, I sat up and watched all the pre-game build up, the commentators whipping themselves into a frenzy over how the whole match was on a knife’s edge. Everyone was picking Australia, but no one was counting out New Zealand. The Kiwis had won all six of their group stage matches (including against Australia), demolished the West Indies in the quarterfinals (Martin Guptil scored 237 of their runs all by himself), and squeaked by South Africa in the semi-finals. But Australia were Australia. They had won the whole thing four times. And they would be at home in the expansive MCG.

But I had hope. I closed my eyes and saw Brendon McCullum scoring 300 and Australia getting bowled out. Instead, though, Mitchell Starc bowled McCullum with the fifth ball of the first over and New Zealand were all out for just 183. Australia chased it down with ease, despite losing Aaron Finch in the second over, and won the game by seven wickets. I watched halfheartedly. Drinking beer until I heard bird song and then going to bed. My wife got up at dawn and let the dog out. It was a unseasonable warm Sunday. And the sun came out. And melted away the last of winter.

This past Sunday I watched the World Cup alone. I woke up in my little apartment overlooking a bakery and watched the first few overs on my laptop on the porch in the heat of the morning. All the other World Cup finals I had watched had been in late spring. A time of beginning anew. Sunday’s final was in the height of summer. Everything was still and hot and quiet. My ex-wife was sleeping in our old bedroom 10 miles away. There was a pit in my stomach, the same one that had been there for a year.

At 9 a.m. I walked into Brit’s Pub to watch the remainder of the match. There was a smattering of people there, but the crowd grew. The Long Room where Niki and I had watched the 2007 final was closed for a private event, so we all watched in the main bar area. I sat at a stool and ordered a beer and watched the greatest ODI the world has ever seen. You know the story. Stokes, Buttler, Archer, Williamson, Neesham, Ferguson. The Super Over and the controversy and Buttler knocking the bails off and dancing into the night in the long shadows at Lord’s.

The match was pure joy and pure heartbreak. I couldn’t take my eyes away from it. But my mind drifted. I didn’t think about four years ago, or four years from now, as I usually do during World Cups. Instead I thought about 12 years ago. And that sunny day and the fight and the squash ball in Gilchrist’s glove and how we always found a way to be okay until we couldn’t and then I was alone.

I have always found World Cups to be a gift. Moments to mark time by. Every four years. A chance to look behind, and to look ahead. To live the examined life. To think about where we were four years ago, and where we will be four years from now. Usually, it’s a joyful practice. We can see how far we have come, and how, somehow, everything was worth it. On Sunday, though, for the first time, I looked back four years and saw only mistakes and regret. I looked ahead four years and saw nothing. A blank page. And I just kept going back to 12 years ago, in the same bar, just a few steps from where I was sitting on Sunday, my wife and I — my ex-wife and I — laughing, talking, being okay. And now I am never okay. I am lost. And all I wanted to do was go back. Shake myself. Make myself see how great it all really was. 

After the trophy presentation I slipped out into the sun and the heat and the haze of a downtown July day. All pavement and shimmer and bare skin. Summer in the north is like nothing else in the world. I caught the train home. 12 years ago we were somehow okay. On Sunday I was not. Four years from now no one knows. But no one knew four years ago either. And that’s the part about all of this. About time. We say that the past is behind us, that the future is ahead. But that is not the case at all. The future is behind us, as we cannot see it. All we can see is the past, it’s right in front of us, staring us down. The present is Ben Stokes batting England back into the game. The past is ahead. The future is behind.  And so no one knows what the 2023 World Cup final will bring. The final will be on March 26. Five days after the first day of spring. We all might watch New Zealand’s redemption, or India’s coronation. And we will all look back to Sunday. And think about where we were. And wonder if it was all worth it. Right now, I am still thinking about 12 years ago. And wondering how it all went wrong, and how I can put it all back together again. Reach forward into the past, make it all okay, like it once was.

And that’s the real magic of the World Cup. A chance to not just pause and reflect, but a chance to see what brought us to that bar stool alone on a Sunday afternoon, and what we can do differently so that four years from now I am better, we are all better. In other words: hope. That’s the lesson here. “There’s always next year” is an old baseball saying. For the World Cup, there’s always four years from now. For New Zealand. For India. For all of us.

12 years. A lifetime. All in the blink of an eye. Time passing like falling leaves until the tree is bare.

For a couple days I have hemmed and hawed about what to post under the Cricket for Americans banner with regard to Sunday’s final. There was so much to say, but none of it felt right. Thankfully, Twitter friend Tim Lowell and stepped in helped me out:

This game will take a long time to process. Mostly I’m happy I know about it. It’s like a precious secret I’ve been let in on. As for NZ, to be at such a disadvantage in every way and to come so so so close only to lose in this fashion is unimaginably sad and awful.

— Tim Lowell (@timlowell) July 16, 2019

The bar I was watching the game in is a popular spot downtown. It gets a great brunch and lunch crowd most weekends, especially since it’s close to two busy conference hotels. There was a private event in the bar’s Long Room where they usually show British sporting events, so we were all out in the main bar area. As such, group after group of folks were led through our loud tipsy mob to their tables up in the dining area. I watched them as they were led by the host, and I would spot a couple sports’ fan looking guys peeking at the screen. Some showed mild curiosity, others showed what appeared to me to look like disdain (as an American soccer fan, I know this look by heart), but most showed no interest whatsoever.

And, so, Tim is right. We were let in on a secret, a wonderful secret, and because of that we were treated to those nine wonderful hours of cricket on Sunday. Meanwhile, 99% of American sports fans missed out. They maybe watched the tennis or some golf or a little baseball or just spent the day doing other things. Which is too bad. Because it was something really, really special. And I feel so lucky that for some reason 12 years ago when I quit smoking I stumbled onto this game.

What was so great? It had everything. Twists, turns, momentum changes, great bowling, great batting, great fielding. It was a final worthy of the name which you don’t get in sports these days. Hundreds of deliveries leading to not one but two ties. And then the home team lifting the trophy in the end.

But the best part about it was that there were no goats. No one lost the game for their team. And there were no enemies if you were a neutral. Every one of the 22 guys out there played until their guts hit the floor and did so with grace and humility and style. You don’t get that in other sports. There are always goats. Always enemies. I watched a bit of the NBA Finals and winced as the Toronto crowd cheered Kevin Durant’s injury. That would not have happened yesterday. You would have liked all of them, and wanted all of them to win. Even if you supported England your whole life and have dreamed of a World Cup for 44 years, your heart still broke for New Zealand.

And it’s a bummer. Because everyone missed out. I came to work on Monday and never even brought it up. No one I know in real life watched it. It happened and it was magic and no one even knew it was going on. What a shame. And how many things are there like that in this life? Hundreds and hundreds, surely. Something every single day happens on TV or in our neighborhood that is somehow a miracle in a life that offers so few. And it’s not just sports. It’s music and art. Every day we miss out on perfection. And that’s the lesson here. I do not, it seems, feel badly for those that missed it. I am instead just feeling lucky that I did not. And, maybe, next time, when the cricket is on and you are being led to a table in the upstairs dining area, stop and take it in for a minute. It might be worth your time. I promise to do the same the next time I walk by a group of people transfixed by something alien, foreign, but also perfect.

Miracles in life are so rare. I got to see one on Sunday. And I am so lucky. Don’t miss the next one.

I am not going to write about all the controversy regarding yesterday’s result. The gist is this: New Zealand were hard done by some only tenuously logical ICC rules — as well as a really bad umpiring decision on the leg byes in the final over — but that no one would really care if it had been Australia or India which, I don’t know, is kind of rude? I get it, everyone loves New Zealand, but no one deserved to lose the way they did yesterday.

That said, they did lose. Or, at least, they didn’t win. This is going to be harsh but it’s not the ICC’s fault that New Zealand didn’t score 10 more runs in their innings. And it’s not the umpire’s fault that they let Stokes and Buttler bat England into the game. I feel like, in a lot of ways, it’s akin to an NFL team blaming a loss on a missed field goal. It’s not sour grapes, as much as it is failing to see the forest for the trees. I realize I might get hammered for this, but it’s my gut reaction to all the talk today. And I love New Zealand. The people, the team. Kane Williamson’s captaincy yesterday was brilliant. I had never seen anything like it before. They are a likable and very, very good cricket team. And I think, maybe, they would agree with me that the loss wasn’t the ICC’s or the umpires’ fault. And I think we can all agree that the ICC needs to have a long look at its rule book as soon as possible.

Anyway, I said I wasn’t going to talk about it, but here I am doing it anyway. The best recap on the day can be found by James Morgan over at The Full Toss. He more or less sums up the general sentiment on the internet today: everyone feels bad for New Zealand but that shouldn’t take anything away from England. And, more importantly, the ICC is a bit of a joke with its simply odd new rules every year. He also has a go at the ECB, who I think is unfairly missing out on a lot of criticism thanks to how the match played out. Morgan reminds us that they pulled the chair out from under their domestic 50 over tournament, despite the fact that the ODI has been the country’s marquee format for the last three years in the lead up to the World Cup. But now they are abandoning it for the hair brained Hundred. Have a read, it’s worth it.

Other than that, I am working on a longer post about the game that I hope to have done later in the week. Mostly, though, I am just basking in what yesterday brought us. I know that it didn’t end in the ideal manner — oh how I wish they had only given England five runs of the miss field and it had been four needed off of two and Rashid had either hit a six to win it or been clean bowled to put the weight on Wood to win it — but it was still oh just something to behold. Long before the controversy, it was still the greatest match any of us had ever seen. The general consensus at the bar was: “holy shit this is something fucking else.” The Stokes-Buttler partnership, Williamson’s aforementioned captaincy strangling the England batsmen into a fine pulp, grinding them down into the dirt to bring home glory for their tiny  country on the other side of the world. The whole day was brilliant. The sun came out in the afternoon. The shadows grew long. And the ending might have been a farce but when it happened I couldn’t help but applaud. You could seen the pressure lift and fall away from the England players’ faces. The weight of history, of a nation, bore down on them, but they just kept going, shook off the Kiwi stranglehold and won the whole damn thing.

7:30 in the evening on the northwest edge of the world’s greatest city, all those overs, all those deliveries, and it came down to a matter of feet and a lot of luck, there in the long shadows, Buttler dancing away into the night. What a moment. What a match.

I just wish it had ended with a Rashid six.

I watched the match today at Brit’s Pub in downtown Minneapolis. I arrived right as the chase was beginning and there were maybe a dozen people there watching. As the England innings wore on, the crowd grew to about 45 or 50. Most of whom were supporting England, with the rest being neutrals or neutrals supporting New Zealand. By the end, it was a rollicking ship of a bar, as we heaved and turned on every ball, like we were being tossed by waves in a storm.

At around the 48th over or so of England’s innings, a woman was offered the seat next to mine at the bar by the one of the England supporters who could physically no longer sit down. She was beautiful. Long dark hair and features like a super model. I paid no attention, the greatest cricket match of all time was happening. However, with three or four balls left of New Zealand’s Super Over, she leaned over and asked me: “so who’s winning?”

I literally had no answer for her. There was no answer really. I mumbled something like, “I don’t know New Zealand right now kind of but not really actually no one is winning.” And for the first moment I realized: there is never an answer to that question in cricket. Not ever. Sure, occasionally, a team is in the ascendancy, like if the team that opens the batting is at 74-8 after 10 overs. Or if there’s a team chasing 324 and they are 280-9 with two overs left. Then, sure, one team could be said to be winning. But, technically, in cricket, no one is ever winning until the last ball of the game is bowled.

And that was never more true than it was today at Lord’s.

At no point during today’s marathon World Cup final could you have accurately answered the question: “so who’s winning?” Or even given it an educated guess. The match was so even throughout every delivery that it was almost a miracle of sport. It was a truly magical day of cricket. And, yes, it’s a shame on how it was decided — by the fact that England had the most boundaries on the day — but that does not take away from the fact that the two teams on the day were all square, matching each other stroke for stroke, single for single, delivery for delivery. 100 overs. 130 deliveries. Nothing could separate them. And, more than that,  there were no goats today. Only heroes. Stokes, Williamson, Archer, de Grandhomme. All 22 were heroes. All 22 gave it their all.

There were no losers today. England won the World Cup, but New Zealand did not lose it. And we, the fans, were winners, too, as we were able to behold such a miracle of a game. And the game was a winner too. Here is cricket, in its dying stages, heaving itself back up off the canvas, and reminding the whole world why it is so great, and why we lucky few love it so much,

There’s a lot more to say, of course, but the one moment that sticks out for me above all the rest, isn’t a moment at all, but a man. Ben Stokes. He took an entire country on his shoulders and as his teammates fell away around him, carried them to glory. It was one of the gutsiest performances I have ever seen from a player, no matter the game. He ran himself absolutely ragged, and gave every last inch he had for England to win. Stokes, shaking off Bristol once and for all. Stokes, so tired at the end he could barely lift his arms. Stokes, leaning on his bat, in the long shadows of a London late afternoon at the non-striker’s end, begging for his chance to win it for his adopted country, only to fall just short. And then a few minutes later, walking out to bat the super over, his kit grass stained and filthy, ready to give just a little more.

**

At around the second over, the bar manager asked me if I was for England or New Zealand. I said I was a neutral, and that I just wanted it to go down to the final ball.

For once, my wish was granted, and then some.

What a match. What a day.

Cricket, am right?

More, hopefully, tomorrow.

A few days ago, I would have given this tournament a letter grade of maybe a B-minus. Today I would give it an A-. Maybe even a full A. For the semi-finals gifted us not one but two upsets, as New Zealand squeaked by India over two days and this morning England demolished a woeful Australia. And not only that, neither England nor New Zealand have won a World Cup, so no matter who wins on Sunday morning at Lord’s, we will get a new name on the trophy. The safe bet, I think, is on England, but as these semi-finals have shown, there are no safe bets at this tournament.

The New Zealand-India match — and to some extent, the England-Australia match — goes to show how thin the margins are in cricket, despite how long the matches are, especially at this high level. India probably played 50 hours or more of cricket over the course of the group stage, but per India’s captain Virat Kohli, it was just 45 minutes of bad cricket that cost India — the best team in the tournament by a country mile — a spot in the finals. 45 minutes. Just a hair over 1% of the cricket they played so far in the tournament. Remarkable. You cannot — cannot — switch off when you are playing at this level. Even just a few minutes could cost you. The length of the matches gives the impression that there is always room to make up for an early wobble, but that is rarely the case when you are playing a team as clinical as New Zealand. Sure the games are hours and hours, with as many as 600 balls bowled, but it all comes down to a few good deliveries, a whisper close run out, or the ball grazing the bat on its way to the wicket keeper.

And the same could be said to some degree of the England-Australia game. The difference was that Australia’s openers were gone almost immediately — again, just a few minutes of good bowling and sloppy batting — while England’s openers saw the ship safely through the first ten overs, which put the game more or less out of reach. And it isn’t just about what happens on the field either. England were terrible when Jason Roy was out, but started winning the minute he was back in the side. At its heart, cricket is an individual sport in the guise of a team game. And Roy proved that out again today. In most other sports, you can lose your best player and still be okay — Ronaldo in the 2016 Euro final for instance — but that is just not the case in cricket. England need Roy. And as long as he doesn’t throw away his wicket on Sunday, I think the match is England’s to lose.

That said, this tournament has proven that while cricket can be oh so very predictable, sometimes it’s not, and that’s why we all keep watching. It’s a remarkable sport with its long days governed by the minutiae of a single ball or a just a few minutes. Which, in a lot of ways, is like life. We go through our lives — which despite what people say, are very long, not very short — and all we focus on in the past are a few minutes here and there, minutes that define us and all that we do. Car accidents. A chance meeting. Something that happened on some random Sunday at 11 o’clock in the morning that broke your heart forever.

And so in life, just like in cricket, it’s best not to switch off, for you never know when magic is going to strike.

Until Sunday then. I can’t wait.

And so the group stage is over. I was hoping to be writing a different story today. One about Pakistan or Bangladesh or the West Indies. But instead we are looking at the semi-finals that everyone expected and quietly feared: the Big Three plus spunky New Zealand. It was almost a foregone conclusion, despite England’s wobble against Sri Lanka. And so I am not telling the story of how Pakistani or West Indian or Bangladeshi immigrants were treated by their new home, the United Kingdom, the host of the tournament. There is no poetic bend to this World Cup toward justice. It’s not that story. Instead it’s cricket’s usual story, the one we hear all the time, the horror story that is the Big Three’s utter domination of world cricket. How they manipulate the game to hoard even more power.

Many people — myself included — bemoaned the fact that there were only 10 teams in the format chosen for this World Cup, because it all but completely denied access to the non-Test nations. But another part of me is like, who cares? We just would have watched India and England and Australia run roughshod over countries who don’t have access to the money and power that those three countries have. But what do we do about this? Nothing. All three final matches will sell out. All three will attract huge television ratings — again, myself included — and all three will be flooded with buckets of cash from sponsors whose products we all buy. And so we are just as culpable. The system is corrupt, and we fund the system.

We didn’t get the semi-finals that we wanted. But we got the semi-finals we deserve. In the world that we fantasize about but do nothing to bring to fruition, Pakistan is playing England tomorrow, perhaps, and maybe South Africa is taking on New Zealand or India. Dream match ups. Instead, we will watch the semi-finals we were expecting to watch and were already bored with the minute the format was announced.

I am being overly cynical, I know, and probably a little harsh, especially for the fans of those four teams. Having your favorite team in a knockout match in the World Cup is a special kind of joy for a sports fan. It’s thrilling and nerve destroying and occasionally even fun. Tomorrow a billion cricket fans in India will tune in to watch the new guard and the old guard take on New Zealand, a like-able but fiercely competitive 11. And not as many people will watch England play Australia on Thursday, but across Australia people will rush through dinner to watch the first over, which will happen in Sydney at around 7:30 in the evening. Kids will be allowed to stay up late but not too late. And throughout England, a kid here and there will watch and fall in love with this remarkable old game, and that kid might be the one that saves it.

Again, I was being harsh. At the end of the day it’s cricket. It’s fun. We maybe didn’t get the semi-finals the poets in us all wanted, but we will get to see the best four teams in the one day game play each other. That’s maybe not poetry but it’s justice, in a sense. We will get to watch Kohli and Sharma and Taylor and Warner and Root. And Bumrah and Boult and Starc. What a shame if any of those players had been left watching from home? We would have missed out on the best cricket has to offer. So, yeah, it’s a shame that Jason Holder is already back in the Caribbean, but we do get Ben Stokes, who has played out of his mind, shaking Bristol off his shoulders, and has carried England to the knockouts.

Even when it is predictable, there is always poetry in cricket, that’s what keeps us coming back.

And cricket, more than any other sport on earth, is intensely and aggressively fair. So maybe it’s not anyone’s fault that the best teams in the world batted and bowled through damp and bad luck bounces and wickets that were roads to get to the knockouts, because that’s just how cricket works. We can’t blame a corrupt system if the game itself is what gave us the semi-finals we got.

Mostly, though, I will watch because I will be sad when it’s over. For nearly six weeks we have watched cricket every day, all day. A festival of the game we love. And on Sunday when the shadows start to grow long in St. John’s Wood, we will know that the end is near. And then the champion will be crowned and the guns will fall silent. And after six weeks of cricket every single morning, we will be greeted with nothing but quiet. And when the trophy is lifted, we will think about where we were four years ago, when Brendon McCullum was bowled out by Mitchell Starc with the third ball he saw, and David Warner and Michael Clarke and Steve Smith put out the result out of doubt. We will think about where we were then, and we will think where we will be four years from now, when India’s openers trot out into the heat and the haze of the tournament’s opening match. Where will I be? Where will all of us be? So much has changed in the last four years, and it will all continue to change. And we will mark time by these tournaments, and hope for a memorable final that we can hang onto as life happens over the next 48 months until we are all here again, writing, watching, cheering. Because it’s a World Cup summer, and World Cup summers are always the best summers.

Until next time.

 

We are nearing the end of the group stage. Australia have booked their place in the knockout stage, and India and New Zealand won’t be far along. The fourth and final semi-final spot is now up for grabs, as favorites and hosts England lost for the second straight time today. With that loss England now sit on eight points with two matches left to play, and Bangladesh are breathing down their necks on seven points and also have two matches left to play. England hold the advantage in Net Run Rate if it comes to that.

But here’s the rub for England: their last two matches are against New Zealand and India — two powerhouses — while Bangladesh plays India and Pakistan. England definitely will need to play out of their minds to beat both India and New Zealand, for while I don’t see Bangladesh beating India, they have a good shot at beating Pakistan. If England lose those matches and Bangladesh loses to India but beats Pakistan, then they would leap frog England into 4th. What a thing that would be! There are 4.4 million people of Bangladeshi descent in the UK and they would blow the roof off the country if they make it to the knockouts.

And that’s really the only story left of the group stage, unless New Zealand or India fall off a cliff, but iI don’t see that happening, so all eyes will be on England and Bangladesh. The former plays India on the 30th of June and New Zealand on June 3. And the latter play India on July 2 and Pakistan on July 5. Those are the dates to pay attention to.

One other thing to note is that as we near the end of the tournament, the players are beat up, sore and worn out — we all saw Ben Stokes hobbling out there today — and so days off become of paramount importance. England will have four days off before the India game compared to India’s two, but will only have two days off to New Zealand’s three in that match. Meanwhile, Bangladesh have SEVEN days off before they play India on July 2, while India will only have had ONE. For their last match they will have two days rest before playing Pakistan while Pakistan will have had six. I think, right now, looking at those numbers, it’s a bit of a wash, but if Bangladesh beat a worn out India on July 2 then England should be very, very worried.

You also have to take in account that as New Zealand and India qualify, they might start resting players, which would be a real shame. I hope they don’t and the twilight stages of this tournament entertain us as completely as possible.

Until next time.

There hasn’t been much to update on, because of all the rain, but we have gotten some matches in these last few days. England, India and Australia all continued their winning ways, while the West Indies and Afghanistan continued their losing ways (so much for my prediction that the Windies were going to make a little noise this tournament). The most interesting result and by far the most entertaining match of the last half dozen was Bangladesh’s defeat of the aforementioned hard luck Windies by seven wickets. And they did it by chasing down a massive total of 321 and got there with 51 balls left in their quiver. Amazing.

We are now at about the halfway mark of the group stage. Every team has played five matches except for Australia and India, who play theirs Thursday and Saturday respectively. The top four, to no one’s surprise, consists of England, India, Australia and New Zealand. If the group stage ended tomorrow, England would play India, and Australia would play New Zealand — two positively mouth-watering semi-finals.

On the cusp are Bangladesh and Sri Lanka who are two and three points out of 4th place. Each of them only has two losses though, so they could theoretically still lose one and stay under the dreaded four loss mark, but it’s going to take some slip ups from the top four to get either into the semi-finals, and I am not sure I see that happening. Today was a real litmus test for England — the only team I could see choking out of the knock out stage — but they clinically and efficiently dispatched Afghanistan to squash any lingering doubts regarding their character. All that said, this Bangladesh side has been damned impressive and if there are any slip-ups that just might be able to take advantage of it.

The real bummer for Sri Lanka is they have lost two full matches to rain. I would be hard pressed to say that they lost four points, but you could argue that they lost one if they had beaten Pakistan or Bangladesh and the other match had still been a rain out … but that’s a bit too much whatifism for my taste.

Speaking of Pakistan, they along with South Africa and the West Indies are not mathematically eliminated but are too far gone to realistically qualify for the knockout stage. Meanwhile, Afghanistan, despite all the heart in the world, are out, and can just look to play spoiler in their final five games.

Big matches on the horizon include Bangladesh vs Australia on Thursday — with the former looking to cause a big-four slip-up themselves — and the massive England vs Australia a week from today.

This has been a pretty great World Cup so far. The only bummer has been the rain. Here’s hoping for a dry few weeks and a memorable second half of the group stage.

Until next time.

 

Rain again today. The third washout of the tournament, and the second day in row. Today it was Sri Lanka v Bangladesh, yesterday it was South Africa v West Indies, and back on June 7 it was Pakistan v Sri Lanka. You have to feel for the Sri Lankans, losing two full matches to rain, but honestly they probably would have only won one of those matches — maybe — so the 2 points from the no-results is probably fair or even more than fair. But I am sure they players and their fans would much rather the games were played.

The Bangladesh coach bemoaned the lack of reserve days at the tournament. I get where he is coming from, but logistically I don’t know how possible it really is. It would be a nightmare. But, also, doable. There is a lot of money at this tournament — more on that in a second — and you’d think that the ECB and the ICC could have figured out a way to make it happen. The sad part is that if no-results start happening every other day for the next few weeks — something probable but unlikely — then it might cost England a chance at hosting a future World Cup. The ECB, by not pushing for reserve days, might have really shot themselves in the foot. Here’s hoping for sunnier weather.

**

Also for today, I recommend an article about the match day ‘experience’ from Alex Ferguson over at The Full Toss. It’s a disappointing read. Not because of Alex’s report, but because of stuff like this:

Every five minutes it seemed you were told to jump up, wave at this, scream at that – all because the ICC wanted someone to do that at the behest of a sponsor.

And this:

Look, we didn’t mind the ‘hydration break’ (sponsored Powerade, the piss-poor version of Gatorade), because that happens at test matches. We don’t mind an Arab airline sponsoring the big screen so we could tell who was out and not out. We get corporate sponsorship because that’s what happens during other sports. We get it: In our consumerist society people are going to try and sell you ****, and you get on with it.

However, during cricket matches getting overly advertised to is an absolute pain-in-the-ass. It was like the ICC had looked at the IPL and thought: “How can we make this EVEN MORE ANNOYING?” without the cars, cheerleaders and stupid time-outs?

Well, somehow they managed it.  Every two or three overs, it was imperative that people were told to jump up and down to get their faces on a camera. Or wave their sponsored ‘4’ and ‘6’ signs. Or show who you were supporting by ‘yays’ and ‘nays’.

I hate that kind of stuff at games, no matter the sport. T-shirt cannons and rock music and everywhere you look some sort of corporate dystopian nightmare that David Foster Wallace would have been proud of.

It’s a shame. Cricket doesn’t need this.

The good news is that it’s not entirely apparent what all is happening when watching on TV from afar. The loud music between overs and the constant shots of people mugging for the camera get old, but the cricket is always the priority. Because, at the end, that’s all that matters. Again from Ferguson:

Thankfully the game itself was fantastic. Australia looked like they were going to get wiped off the face of the earth until Steve Smith, Alex Carey and Nathan Counter-Nile rescued them. And then the Windies – who had looked comfortable – started to look less like a team of World Cup players than a team full of IPL players (Shai Hope apart).

And that’s the beauty of cricket: even in the face of all that ridiculous late-stage-capitalism nonsense, the game shines through.

**

Lastly for today, last night I watched game 5 of the NBA Finals (stop laughing, I have a friend from Toronto here in town), one moment sticks out: The Toronto fans cheering when Golden State superstar, Kevin Durant, went down injured. My first thought was: that would never happen in cricket. For all the eye rolling we all do at the “spirit of cricket,” it really does keep the stuff we saw last night in Toronto out of the game. When an opposing player scores a beautiful 100, for instance the fans for the other team applaud for him. It’s really remarkable.

There is, of course, at this tournament, some booing being directed at Australia’s David Warner and Steve Smith for their participation in a ball tampering incident last year, but I really think that that is apples and oranges. It’s one thing to cheer an injury, and something different entirely when it is booing players who have cheated. The latter might happen in cricket, but the former never would.