America

I love America.

And not in the ultra-nationalist, “AMERICA FUCK YEAH” sense – but in the “grand experiment”, utopian sense. When I bike by a park in the Longfellow neighborhood of Minneapolis on a summer’s evening, and it is full of people of every shape, size, color, and creed, playing soccer, softball, lacrosse, horseshoes, and chess: that is when I love America. That is when I am proud to be an American.

And, so, last weekend, as I was walking the dog, I noticed kids playing cricket in the park down the street from my house, and I was in love with America; I was proud to be an American.

Of course, that sounds silly, and of course America, and especially Minnesota, has serious segregation issues. It was not a rainbow of humanity playing cricket on Saturday, in other words.

But my point stands, as cricket slowly but surely inches its way into the average American’s consciousness, I fall a little bit in more in love with my country.

Cricket becoming popular in America is what America is all about.

Children of Asian immigrants playing cricket on a baseball diamond in the Midwest United States is what America is all about.

The next step is for children of all backgrounds to join them; that’s when my heart will really swell.

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Infinity

I have been greatly enjoying the Champions Trophy.

There is a part of international cricket that I have a hard time wrapping my brain around: the infinity of it all. Tours and tests and round and round with no clear season or winner or ending. I think my inability to comprehend it or for my brain to find sense in it springs from the fact that I am an American and that I came to the sport late in life. But tournaments such as the one taking place in England and Wales this summer are the opposite of forever: a short period of time, a clear winner, and most importantly: an ending.

It is a nice antidote to the literally endless international schedule.

Also, the tournament itself, despite being a wasteful ICC money grab, has been a great success. Thrilling matches, great individual performances, packed houses, and the final everyone wanted: India vs England.

Well, that was the final I wanted.

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British Baseball Announcers

This is worth your time if you have not seen it already. Downright hilarious; especially for those that follow both baseball and cricket:

Short post tonight, but if you have not done so already, be sure to listen to (or read) The Cricket Couch‘s fascinating interview with Rohan Chandran, one of the founding members of Cricinfo.

I found the interview especially interesting because I learned that Cricinfo has very strong and clear Minnesota roots. Back in early 1993, when the site was not a website at all but a glorified Internet Relay Chat (IRC), University of Minnesota students Neeran Karnik and Simon King were integral members of the core group of amateur coders, mechanical engineers, and just general cricket nuts throughout the world who used IRC as a way to “broadcast” cricket scores to fans around the globe via the Internet – and their work eventually morphed into the Cricinfo website we all know today.

In fact, many Internet and cricket historians credit Simon King as the true “founder” of the site for his development of the #Cricinfo IRC bot in the spring of 1993. 

And finally, one very key moment in Cricinfo’s development was its move from IRC to Gopher – one of the very first web browsers – which was of course invented by a team from the UofM. And Chandran gives clear credit to Neeran Karnik for setting the site up on Gopher.

I urge you to go listen to the podcast or read the transcript – it is really fascinating stuff.

For more on Simon King, I recommend Cricinfo’s 20th anniversary timeline.

And finally, cheers, as always, to The Cricket Couch for always providing us with such amazing content.

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Update: More great information from Rohan Chandran’s blog. Also both Chandran and Neeran Karnik are on Twitter.

Remarkably, despite the fact that both Karnik and King were at the University of Minnesota at the same time, the two never met in person.

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Update #2: Be sure to check out Neeran’s comment below for even more of the Cricinfo backstory.

Cricinfo is currently celebrating its 20th anniversary.

It is truly remarkable, considering the state of the Internet in 1993 compared to the state of the Internet in 2013, that the site has not only endured, but thrived.

Sambit Bal wrote a lovely tribute to the site that I cannot recommend enough. He says it better than I can:

In the sands of human history two decades are no more than a speck, but it is the sum of life for the World Wide Web. The internet has been around in some form or the other since the early 1980s, but websites as we know them didn’t come around till about 1993, by when, incredibly, Cricinfo existed. Before Twitter, before Facebook, before Google, before Hotmail and Yahoo, before iPhones and BlackBerries, and even before proper web browsers, there was Cricinfo.

Familiarity dulls our sense of wonder and we are prone to take for granted things that become part of our daily routine. But consider this. Before Cricinfo, the only way to find out what was happening in the game from a non-cricket part of the world was to put in an expensive international call. I have a friend who had his mother in Delhi post to the US newspaper clippings of each day’s report after every Test. She once forgot to include the last day’s report, which left him tormented for days.

As Simon King, who led a bunch of cricket samaritans in shaping and nurturing Cricinfo through the early years said: before Cricinfo, it was the dark ages.

The site is entirely integral to the sport. And while there are both positive and negative things one could say about its stranglehold on Internet based cricket reporting, I honestly believe that Cricinfo saved cricket.

Not Sky Sports, not Sachin Tendulkar, not the Twenty20.

It was Cricinfo, all along, that kept the game alive through some of the darkest decades the sport had ever experienced, and now that the sport is entering a new golden age (my opinion) it has Cricinfo, and ESPN by extension, to thank.

And speaking on a personal level: I am not a cricket fan today if Cricinfo does not exist.

Fact.

And I would bet that many of my fellow American born cricket supporters, and continental European cricket supporters, and other cricket fans from the sport’s backwaters are also not fans if Cricinfo does not exist.

Furthermore, the Asian Indian ex-pat community, as Sambit states above, relies entirely on Cricinfo to stay in touch with the sport they left behind. There are 2.8 million Asian Indians in the USA right now – would they still be cricket fans without Cricinfo? Or would they have moved on to baseball, or soccer. Tough to tell, of course, but you have to at least give Cricinfo some credit for keeping them hooked.

(And that is a bit of a chicken or the egg situation: Are Asian Indians ex-pats the world world over still cricket fans because of Cricinfo? Or is Cricinfo’s status in the sport due to the fact that there are tens of millions of Asian Indian ex-pats? Probably a bit of both).

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And so, like I said, I really do not have a lot to add here. I do urge everyone to check out Cricinfo’s anniversary coverage. It really is fascinating. There is a great story on what it was like to do ball-by-ball commentary during the 1996 World Cup.

And while some have issues with the site, and while some might think that its status constitutes a monopoly and is bad for the game, I think the site is just brilliant, from top to bottom. Not infallible, of course, but I love that our game has one space for us all to conger, unlike football or basketball. I think we fans are extremely lucky to have Cricinfo – shoot, I think cricket overall is extremely lucky to have Cricinfo.

I also believe that this thriving and wonderful blogging community that we all enjoy is also extremely lucky to have Cricinfo: not just for the story ideas and the match reports and Statsguru: but I think its monopoly in a lot of ways created our underground cricket writing community. And I think we can all agree that that is something to be thankful for.

And so, thank you Cricfino writers, editors, and code jockeys. Thank you Walt Disney and Wisden and ESPN. Thanks to the poor souls that have to sell their advertising space. Thanks to accountants and office managers and assistants. Thanks to everyone involved.

Happy birthday and here’s to another 20 years! Mazel tov!

Most of you have probably seen the latest “article” from BuzzFeed: Why The USA Needs To Give In And Embrace Cricket.

A synopsis of their reasons:

1. The games aren’t as long as most think
2. The players don’t always wear white – in fact sometimes they wear PINK
3. It’s similar enough to baseball
4. It’s hard
5. Players have to pay attention or they might get hit in the face (with the ball)
6. There’s trash talk
7. The fielding positions have funny names
8. Fans dress fashionably but also sometimes they wear costumes
9. There is beer
10. Sometimes it rains (?)
11. Hardly any countries play it so America could dominate (Paging, Peter Della Penna. Peter Della Penna to the front desk.)
12. Alastair Cook is super hot
13. Lily Allen likes cricket
14. Benedict Cumberbatch likes cricket
15. The princes like cricket
16. Doctor Who likes cricket
17. And you can play it whilst eating a sandwich

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Yes, I know, it’s all meant tongue firmly in cheek, but some of those reasons are quite valid, and my list of reasons why Americans would love cricket, while shorter, was at least kind of similar:

1. The Two Chucks (what happened to those guys anyway?)
2. The blogging community
3. Lasith Malinga
4. Twenty20s
5. There’s beer
6. The fancy dress

Of course, with the exception of number three, those are all things that happen off the pitch, but here is an open letter to American Sports Fans explaining what they are missing out on by ignoring what’s happening on the pitch:

The game lasted five days. There were over 2,700 balls delivered. And yet somehow, despite all logic to the contrary, the game was not decided until the final ball was delivered…

It’s a great game, America.

Trust me. Trust BuzzFeed.

It’s time.

Join us.

Those of you that have been reading this blog for a while know that I first started following cricket during the 2007 World Cup. Every time I tell a dedicated cricket follower that fact, they respond with something along the lines of “and you didn’t run screaming back to baseball!?”

And, no, I didn’t.

In fact, I loved every second of it.

That probably had something to do with the fact that I didn’t know any better.

But I also think it has something to with the format itself.

As I mentioned briefly in a post from a couple days ago, the One Day International was my first format and it is how I learned the game.

I fell in love with cricket because of the ODI.

This morning as I was watching the overs tick over via the ball by ball on Cricinfo, I was reminded of those first few glorious mornings during the 2007 World Cup. It was a grand feeling then, and it was wonderful to be reminded of it again this morning. (By contrast, the 2011 World Cup did not make sense, timezone wise, which is why the memories did not come flooding back then.)

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But my feelings for the ODI are not simply nostalgia based, I really do think it is a phenomenal sporting contest. The strategies are endless and interesting: be aggressive but not too aggressive; play defensively but also offensively; and don’t forget about that net run rate.

It takes all day to get a winner, from late morning until late afternoon; and so it is a real test of endurance and stamina.

The problem, however, is that cricket is far too reliant on the format to fill out the schedule during longer tours.

Those endless 18 match tri-series are truly interminable, for instance – to the point where the matches lose all of their color, all of their character, all of their magic.

I love ODI cricket during a tournament, even if it is just the Champions Trophy (more on that in a second) but I find the format terribly boring outside of tournaments.

My recommendation, based on a Tweet from earlier today: play 50 over cricket at the domestic level, but only play it at the international level during the World Cup.

The obvious problem there is that players will not be conditioned to the format at the highest level and the games might not therefore be as entertaining, but I don’t think that would be the case.

Or maybe, during tours, just play one ODI and one T20 and five Tests.

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Someone else Tweeted, and I forget who, about how the Champions Trophy, while a bit of a joke in cricketing circles, mostly for how the ICC pimps it as the greatest thing since sliced bread, really is the perfect format for an ODI tournament. The eight best teams in the world, and it’s over in two and a half weeks.

And, I don’t know, I think I agree with that.

Of course, the Twitterer went on to mention that the ICC has indefinitely cancelled future Champions Trophies, which of course is par for the course: cancelling the one thing they are doing right.

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A bit of a rambling post, but here’s the gist: this should be a fun tournament; especially if today’s match was any indication of future play.

See everyone on Twitter.

The Champions Trophy Starts tomorrow and will be carried live here in the states over on ESPN3. I must admit, I am kind of excited.

If you missed it on Twitter, here is a link to ESPN3’s official press release regarding their coverage. You can also go check out my cricket viewing guide for the full schedule.

My prediction is as follows:

#ct13 prediction: NZ and ENG advance from group A, PAK and SA advance from group B. Then SA over NZ in the final. #youhearditherefirst

— Matt Becker (@limitedovers) June 3, 2013

And for a proper preview, I turn the site over to occasional guest writer, JP Daughtery:

ICC Champions Trophy Preview 2013

Group A

England

The hosts of the tournament, usually good in their home conditions but they just lost a home series to New Zealand.

Captain: Alastair Cook
Wicketkeeper: Jos Buttler/Jonny Bairstow
Best batsman: Alastair Cook; England’s captain has had a prolific last couple of years, especially in Test cricket, where he recently became England’s all-time leading century-maker. Can he transfer that form into the 50-over game?
Best bowler: James Anderson; One of the best classical swing bowlers in the world. Uses his great gift of being able to swing the ball late to pick up early wickets with the new ball.
X-Factor: Eoin Morgan; Morgan’s outrageously inventive stroke play has earned him a reputation as one of the best finishers in world cricket. Is possibly the only player in world cricket to play more ‘reverse’ shots than conventional shots.

Australia

Always one of the favorites, even though they are in a rebuilding phase and just got bowled out for 65.

Captain: Michael Clarke
Wicketkeeper: Matthew Wade
Best batsman: Michael Clarke; The Australian captain had the year of his life last year, scoring two double centuries against South Africa. Can he lead the Aussies to Champions Trophy 3-peat?
Best bowler: Mitchell Starc; The young Starc has wowed people the world over with his pace and bounce, and his ability to not be erratic like that other Mitchell. Expect the English conditions to be to his liking.
X-Factor: David Warner; This dynamite opener can give Australia a fast start, although he has not been in the best of form lately. Can he deliver when Australia needs him most?

Sri Lanka

A young and exciting team, bolstered with some veterans who are legends of the game.

Captain: Angelo Mathews
Wicketkeeper: Kumar Sangakkara
Best batsman: Mahela Jayawardene; A classical batsmen, uses more of placement than power in his shots. One of the few players to get 10,000 runs in both Tests and ODIs.
Best bowler: Lasith Malinga; ‘The Slinga’ had a relatively quiet IPL season until the final, when he demolished the Chennai top order. Expect him to be confident after that performance.
X-Factor: Dinesh Chandimal; This exciting young prospect is one of the new stars of the Sri Lankan batting order. He will be expected to play a big role, probably batting at number 3.

New Zealand

On a hot streak entering this Champions Trophy, having just beaten England in an ODI series.

Captain: Brendon McCullum
Wicketkeeper: Luke Ronchi
Best batsman: Martin Guptill; One of New Zealand’s brightest talents, he just made a scintillating match-winning 189 against England.
Best bowler: Tim Southee; One of the most underrated bowlers in world cricket, expect him to be near the top of the wickets chart in helpful English conditions.
X-Factor: Brendon McCullum; One of the most dangerous batsmen in world cricket, especially towards the end. Has terrific six-hitting ability.

Group B

South Africa

The favorites for the tournament, can they finally win a major trophy?

Captain/Wicketkeeper: AB de Villiers
Best batsman: Hashim Amla; Possibly the best batsman in world cricket at the moment. Uses exceptional touch in order to find the gaps and plays with an elegance matched only by a late 90s-early 2000s Tendulkar or Laxman.
Best bowler: Dale Steyn*; The best fast bowler in world cricket is ably supported by his partner in crime, Morné Morkel. Uses overwhelming speed and late swing to defeat batsmen.
X-Factor: David Miller; Stole the show in the IPL with some eye-catching displays of power, including a 38-ball 101.

*Editor’s noted: story was filed before Steyn’s injury was reported.

India

It is unknown how the world’s most supported team will fare after news of the spot-fixing scandal. Based in the evidence from the warm-up games, they will go far.

Captain/Wicketkeeper: MS Dhoni
Best batsman: MS Dhoni; Dhoni is quickly becoming the best ODI finisher of all-time, and with good reason. He uses his supple wrists to create incredible bat speed to hit sixes. Example: 2011 World Cup Final, over 48.2.
Best bowler: Umesh Yadav; Umesh is back in international cricket after recovering from a stress fracture in his back. Uses his good pace and seam movement to get wickets.
X-Factor: Dinesh Karthik; Karthik was Mumbai’s best batsmen during the IPL and has shown great form in the warm-up matches. Expect him to have a great tournament.

Pakistan

The most unpredictable team in world cricket. One day they tie Ireland, the next they beat South Africa. You never know quite what you’re going to get.

Captain: Misbah-ul-Haq
Wicketkeeper: Kamran Akmal
Best batsman: Mohammad Hafeez; Hafeez has been Pakistan’s most consistent performer over the past few years. Expect him to be the anchor against the two new balls.
Best bowler: Saeed Ajmal; The best spinner in world cricket, he possesses both a great off spinner and a well-disguised doosra.
X-Factor: Mohammad Irfan; The 7-foot-1 Irfan is a tough customer to handle as he gets lots of bounce. Expect him to be a handful for opposition openers.

West Indies

The winners of the most recent ICC tournament, the 2012 World T20, they are less comfortable on the ODI stage.

Captain: Dwayne Bravo
Wicketkeeper: Denesh Ramdin
Best batsman: Chris Gayle; The six-hitting behemoth was at his best in the IPL. Can he be a bit more patient in a longer format?
Best bowler: Sunil Narine; On his first visit to England, Narine struggled. He has come back a better bowler than he was and expect him to have success.
X-Factor: Kieron Pollard; This hard-hitting death-over specialist proved his worth in the IPL final, smashing 60 off 32 deliveries. He will hope to replicate that performance and go on to make more runs.

Predictions:

Group A:

1. New Zealand
2. Sri Lanka
3. Australia
4. England

Group B:

1. South Africa
2. India
3. West Indies
4. Pakistan

Semi-finals:

India over New Zealand
South Africa over Sri Lanka

Final:

India over SA.

You read right. Call me crazy, but remember, you heard it here first.

1. Despite continuing to give the impression that I think Test cricket is the only format worth a damn, I have a real soft spot for the One Day International. It was my first format; it is how I learned the game.

2. And despite continuing to say that I have no allegiance to any particular cricketing nation, I have had always had a secret sports crush on New Zealand’s cricket team.

And because of these two skeletons in my closet, New Zealand’s ODI series win over England, in England, was just simply a joy to watch happen. And now with the Champions Trophy set to start on Thursday, they are going to go into that tournament on a real high, and I think with a definite chance of reaching the knockout stage.

I think this because they didn’t just beat the fourth best ODI team in the world, they positively routed the fourth best ODI team in the world. A team that has not lost an ODI series at home since 2009.

New Zealand’s run rate was a run an over better than England’s and they only lost three wickets in 50 overs, while England was bowled out in just 44 overs.

It was a shellacking.

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Some might say that the win at Southampton and to a lesser extent the win at Lord’s, were all down to the blistering performances of Martin Guptill. Those same people will say it is dangerous to rely on one man in a team sport – and I will agree with those people. However, the Champions Trophy is not a season – it’s two and a half weeks and at most five matches. If Guptill can stay hot, and if the Kiwi attack can continue to hold teams to 250 or less, then that’s enough to win in a short tournament such as the Champions Trophy.

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The West Indies winning the T20 World Championship was a really big deal, and New Zealand winning the Champions Trophy, while it would not be as sexy, would be equally a big deal. World cricket desperately needs a strong bottom half of the table.

But even if they lose all three matches in the group stage, their series win over England is still a massive accomplishment – and really great for cricket.

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New Zealand’s first Champions Trophy match is Sunday against Sri Lanka in Wales. A winnable match, but not an easy one. First ball is at 04:30am Minneapolis time, which I think is around ten-thirty in the evening in Wellington. Not exactly prime viewing hours, but here’s hoping some of my pals on Twitter from New Zealand are up and watching at least part of it.

I bring up the time zone issue because I love how BIG the sport of cricket is. A team from an island in the Southwest Pacific Ocean and a team from an island in the Indian Ocean, playing each on an island in the North Atlantic.

Sri Lanka: 7,700 miles from home. New Zealand: 11,000 miles from home. First ball is 10:30am local time, 04:30am in Minneapolis, 10:30pm in Wellington, three in the afternoon in Colombo…

It’s a global game.

And while it is not the biggest trophy in cricket by any means, I will still watch. Because I like being a part of such a global undertaking…and because I secretly love the ODI; and because I secretly love New Zealand.

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All the people who watched the IPL final are the reason why fixing will never go away. You’re all complicit.

— Devanshu (@dbackwardpoint) May 26, 2013

It is a shockingly aggressive accusation of everyone, including myself, that was watching the IPL final on Sunday. And it has taken me a couple of days to figure how exactly I feel about it.

On the one hand, it was kind of a buzz kill. Not in a bad way, mind you, because when else should one make such a statement? Before the match when no one is paying attention? After the match when everyone has stopped caring? No: you make it during the final itself, when Twitter is crawling with IPL fans. To do it any other time would be cowardly.

But it did make me feel like a bit of a chump.

Which brings me to my other hand: he was right.

Cricket is beyond corrupt, and spot fixing is a symptom of a march larger disease, but either way: we as fans are part of the problem. Every time we tune into a match, purchase a ticket, or buy an online subscription we are telling the powers that be that we are totally happy with, as Devanshu put it later, “business as usual.”

And you will notice I did not single out the IPL either. There have been spot fixing convictions in Test cricket and County Cricket. As I have mentioned in previous posts, singling out the IPL solves nothing. This is cricket’s problem, not the IPL’s problem.

So what to do then?

Stop watching?

That’s one course of action. Stop paying for anything cricket related. Turn off the computer and go outside. Attack the powers that be where it counts: their pocketbooks. And if enough people do that, the sport will (hopefully) take notice and make attempts to heal itself – or if not: die.

But that is a course of action that most of us, myself included, are simply unwilling to take, because we cannot pick and choose and say “I will watch the Ashes but I am going to boycott the IPL.”

It’s all or nothing – or nothing changes.

Another course of action is to do what baseball fans in America did with regard to steroids: hope someone else fixes it for you while you keep on going to games and buying Barry Bonds jerseys. It took an investigation from the United States government to force Major League Baseball and the Players Union to implement a testing system with actual consequences.

And so we just keep watching cricket and hope the ICC, or the United Nations (??), or a third party helps us out of our jam.

But that is another course that I am not willing to take. First of all, it will never happen, and second of all, while it might make me a hypocrite, I am going to continue to speak out against all of the meaningless matches and the sport’s relationship with gambling organizations.

And that’s third course right there: telling the powers that be that “business as usual” is perfectly fine, we are all just going to complain about it now and again.

And maybe the third course is exactly what the sport needs.

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I am a big believer in the important role journalism plays in a democracy. A strong and independent press is vital to its very survival. And yet good journalism is going away. Probably forever.

Cricket has an army of wonderful journalists covering it. But they are all beholden to page views and subscriptions and ratings.

But cricket has something else that is not beholden to those things: its strong, vital, and diverse blogging community.

And so I am going to keep watching, but I am also going to keep writing. And I hope all of my fellow bloggers continue to do the same.

It’s okay to watch the IPL final, but it’s not okay if you do not use your voice to speak out when you see corruption ruining this sport we all love so dearly. We can longer afford to turn a blind eye.

And that is my call to my fellow cricket bloggers: if you see something, say something. It is vital to cricket’s survival.

Sooner or later, they will start listening.

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Sussex vs Somerset at Horsham, County Championship
Somerset 76 & 108; Sussex 300
Sussex won by an innings and 116 runs

Steve Magoffin is a 33 year old medium fast Australian who has played 93 First Class matches for Queensland, Surrey, Sussex, Western Australia, and Worcestershire. Over those 93 matches, he has taken 334 wickets with an economy rate of 2.63.

Yet he has never played for Australia at the international level.

This brings to mind two thoughts: One: considering Australia’s current problems, it’s a shame that they are not giving bowlers such as Magoffin further consideration. Two: It also goes to show how difficult it is to break into an international side. There are countless journeyman professionals such as Magoffin who have long and successful careers at the County level, but never get a sniff of the Test or even one day squad.

Something to remember when we are all watching the Champions Trophy and the Ashes this summer: we really are watching the very best cricketers on earth.

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Magoffin’s eight first inning wickets for Sussex against Somerset last week buried his opponents before the first drinks break. The hosts were all out for only 76 runs before lunch on day one, and Sussex’s quiet and efficient 300 was all they needed.

Magoffin took another four wickets in the second innings, while only giving up 11 runs in 12.3 overs.

His full match stats are nothing if not impressive:

23.3-9-31-12

That’s a good couple of days at the office.

Hopefully it at the very least turned a couple of heads over at Cricket Australia.

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That’s two wins on the trot now for Sussex in the County Championship, and they have yet to lose a match in that tournament. They currently sit at the top of the table – one point clear of Middlesex but with a match in hand; all of this despite the fact that several of their key players (Joyce, Prior…et al) have been away on international duty.

Sussex vs Kent at Horsham, Yorkshire Bank 40
Sussex 222; Kent 202
Sussex won by 20 runs

I have given Sussex a little stick lately for relying too often on one stand out performance from one player, and how that might start to become a problem.

The YB40 match against Kent yesterday bucked that trend. They had five batsmen score over 30 runs; and four bowlers each took two wickets.

It was not a drubbing, but it was an efficient team effort and sorely what Sussex needed in this competition.

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Horsham Cricket Club is one of three official grounds used by Sussex throughout the season. The matches there this week were part of the Horsham Cricket Festival.

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Next up for Sussex: Warwickshire at Hove in another 40 over match on May 30th.

There has been a lot of bad news in cricket lately. I am not going to go into a detailed reaction, but some weeks it is hard to be a cricket fan – and this has been one of those weeks.

However, thankfully, in the cricketing backwater of  Dublin, Ireland, the entire world has been able to witness entertaining, swashbuckling cricket played with joy and abandon to help us all forget about corruption and scandal for at least a little while.

The first Ireland vs Pakistan ODI ended in a thrilling tie – and the second appears to be going Pakistan’s way despite a brilliant century from Sussex’s Ed Joyce.

But the best part of the matches has been the fact that Cricket Ireland has streamed the matches live, free, and worldwide on its website. The Cricket Couch wrote a great post about it, he said better than I ever could:

It was throwback to an earlier time.  A time when cricket was innocent and the pictures shot with cameras you could count with the fingers on one hand; Almost an amateurish feel to the angles and the switch to the different views trying to track the ball down; The voices telling you what you need to know rather than trying to capture your attention so that they could peddle you a product; No graphics besides the odd look at the scorecard and a demand of the viewer to pay attention to the live pictures because there weren’t many replays on the screen; A window in to the past that in fact gave us a peek in to the future of cricket broadcasts.

…

If the ones that are in charge of running the sport are really keen on growing the sport and its fan base, the path is laid out right in front of them.

Nothing more really needs to be added, except this: it was a really, really good day for cricket – and the sport sorely needed a good day. Cheers to Cricket Ireland.

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Today is: the IPL final, day three of England vs New Zealand, and the aforementioned Ireland vs Pakistan ODI. So today I am going avoid Cricinfo and Twitter and just watch the cricket.

Sussex match reports to follow tomorrow.

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