Australia v Sri Lanka T20 World Cup Report Card
Featuring extra deliveries, pantsuit deception, Joker: Folie à Molineux and not putting up with nonsense
Extra Deliveries
Grade: C+
There’s a women’s T20 World Cup taking place. How do we know this? Because we had the cameras cutting to Mitchell Starc in the stands, cheering on his wife’s team. (We assume he’s supporting her team - it would be kind of a dick move to go all the way to the UAE to support the opposition.)
This time around, the opposition for Alyssa Healy’s Australian side was Sri Lanka, who won the toss and chose to bat first.
Megan Schutt and Ash Gardner both bowled maidens first up. “If you don’t score runs, you can’t get out,” as the old, incorrect Sri Lankan saying goes.
Luckily, Schutt stumbled onto the tactic of bowling a couple of no balls so she could take a wicket on her eighth delivery of the over. Retro!
Darcie Brown then took Schutt’s basic idea and really ran with it. Ran in with it, that is, multiple times, in searing Sharjah heat, plonking her front foot down well over the line.
When she wasn’t bowling no balls, she was bowling wides. A masterclass from Brown, who clearly had her sights set on taking a wicket on the 27th ball of her over.
Pantsuit Deception
Grade: B+
Despite Brown’s best efforts, she did not take a wicket. Nor did she bowl again, Healy correctly discerning that she’d bowled about four overs’ worth of balls in her lone over.
Instead, it was over to the Australian spinners - Gardner, Georgia Wareham and Sophie Molineux - to tidy up the middle overs. They successfully did so, reducing Sri Lanka to 5/65 in the sixteenth over when Gardner hung on to an outfield catch from a swatted pull by Hasini Perera off a Wareham full toss.
But wait a moment. Let’s check the height of this full toss and see if this is yet another no ball.
Because,Turns out, the ICC had measured all the players’ waist heights before the tournament (they tricked them into this by telling them they were making them all smart beige pantsuits), so that in this exact scenario they could use ball-tracking to measure whether a full toss was legal or not.
Great stuff! A sensible implementation of the available technology. I wholeheartedly applaud this.
Of course, I’d like it even more if they ran the ball tracking software on something other than an Intel 80386 PC running Windows 3.1.
Because, for some reason, the ball tracking was taking forever to load. So much so that by the time they confirmed that, yes, Perera was out, Sri Lanka’s innings was done.
Joker: Folie à Molineux?
Grade: D-
Look, I’m aware that saying ‘Joker: Folie à Molineux?’ doesn’t qualify as a joke in itself. It’s more just a vague idea that merely alludes to something that, if more carefully worked on, might eventually turn out to be actually funny or interesting, but isn’t there yet.
Still, that’s fitting too, I think. I saw the original Joker and I’ve heard about the second one.
I stand by it.
Not Putting Up With Nonsense
Grade: B
Australia’s pursuit of Sri Lanka’s 7/93 began with Healy being bowled and Wareham being run out to have them 2/14 in the third over.
But that just brought Perry to the crease and she’d had enough of Sri Lanka’s nonsense, hitting consecutive boundaries to properly kickstart the chase.
However, Sugandika Kumari was brought on to bowl, and she’d had enough of Perry’s nonsense and bowled her. 3/35 at the end of the Power Play. Australia in trouble?
Well, no. They still had Gardner coming out to bat. Oh, and Phoebe Litchfield to follow. And, yes, then Tahlia McGrath. With Annabel Sutherland coming in at eight.
So, no. Not in trouble.
Especially when Beth Mooney was still out in the middle, sensibly seeing Australia safely home, despite looking as if she was about to burst into flames at any moment.
Now, that’s professionalism.