(Australia v India) v (Afghanistan v Bangladesh) Report Card
Featuring silly cricket, maternal anthropomorphised ghost prudes, semi-final spots and absolutely bonkers cricket
Silly Cricket
Grade: D
After their defeat to Afghanistan in the previous match, Australia went into their final Super Eight game against India, knowing that they could win, yet still miss out on the semi-finals. Conversely, they could also lose to India and still make them.
A classic who cares match, then, and, as a result, it was scheduled for the middle of the night, Australian time. That’s a time when nothing sensible happens, as evidenced by the most recent IPL, which was played almost exclusively in those hours, and was full of silly scores as a result.
Here, in the T20 World Cup, India captain Rohit Sharma seemed very determined indeed to make a silly score, belting 92 off 41 deliveries to set up a massive total for India batting first.
Once he was dismissed, however, the Australian bowlers marginally sensibled things up, restricting India to 5/205.
‘Restricting’ being stretched to its very definitional limits there, of course.
Maternal Anthropomorphised Ghost Prudes
Grade: F
In reply, Travis Head tried to be as silly as Rohit, and, to be fair, went pretty close, hitting 76 (43). Maybe if he’d come out to bat wearing a sombrero made of pool noodles on his Travis, he could have closed the gap sufficiently for Australia to win.
But he didn’t, so they didn’t.
Y’know, there was a lot of talk (some of it from the Australian cricketers, to be fair) about the risks of Australia not playing to the peak of their abilities against Scotland. Spooky talk about a ghastly entity known as ‘Mother Cricket’, who would pop out of a Lord’s cupboard (well, maybe not Lord’s - let’s say instead a ground where women have traditionally been made more welcome) and punish the Australians if they dared to deliberately underperform in a cricket match.
Indeed, one of the benefits of Australia (eventually) beating Scotland in that game was that their defeat by Afghanistan was correctly attributed to Afghanistan's brilliance rather than some belated vengeance from this shrill Mother Cricket entity.
But perhaps we’ve got it all wrong. Certainly, if we compare Australia’s results before and after the Scotland match, it becomes clear that this quarrelsome Mother Cricket creature should she exist (she doesn’t) wanted Australia to knock England out of the tournament with cannier long term, Hazlewoodian thinking.
Something for the team to consider next time they find themselves in such a position and overcome by a superstitious fear of maternal anthropomorphised ghost prudes.
Semi-Final Spots
Grade: C+
India’s win locked in one of the semi-final spots. They would play England in the silly o’clock time slot. The famously cool-headed South Africa team, meanwhile, had defied the thrilling comic premise of being knocked out of the tournament in the Super Eight stage with their first defeat.
Perhaps they figured they hadn’t developed the bit well enough. That it might have worked better had they stormed through the group stages, winning by massive margins. Alert to this sloppy set-up, they instead scrambled home against the West Indies to book their semi-final spot, with their opponents to be determined by the final match of the Super Eight stage between Afghanistan and Bangladesh.
Absolutely Bonkers Cricket
Grade: A+
And if we thought the India-Australia game had silly cricket, the Afghanistan v Bangladesh match trumped it one thousand-fold.
Australia needed Bangladesh to do them a favour in the final match of the Super Eight stage. (And, boy, they certainly deserve a favour after all the tours against Bangladesh they've definitely not cancelled based on the flimsiest of excuses.)
But not too much of a favour. Because, in theory, Bangladesh could surge past both Afghanistan and Australia on net run rate with a sufficiently large victory. This would have been the funniest of the three possible outcomes, and it was one that looked possible once Bangladesh restricted Afghanistan to 5/115 from their twenty overs, an innings so infuriating for Rashid Khan that he threw his bat at the non-striker at one point.
Fuming as he came off the ground, Rashid was in the kind of mood to either take eight wickets for three runs. Or go for 70 in his four overs. As it turned out, it was closer to the former (4/23), coming on to take crucial wickets after a frenzied Power Play that saw Bangladesh surge towards their net run rate goal of winning within 12.1 overs.
Rain was afoot. Duckworth Lewis Stern par scores were recalculated. Covers came on. Duckworth Lewis Stern par scores were recalculated. Covers came off. Duckworth Lewis Stern par scores were recalculated. Wickets fell. Duckworth Lewis Stern par scores were recalculated. Somehow Litton Das was carrying his bat throughout the chaos, pushing Bangladesh ahead. Duckworth Lewis Stern par scores were recalculated. Wickets fell, rain fell, and, after being prompted by coach Jonathan Trott, Gulbadin Naib at first slip fell, clutching at his hamstring to kill time, because suddenly Afghanistan were now ahead. And Duckworth Lewis Stern par scores were recalculated.
It was the maddest game one could ever hope to see. God bless Australia for losing to Afghanistan and making this mad final match possible. Proper entertainers.
Finally, somehow, this brilliant, bonkers match ended in the following manner:
Bangladesh were ahead of the par score with ten balls remaining
Naveen-ul-Haq took the penultimate wicket to push Afghanistan ahead of the par score with nine balls remaining
Rain came, and went
Then Naveen-ul-Haq struck one last time to bowl Bangladesh out, nine runs short of victory, with Litton Das stuck, 54* (49) at the other end
A mad, mental cricket match, that means South Africa now get to lose their semi-final to Afghanistan. So, that's fun.
