Twenty 20 Blog

The ICC has quelled speculation that the ICC World Twenty could be moved away from West Indies by announcing that the tournament will be officially launched in Barbados on October 31.

Earlier this week a newspaper report suggested the ICC were considering shifting the tournament due to the ongoing contractual dispute in the Caribbean which has led to West Indies fielding a second string outfit during recent matches, including the ICC Champions Trophy.

Now, though, the ICC has said that Haroon Lorgat, the chief executive, will launch the event at the end of the month and tickets will go on sale the following day.

The news was announced after the ICC chief executives’ committee (CEC) meeting in Johannesburg which has had two days of discussions over various issues.

The CEC also worked on developing a draft of the next Future Tours Programme (FTP) since the current one ends in May 2012. A working draft of the same will be presented to the next board meeting.

The CEC also appointed Justin Vaughan, New Zealand Cricket chief executive, to the ICC Cricket Committee while

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Sri Lankan batsman Tillakaratne Dilshan has won the Twenty20 International Performance of the Year award in recognition of his breezy 96 off 57 balls against West Indies in the semi-final of the 2009 World Twenty20 in England. Dilshan’s performance at The Oval included two sixes and 12 fours and helped steer his side into the finals of the tournament.

This is the second year the award has been given to recognise the most impressive performance by a player in Twenty20 internationals during the 12-month voting period, continuing to mark the advent of the shortest format of the game.

The award rounds off a good year of Twenty20 cricket for Dilshan who took the World Twenty20 by storm after showcasing his astonishing ‘Dilscoop’ - a flick-shot over his head - and also being named as Player of the Tournament, having scored 317 runs at 52.83.

According to the ICC Awards 25-member voting academy Dilshan’s effort was the most impressive in the voting period between August 13, 2008 to August 24, 2009.

His performance beat competition from West Indies’ Chris Gayle for his 88 off 50 balls against Australia, also during the 2009 World Twenty20 at The Oval; Umar Gul’s 5 for 6 for Pakistan against New Zealand in the same

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Pakistan’s cricket board is planning a bid to host the 2014 Twenty20 World Cup in the hope that the security situation in the country improves over the next five years, local media reported on Monday.

“Hopefully by that time the conditions to host international events would be ideal in our country,” Pakistan Cricket Board chief Ijaz Butt told The News from South Africa, where the national team is contesting the Champions Trophy.

The PCB’s top official is scheduled to hold meetings with officials of other cricket boards to “muster their support” while in South Africa, The News reported.

Pakistan lost the rights to host the Champions Trophy last year due to concerns expressed by leading foreign teams. The tournament was postponed by 12 months and moved to South Africa.

Pakistan was also stripped of its rights as co-host of the 2011 World Cup following a terror attack on the Sri Lanka test team earlier this year. It will share revenue with India, Sri Lanka and Bangladesh but will not host any of the matches in international cricket’s leading limited-overs tournament.

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Thrilling contests will be the order of the day at the Champions Trophy, especially following a raging debate over the future of one-day cricket.

The 11-year-old tournament may have witnessed many nail-biting matches, but is still competing with the 50-over World Cup and Twenty20 World Championships for popularity and glamour.

Wisden described the 2006 edition — held just five months before the World Cup — as “the unwanted stepchild of international cricket”, while Matthew Hayden recently suggested the tournament be scrapped.

“Playing the World Twenty20 every other year is too much. And why have the Champions Trophy when you’ve already got a 50-over World Cup?” former Australian batsman Hayden wrote in a newspaper column.

The biennial tournament, a brainchild of former International Cricket Council (ICC) chief Jagmohan Dalmiya, has already had more than its fair share of criticism since it was launched in 1998 in Dhaka.

The event was known as ICC Knock-Out at Dhaka and at Nairobi two years later, but its format left a lot to be desired as just one bad match sent the favourites home, like Australia.

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Flamboyant Pakistani all-rounder Shahid Afridi is a miffed man, who believes the team did not get enough time to celebrate their Twenty20 World Cup triumph.

Afridi, who skipped the ongoing Test series against Sri Lanka, said the feeling of winning the Twenty20 World Cup had just started to sink in when the cricketers left for the tour.

“The team should have had at least a month or so to enjoy the taste of victory. There should have been given enough time to enjoy the celebrations. It is unfortunate they got no time,” Afridi said.

According to him, the Pakistani players struggled to quickly shift to the Test mode in Sri Lanka and that explained their struggle there.

“It is upto the players to do their best to give good performances in Sri Lanka but I maintain it is unfair on them that they got little time to rest and prepare for the Sri Lankan tour,” he said.

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Fast bowler Shoaib Akhtar has said he considered suing the Pakistan cricket management for revealing, in a public statement, the skin ailment that forced him to miss last month’s World Twenty20. The PCB’s statement on his fitness ahead of the tournament in England said Akhtar had been diagnosed with genital viral warts; he was subsequently removed from the squad.

“I kept quiet because I have a central contract and didn’t want to offend the PCB, but I could have sued the Pakistan team management,” Akhtar said in a TV programme on Express News. “I didn’t want the Pakistan team to suffer because my news is published all over the world.”

Akhtar belongs to category A of the PCB’s centrally contracted players, who are barred from openly criticising the cricket board’s decisions.

The injury-prone fast bowler last played a Test in 2007, against India, before he was sidelined for 14 months with fitness and disciplinary problems. He made two unimpressive comebacks to international cricket this year - in the one-day series at home against Sri Lanka, and the five ODIs and lone Twenty20 against Australia in Abu Dhabi and Dubai. Akhtar, however, believes he can still get back to his best.

“There’s still three-four good years left in me,” he said. “I am the fastest bowler in history and it’s not possible for everyone to bowl at 150 (kph).”

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England have been grouped with hosts West Indies and one qualifier in the World Twenty20 tournament in 2010.

The West Indies, who knocked England out of this year’s tournament, will open the competition on 30 April.

Holders Pakistan face Australia and Bangladesh, with Sri Lanka pooled against New Zealand and Zimbabwe.

India take on South Africa and another qualifier, with the tournament, staged in St Lucia, St Kitts, Barbados and Guyana, set to finish on 16 May.

Chris Gayle’s West Indies defeated England at the Super Eight stage in this year’s Twenty20, winning a match in which the winner would qualify from their group.

In a rain-affected contest, an unbeaten partnership of 37 between Shivnarine Chanderpaul and Ramnaresh Sarwan saw the Windies home.

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Reigning 50-over world champions Australia, have been ranked below Bangladesh for next year’s World Twenty20 in the Caribbean, organisers announced Sunday.

Seedings are based primarily on the results of last month’s second edition of the tournament in England where Pakistan, losing finalists in 2007, beat Sri Lanka at Lord’s to take the trophy.

Australia lost both their group matches, against the West Indies and Sri Lanka. Bangladesh also failed to make it through to the second round, after defeats by minnows Ireland and 2007 champions India.

But Bangladesh emerged with a slightly better, if still negative, run-rate compared to that of Australia (-0.996 to -1.331).

Both countries have now been placed in the same first round Group A, along with defending champions Pakistan.

The top two sides from each of the four groups in the 12-nation men’s tournament will go through to the second round Super Eights from which the top four sides for the semi-finals will be drawn.

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England’s performance in the World Twenty20 was a strange mix and in a way summed up this form of the game - completely unpredictable.

They were widely ridiculed when defeat to Holland in the tournament opener put them in danger of an embarrassingly early exit but just a few days later they claimed an emphatic win of eventual champions Pakistan. This was followed by a drubbing at the hands of South Africa, a thrilling win over India by the narrowest of margins before a rain-affected exit at the hands of the West Indies who really came alive again in this competition after a dismal performance in last month’s Test series.

However as disappointing as their exit was, given the tight finish and England’s recent dominance against the West Indies, did they deserve to be in the semi-finals ?  Probably not and it’s only down to the excellence of their bowlers that they got anywhere near. The trio of Anderson, Sidebottom and Broad were a revelation and give England plenty to build on in this form of the game in the future. They all possessed that deadly combination of accuracy, pace and variety and showed the sort of nous that English bowlers have lacked in limited overs cricket for all too long. Apart from against the West Indies, the bowling at the death was superb, particularly against India where it was no mean feat to hold off the might of Mahendra Dhoni and his big hitting compatriots.

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With a glittering array of batting talent, the experience of winning in 2007 and huge partisan crowds India were the bookies favourites to win the ICC World Twenty20 2009. Their failure to even make it out of the Super 8s was the biggest shock of the tournament.

So why did India fail to perform?  With all due respect to the likes of Zaheer Khan and RP Singh, it’s the batsmen who win matches in Twenty20 and India’s star-studded line-up were like rabbits in the headlights at times, a fact captain Mahendra Dhoni has acknowledged.

“The bowlers did well but the batting really hasn’t been up to the mark. With the batsmen, if the top three don’t click it becomes very hard.”

The loss of Sehwag hit India hard

A lot of people underestimated just how much the loss of injured opener Virender Sehwag would affect the team. Sehwag is a proven performer on the biggest stage and India missed his ability to set the tone of an innings and make the best attacks look ordinary. Momentum is huge in Twenty20 and without Sehwag, India lacked experience at the

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