India vs Australia: One Day Series Preview

India are hosting Australia for a seven-match ODI series, which normally would have been hyped for weeks (if not months) in advance, but the Ashes (and its attendent ODIs) blurred into the Champions Trophy which blurred into the Twenty20 Champions League which only finished yesterday, so it’s almost as if the series has crept up [...]

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Unexpected happenings at the Twenty20 Champions League so far

No IPL sides have made the last four, possibly resulting in a serious downturn in marketing synergies and the value of cricketainment assets everywhere. It seems home advantage and the first pick of everyone else’s players wasn’t enough. New South Wales, who had probably been the best team in the competition up to that point [...]

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Twenty20 Champions League Preview: Part Two

Part two of the Twenty20 Champions League Preview: The Bangalore Royal Challengers have almost as many South Africans in their squad as the sides representing that country (even without the injured Kevin Pietersen). Jacques Kallis, Mark Boucher and Dale Steyn all feature, whilst Rahul Dravid demonstrated in this year’s IPL that there’s a role for [...]

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Twenty20 Champions League Preview: Part One

Club cricket takes a new turn this week with the inaugural Twenty20 Champions League. Here’s a brief run-down of the sides involved: The Cape Cobras, although without the injured Graeme Smith, will still have plenty of firepower with JP Duminy and Herschelle Gibbs the main threats. The lack of access to the large pool of [...]

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Nannes About to Break Through

After making his Victoria debut at the ripe old age of 29, going missing in Middlesex and briefly going Dutch, Dirk Nannes is set to establish himself as a key part of Australia’s One Day attack. Having made his ODI debut yesterday in Australia’s demolition of Scotland, ‘Dirty’ Dirk will be looking to make an [...]

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Sussex and Somerset Qualify for the Big Bucks

Sussex and Somerset are on their way to the Champions League after reaching the final of the Twenty20 Cup, with Sussex also being crowned champions for the first time after scoring an impressive 172 in the final. The rewards on offer in India will dwarf the £50,000 or so that the winning county earns from [...]

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Black Caps Agree to Pass on IPL Cash

There has been a lot of talk recently about the rise of Twenty20 freelancers, with Andrew Symonds and Andrew Flintoff both being linked speculatively with the idea of wandering Twenty20 specialists playing in four or five different countries’ domestic Twenty20 competitions a year rather than playing for their country. Kevin Pietersen is the latest player [...]

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Shahid Afridi in Twenty20 cricket

When Twenty20 cricket was first gaining its popularity, people said things like ‘oh, that sounds like the sort of thing Shahid Afridi would like – he scores runs at a ridiculous rate whilst holding defensive shots in the contempt they deserve‘ (as it was put in the Guardian, he “bats with the foolhardy panache of [...]

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ICC World Twenty20 Preview: Group D

New Zealand beat India in their recent warm-up match for this tournament, which is bound to raise hopes that the Black Caps will pose a real challenge. Brendon McCullum is perhaps the archetypal Twenty20 batsman (as he showed in his dramatic introduction to the IPL last year), and Daniel Vettori and Jacob Oram are both [...]

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ICC World Twenty20 Preview: Group C

Australia, as in any competition in any form of cricket, are amongst the favourites, but they are nowhere near as highly rated as usual. Most of the impressive Aussie performances in this year’s IPL were from players retired from international cricket or not included in the national team. Of course, there are enough top-quality players [...]

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ICC World Twenty20 Preview: Group B

England have always struggled for balance and stability in their Twenty20 side, particularly at the top of the order, and the absence of Andrew Flintoff seems likely to exacerbate those struggles, as does the fact that the Test and 50-over captain does not feature in the squad for this tournament. Home advantage may be valuable, [...]

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Kevin Pietersen is “not very good at Twenty20 cricket”

Kevin Pietersen has, presumably half-jokingly, admitted that he’s not very good at something. The fact that KP is capable of articulating the idea that he isn’t amazing at everything will be shocking enough in itself to some, but that’s not all – the thing he’s not great at is cricket. “I’m not very good at [...]

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