Geelong – Bulletproof Truth

Thank you, Sri Lanka, for everything

“Mate, there’s no plan. But if there was, first they would have to sort out Test cricket.” – a Sri Lanka supporter’s concerns.

Telford Vice / Melbourne

THERE is no loneliness in being a long distance Sri Lanka fan. At Kardinia Park on Sunday, surely not even 407 among the 16,407 who turned up to watch the opening match of the men’s T20 World Cup were there to support Namibia. When the game was over there might have been as few as 47 left to see the United Arab Emirates take on the Netherlands, and not only because a frosty spring evening had descended on Geelong.

The crowd would have lurched through a slew of feelings during and after the Namibians’ jolting win, but loneliness would not have been among them. There were thousands of shoulders to cry on, and to be cried on. And the Papare Band Melbourne, Sri Lankans all, of course, were there to apply balm to stung souls.

Of the Sri Lankan diaspora, estimated at more than 2-million spread around the world, 465,000 are in India, Australia and the United Kingdom — countries where Lankans are able to see their team in the flesh with semi-satisfying frequency. Another 1.63-million are in 25 countries whose cricket boards are associate members of the ICC. That’s the rest of the 2-million, and a few thousand more to spare.

Being able to play or watch cricket, or just know that it within reach, wouldn’t be uppermost in Sri Lankans’ reasons for leaving. But it can’t hurt to know that whatever else they have to forsake — hoppers, arrack, warmth, family, friends, living while brown in a part of the world where brownness comes standard — the game will be there to take the edge off the foreignness. Wherever it is that they end up, perhaps all that is left of home in their new reality is cricket. You might not be able to watch Sri Lanka play if you are in, say, Cyprus. But you will be able to hear bat on ball.

Almost half of Australia’s Sri Lankan migrants live in Melbourne, 80km up the motorway from Geelong. Two of them, both in their mid-30s, made their way to the match against the Netherlands at Kardinia Park on Thursday. Harsha told Cricbuzz he had moved to Australia “more than 20 years ago”. As did Lashan. What did they think Sri Lanka had to do to get back to the kind of team they were in 1996, when they did what seemed unthinkable to the rest of us and won the World Cup?

“We’re a long way from that, mate,” Lashan said, the rasp of an Australian accent cutting through his otherwise mellow south Asian tones.

“They’ve got to have a plan to get Sri Lankan cricket back on track,” Harsha offered.

“Mate, there’s no plan,” Lashan retorted. “But if there was, first they would have to sort out Test cricket.”

Harsha concurred: “Right. And that means sorting out domestic cricket.”

Even when they’re being interviewed by the press, there’s no loneliness, or aloneness, in being a long distance Sri Lanka fan. Your mate will help you answer the question, whether you’ve asked them to or not.

Harsha and Lashan would have been little boys in 1996, their hearts warmed and their minds dazzled by the deeds of Sanath Jayasuriya, Aravinda de Silva, Arjuna Ranatunga, Chaminda Vaas, Pramodya Wickramasinghe and Muttiah Muralitharan. Then came Kumar Sangakkara, Mahela Jayawardene and Lasith Malinga to keep the dazzling warmth alive. Sri Lanka reached the final in 2007 and 2015, but lost both times. In the T20 version they went down the final in 2009 and 2012 and won it in 2014.

There have been swings and roundabouts, but until last year’s T20 World Cup they hadn’t had to qualify for the business end of a global tournament since the inaugural World Cup in 1979. And there Sri Lanka were in Geelong, scrapping it out with teams who had never beaten them in nine previous ODI and T20I meetings to nail down a place in the second round of the T20 World Cup.

Ignominy loomed when they lost to Namibia, but was averted with wins over the United Arab Emirates and the Netherlands. That, mind, on the back of winning the Asia Cup in the UAE in September, a triumph achieved in the throes of mass protests at home over rampant inflation and energy shortages that led to a change of government and were quelled in a brutal crackdown.

Being Sri Lankan is never simple, home or away. It is also under appreciated. While West Indies have been given their due credit for showing the world that cricket teams do not have to be white to be great, Sri Lanka haven’t been properly acknowledged for proving that orthodoxy isn’t a requirement for success.

Would the game have had David Warner if Ranatunga hadn’t re-invented white-ball batting? Would Jasprit Bumrah’s action have been deemed acceptable if Malinga didn’t wing out his bowling arm? If Muralitharan hadn’t ripped up the received mechanics of how to bowl spin, would we have had … Scratch that. Nobody bowls like Murali. But what does it tell us that the epitome of unorthodoxy is cricket’s most successful Test bowler? Maybe that the old-fashioned coaching textbook is a fraud written by the unimaginative and controlling to shackle creativity and freedom. Let no-one forget that cricket was the original colonial sport.

Sri Lanka’s fans, too, could teach us plenty. Wherever they go they are a credit to themselves, their culture and the team they support. Unlike fans from too many countries they are never arrogant or rude, and they don’t seem to feel the need to establish dominance when they encounter spectators who don’t share their passion. Their chests swell with hope and pride, not self-importance.

So there was no surprise when, asked for his last name, Harsha said, “It’s a long one. I’ll spell it for you: “W, I, C, K …” Wickramasinghe? “Uh, yes.” Same spelling as Pramodya? “That’s right, mate. Geez …” His incredulity at having who and what he is in the world acknowledged by someone who clearly was neither brown nor Sri Lankan was at once endearing and saddening. Lashan, last name please? “Let’s leave it at Lashan.” Ah. Might you be a Rajapaksa? Happily the joke landed in the spirit with which it was made.

Better yet, Harsha and Lashan still have a team to shout for at the T20 World Cup. Best of luck, fellas. And you know this already, but you will not be alone.

First published by Cricbuzz.

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Lankans go where Dutch feared they would not tread

“They’re just cutthroat tournaments.” — Scott Edwards, Netherlands captain

Telford Vice / Geelong, Victoria

DID the real Sri Lanka team stand up in beating the Netherlands in Geelong on Thursday? Will the side who shambled to defeat against Namibia on Sunday be remembered as aberrations who took a wrong turn on their way out of a bad dream and ended up bang in the middle of Kardinia Park?

No, not least because only three of Sunday’s XI — Danushka Gunathilaka, Pramod Madushan and Dushmantha Theekshana — did not feature on Thursday. And because the two matches were played on the same pitch, albeit that the ball came onto the bat more fluidly on Thursday.

But you would be forgiven for believing the Sri Lankans who strode the field like they owned it only four days after they had looked like they had never been out of their own backyards had not been introduced to each other.

Neither a first-baller suffered by Dhananjaya de Silva, who was trapped in front by Paul van Meekeren — with a delivery that the gizmos said would have missed leg stump — immediately after van Meekeren had yorked Pathum Nissanka, nor the fact that only two Lankans reached 30 could derail the Asian express on its way to 162/6.

Kusal Mendis batted through six partnerships for his 44-ball 79, a commanding innings that endured into the last over and lent authority to a batting line-up who had shown none of that quality in being dismissed for 108 on Sunday. Max O’Dowd’s unbeaten 71 kept the Dutch in touch with the game at least theoretically, but Sri Lanka’s 16-run victory — and their u-turn from the cliff edge of elimination — was never in serious doubt.

The result took the Lankans from third to first place in the Group A standings. Like them, the Netherlands had won two of their three matches and were in second place — good enough to also go through to the second round. But the Europeans faced a nervous evening because they needed the United Arab Emirates to do what they hadn’t yet done in two editions of this event: win.

“They’re just cutthroat tournaments, aren’t they,” Netherlands captain Scott Edwards told a press conference between the games. “We think we’ve played a lot of good cricket in all three of the games. But the nature of these tournaments is that one little slip-up and you can be knocked out. Hopefully the UAE can get up and we’re still going tomorrow.”

After they had toppled the Lankan giants, the Namibians stumbled against the Dutch. Now the Netherlands needed a UAE team who had lost all five of their previous T20 World Cup — or World T20 — games to come good. If the Emiratis won, the Namibians would be marooned in third place and the Lankans and the Dutch would advance to the second round. If Namibia won, their muscular runrate would probably seal them into second place.

Would the Netherlands hang about to see what would happen? “I’m not sure where we’ll be,” Edwards said. “I think we’ll probably have a little bit of a discussion and share a drink together. It’s been an awesome month or so, and hopefully it continues. But, yeah, we’ll just be enjoying each other’s company.”

They did indeed stay and watch. How could they not, considering what was on the line? And the UAE rewarded them for their trouble by scoring 148/3, their highest total batting first in this tournament since they were bowled out for 151 by the selfsame Netherlands in Sylhet in March 2014. At least one of their top order of Muhammad Waseem, Vriitya Aravind and CP Rizwan were at the crease into the 17th over with Waseem scoring 50 and Rizwan finishing not out on 43. Then Basil Hameed hit 25 not out off 14 and shared 35 off 18 with Rizwan.

But the Dutch knew only too well what happened that day in Bangladesh more than eight years ago: they knocked off the target with six wickets standing and seven balls to spare. So the tension wouldn’t have eased when Namibia crashed to 69/7 inside 13 overs. Because David Wiese, the human oil rig, the moose in pads, the mountain man, wasn’t among the batters dismissed.

Wiese had joined Jan Frylinck in the eighth over, when the required runrate was 8.58. Soon it had climbed into double figures, reaching two runs a ball after 14. But Wiese was always going to be the difference between the teams, and he found an able ally in Ruben Trumpelmann. Playing his first match of the tournament, Trumpelmann kept a low profile in a stand that grew steadily until the last over loomed with 14 required.

It shouldn’t have come to that. Waseem had bowled the 17th, and Wiese had skied the last delivery to midwicket. Clearly it was wicketkeeper Aravind’s catch. Instead Waseem ended up under the ball — which burst through his hands and plopped, luridly, onto the turf.

So the decision, after a committee meeting in the middle, to entrust Waseem with the final over took guts and gumption. And when Wiese heaved the fourth ball down long-on’s throat with 10 required, it paid off. With that, every Dutchman and each of their fans in the stadium was on their feet and screaming.

Wiese was gone for 55 off 36, and his dismissal ended the partnership at 70 off 44. It also ended the match as a contest. Wiese walked off slowly, mournfully, tossing and catching his bat, searching the night sky for a silver lining. He didn’t find it.

The UAE finished bottom of the group and are on their way home, but that didn’t matter to them as they embraced and prayed and felt the blood of victors, by seven runs, pumping through their veins. The Namibians finished a place above the UAE, but that also didn’t matter. Africa is a long way away, and on their way there they will have too much time to think about what went wrong and what almost went right.

Sri Lanka’s first match of the second round is against the runners-up in Group B — which will be decided in Hobart on Friday — also at the Bellerive Oval on Sunday. The Dutch can look forward to a clash with Bangladesh, also in Hobart, on Monday.

But those are other matters for other days. For Sri Lanka and the Netherlands, and even the UAE, Thursday was about relief and happiness. For Namibia, not so much. Cooper was right. Some teams came here to have their throats cut, others to do the cutting.

First published by Cricbuzz.

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Push comes to shove in Geelong

“There is no pressure at all.” – keep telling yourself that, Dasun Shanaka

Telford Vice / Geelong, Victoria

Sri Lanka vs Netherlands

WITH Dilshan Madushanka gone before the first game because of a torn quadriceps, Dushmantha Chameera freshly ruled out by a calf injury, and Danushka Gunathilaka and Pramod Madushan doubtful with hamstring issues, Sri Lanka would be forgiven for thinking their campaign had been cursed. Victory is probably essential for them to advance, which might not have been the case had they not slipped on Namibia’s artfully placed banana peel in the tournament opener.

But, for Dasun Shanaka, the situation was eminently manageable: “There is no pressure at all. We just need to concentrate on our own performances and what we need to do to make sure that we get into that second round. In the first game we didn’t execute, so we got beaten by Namibia. But we are a far better team than the way we performed in that game.”

Net runrate seems set to play a key role. The Dutch are the only team who have won both of their games, but they also have the lowest runrate among the top three. So victory for the Lankans or the Namibians could shut them out of the next round.

When: Thursday, October 20 at 3pm local time, 9.30am IST

Where: Kardinia Park, Geelong

Squads:

Sri Lanka: Dasun Shanaka (capt), Charith Asalanka, Wanindu Hasaranga, Dhananjaya de Silva, Binura Fernando, Danushka Gunathilaka, Chamika Karunaratne, Lahiru Kumara, Pramod Madushan, Kusal Mendis, Pathum Nissanka, Bhanuka Rajapaksa, Maheesh Theekshana, Jeffrey Vandersay.

Netherlands: Scott Edwards (capt), Colin Ackermann, Tom Cooper, Bas de Leede, Brandon Glover, Fred Klaassen, Stephan Myburgh, Teja Nidamanuru, Max O’Dowd, Tim Pringle, Shariz Ahmad, Logan van Beek, Timm van der Gugten, Roelof van der Merwe, Paul van Meekeren, Vikram Singh.

Namibia vs United Arab Emirates

Namibia’s net runrate is currently more than twice the size of Sri Lanka’s and eight-and-a-half times as big as the Netherlands’. So Gerhard Erasmus’ side, who are currently second in the standings, could finish on top if they win on Thursday. They should have the beating of the winless United Arab Emirates, who are comfortably the weakest team in the group.

Erasmus said they had learnt the lessons of losing to the Netherlands on Tuesday in the afterglow of their Lankan triumph on Sunday: “It’s only human nature to celebrate a big win like that, but it was a very tough thing to do to recover after that. Although we have all the know-how to do that, the experience of how to do that is difficult. It was very tough to mentally reset after that game. We tried our best to do that, and that’s what we’re going to do in the next game.”

Importantly for the Namibians, Erasmus said star allrounder David Wiese had been passed fit after needing attention after crashing to earth in attempting to take a catch on Tuesday: “He’s got a bit of a bump on his forehead and he had a bit of a rugby scrum tape around his head, but it’s all fine now.”

When: Thursday, October 20 at 7pm local time, 1.30pm IST

Where: Kardinia Park, Geelong

Squads:

Namibia: Gerhard Erasmus (captain), Stephan Baard, Karl Birkenstock, Jan Frylinck, Zane Green, Divan la Cock, Jan Nicol Loftie-Eaton, Lo-handre Louwrens, Tangeni Lungameni, Bernard Scholtz, Ben Shikongo, JJ Smit, Ruben Trumpelmann, Michael van Lingen, David Wiese, Pikky Ya France.

United Arab Emirates: Chundangapoyil Rizwan (capt), Vriitya Aravind, Aayan Afzal Khan, Ahmed Raza, Aryan Lakra, Basil Hameed, Chirag Suri, Junaid Siddique, Kashif Daud, Karthik Meiyappan, Muhammad Waseem, Sabir Ali, Alishan Sharafu, Zahoor Khan, Zawar Farid.

First published by Cricbuzz.

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Rain doesn’t only stop play

Up to 30mm of rain is forecast for Melbourne on Sunday, endangering the India-Pakistan blockbuster

Telford Vice / Geelong, Victoria

RAIN stops play. The most bland sentence in cricket is also the easiest to dismiss. Nothing to see here. Move on. But the rain that has fallen over vast swathes of Victoria in recent days is not so summarily brushed off.

Turn on a television in these parts and you will see one of three messages scrolling across the bottom of a screen filled with images of water water everywhere. A list of place names is followed by warnings telling residents to “move to higher ground”, “evacuate immediately”, or, ominously, that it is “too late to leave”.

The veracity of these dire urgings will be questioned when they are made in a society as riddled with over-regulation as Australia’s. As the admittedly right wing, rabidly tabloid Sydney Daily Telegraph railed in August 2015: “You can’t smoke, you can’t boo at the footy, you can’t ride a bike without a helmet, you can’t vape an e-cigarette, you can’t get drunk in a pub, you can’t drink a shot after midnight, you can’t take your dog in the car without a special harness, and every time you get in your car you’re at risk of running foul of a speed camera.”

But Victoria’s weather is not an invention of the conservative press. A 71-year-old man was found dead in his submerged backyard in Rochester, north of Melbourne, on Saturday. Flooding has forced the closure of more than 140 schools and other educational centres in the state. On Tuesday, Chrissy Weller, the mayor of Echuca, north of Rochester, told the ABC the people of the town were helping the army build levees in a desperate attempt to keep at bay the rapidly rising Murray River. Weller they had 24 hours to do the job or face the full force of the elements: “We’ve got to give it a go because, obviously, we’ll lose all the residential and the CBD area if we don’t.”

If you’re not in Australia this could come as news to you, dear cricket reader. Turn on your television and all you might see beamed out from Down Under is a steady stream of cricket. Despite rain around the outskirts of Geelong, the opening matches in the men’s T20 World Cup at Kardinia Park on Sunday went ahead without a blip. Monday’s games in Tasmania, south of Victoria, were delayed or interrupted but not an over was lost. The Group A action was back in Geelong on Tuesday, where the forecast for cool but dry conditions proved accurate. Namibia and the Netherlands played the day’s first match under bright blue, almost cloudless skies.

The closest the tournament has come to being impacted by the weather is that some of the media working on the matches at Kardinia Park have had to make detours en route to Geelong to avoid flooded roads. At least one couldn’t come to work on Tuesday. But that’s not the kind of thing that makes the news.

What will hit the headlines is that the current forecast for Melbourne on Sunday is for an 82% chance of rain at 7pm — when the first ball is due to be bowled in the mega match between India and Pakistan at the MCG. Between 15 and 30 millimetres is expected to fall, putting international cricket’s blockbuster fixture in danger. How big is this blockbuster? Television advertising during the same fixture in last year’s edition of the tournament sold for USD36,500 per 10 seconds in India, a record for broadcast revenue in that country.

The ICC, the MCG, cricket itself and India and Pakistan supporters need it not to rain in Melbourne on Sunday. History would seem to be on the same side as that hope. Only five of the 149 ODIs at the MCG have been washed out, all of them in January or February and none since 2004. Just one of the 15 T20Is played there has suffered that fate, although it was uncomfortably close to this time of year: rain put paid to the match between Australia and India in November 2018.

It means less that the closest India and Pakistan have come to not reaching a result in their 11 T20Is against each other is when they tied their first clash in the format, which was played during the inaugural World T20 at Kingsmead in September 2007. The last 24 ODIs between them, going back to July 2007 in Glasgow, have been decided.

It isn’t often that matches involving India and Pakistan evoke blandness of any kind. Except regarding the weather. Would that that be the case on Sunday.

First published by Cricbuzz.

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Geelong’s unidentical twins

“It was tough to hit through the line. It was more of a nudgy type of surface, where you tried to play as straight as you could because you didn’t want to get found out by the skiddy one.” – Bas de Leede

Telford Vice / Geelong, Victoria

HOW could two pitches, side by side in the middle of the same field and separated by a few centimetres, behave as differently as the surfaces used in the men’s T20 World Cup doubleheaders at Kardinia Park this week?

Weren’t they made from the same strip of earth? Didn’t batters and bowlers have a reasonable expectation that what they saw on Sunday they would get on Tuesday? Shouldn’t consistency be the goal?

Sunday’s pitch was topped by an even thatch of grass. Tuesday’s was a uniform stretch of bald mud. Sunday’s wasn’t easy to bat on, but it also wasn’t unreasonably difficult. Tuesday’s made some of those who took guard on it look like they were holding a bat for the first time in their lives.

About all the two pitches had in common was that they were both 22 yards long. And that they were from beyond the boundary. They were grown elsewhere and dropped into the middle of what is more an Australian Rules football stadium than a cricket ground.

On Sunday, Namibia were able to score 163/7 runs off Sri Lanka to set up a famous victory by 55 runs. On Tuesday the Namibians eked out 121/6 against the Netherlands, and it would be difficult to make the case that the Dutch attack was better than the Lankans’.

“The surface was two-paced with the quicker balls that skidded through staying quite low, and then you had the odd slower ball that held up,” Bas de Leede told a press conference about Tuesday’s pitch, which the Dutch came to terms with well enough to win by five wickets with three balls remaining. “It was tough to hit through the line. It was more of a nudgy type of surface, where you tried to play as straight as you could because you didn’t want to get found out by the skiddy one.

“Sunday’s pitch had more grass on it, so it was slower. This one looked like it had no grass at all. And there were some cracks, which means it was dry. Sometimes it almost soaked up the bounce of the ball and that’s why it skidded on. They were definitely two different surfaces.”

Namibia’s Jan Frylinck concurred: “Yeah, the surface was tough. There was no grass on that wicket. That’s why the other night’s pitch played so nicely. This one was very two-paced. Some of the balls got stuck in the surface and some of them skidded through, which made it quite difficult.”

Frylinck’s 43 was easily the best of the Namibians’ batting, but they needed a lot more where that came from. The Netherlands sealed the deal when their top three of Max O’Dowd, Vikram Singh and de Leede all sailed past 30. O’Dowd and Singh shared 59 off 50 for the first wicket, a stand worth more than the sum of its parts considering the circumstances.

In Tuesday’s other match, even a hattrick by Karthik Meiyappan, the first in the United Arab Emirates’ history, couldn’t stop Sri Lanka surging to victory by 79 runs. The leg spinner had a heaving Bhanuka Rajapaksa caught at deep cover and Charith Asalanka taken behind before he cleanbowled Dasun Shanaka. Remarkably, Meiyappan put his trust in his googly to bowl all three of those deliveries.

The Lankans were on course for a total of around 200 before Meiyappan’s intervention, which helped limit the damage to 152/8. Given the conditions the UAE were always going to be up against it, and they were duly reduced to 63/6 inside 10 overs on their way to a reply of 73.

The result made the Emiratis the only team in Group A who have lost both of their matches, and thus prime candidates for elimination before the second round. The pecking order will be decided on Thursday, when the teams return to Kardinia Park to play their last first-round games. The Netherlands will take on Sri Lanka, followed by Namibia playing the UAE.

The Dutch currently top the standings with Namibia and Sri Lanka two points behind. The Namibians hold the second qualification slot because of their superior net runrate, and they will face the easier task. The Lankans will back themselves to beat the Netherlands, but they will have to do so convincingly to overcome Namibia’s runrate.

Which of the unidentical twins would he prefer for Thursday’s crunch match, Frylinck was asked. His reply began with a laugh: “Can I ask you which one you would like to play on? Obviously the first, the game we played against Sri Lanka, that pitch.”

After Tuesday’s games, members of the groundstaff headed for the middle. All of their focus was on one of the two pitches, which they gave a decent dousing using a hose pipe. Frylinck’s wish, it seems, will be granted.

First published by Cricbuzz.

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Group A crackles with context

“There are no guarantees of any success going forward. This game doesn’t work like that.” — Pierre de Bruyn, Namibia coach

Telford Vice / Geelong, Victoria

TOURNAMENTS conjure context out of next to nothing. So after a mere day in Group A we know that Namibia are not messing around, that the Netherlands are capable of engineering gritty victories, that the Sri Lankans are soft in the middle, and that the United Arab Emirates haven’t made much progress towards becoming competitive in global tournaments.

Namibia’s shock 55-run win over the Lankans in the first match of Sunday’s doubleheader in Geelong, followed by the Dutch scraping home by three wickets with a ball to spare despite the UAE’s limp total of 111/8, gave us something to go on for Tuesday’s matches at the same venue.

Sunday’s winners will play the losers. Another win for the Namibians would be a great leap forward to a place in the Super 12, and a second loss for the UAE would be a step towards an early flight home.

But matters are unlikely to be so simple. As disappointing as the Lankans were on Sunday, when their bowlers took their foot the Namibians’ throats, allowing them to recover from 93/6 to 163/7, they should have the beating of a UAE side who have won only one of the 15 ODI and T20 World Cups matches they have played. The Dutch, who would have come unstuck on Sunday if they were chasing even a marginally more decent target, will have to raise their game exponentially if they are to stay in the contest with Namibia. The most likely outcome is victory for Sri Lanka and the Namibians, which would make the Africans the only side with two wins and leave just the Emiratis with two defeats.

The uncertainty is only deepened by the fact that the pitch prepared for Tuesday’s matches, which is adjacent to Sunday’s surface, has significantly less grass. All four teams struggled with the lack of pace on Sunday — three batters succumbed to catches off the leading edge in the Namibia-Sri Lanka game alone — and they could find themselves on an even slower slab on Tuesday. More grist for the context mill.

When: Tuesday, 3pm and 7pm Local Time

Where: Kardinia Park, Geelong

What to expect: A cool, sunny, dry day and evening. And a surface that might behave differently to Sunday’s.

Team news:

Namibia: Change this XI? Why would you do that?

Possible XI: Divan la Cock, Michael van Lingen, Stephan Baard, Jan Nicol Loftie-Eaton, Gerhard Erasmus (capt), Jan Frylinck, JJ Smit, David Wiese, Zane Green, Bernard Scholtz, Ben Shikongo

Netherlands: Similarly, the Dutch should keep faith with the side who got the job done, if only just, on Sunday.

Possible XI: Max O’Dowd, Vikram Singh, Bas de Leede, Tom Cooper, Colin Ackermann, Scott Edwards (capt), Roelof van der Merwe, Tim Pringle, Logan van Beek, Fred Klaassen, Paul van Meekeren

Sri Lanka: Binura Fernando has been approved as a squad replacement for Dilshan Madushanka, who has been ruled out with a torn quadriceps. The Lankans have to find a way to get Lahiru Kumara into the side, perhaps at the expense of Dushmantha Chameera.

Possible XI: Pathum Nissanka, Kusal Mendis, Dhananjaya de Silva, Danushka Gunathilaka, Bhanuka Rajapaksa, Dasun Shanaka (capt), Wanindu Hasaranga, Chamika Karunaratne, Lahiru Kumara, Pramod Madushan, Maheesh Theekshana

United Arab Emirates: What do you do when you lose even though you put your first-choice team on the field? Put them on the field again.

Possible XI: Muhammad Waseem, Chirag Suri, Vriitya Aravind, Chundangapoyil Rizwan (capt), Basil Hameed, Zawar Farid, Aayan Khan, Kashif Daud, Karthik Meiyappan, Junaid Siddique, Zahoor Khan

What they said:

“We’ve got to stay humble. There’s a lot of cricket to be played still in this tournament. There are no guarantees of any success going forward. This game doesn’t work like that.” — Pierre de Bruyn is determined to keep Namibia’s feet firmly on the ground after Sunday’s famous victory.

“We’ve played Namibia before. We know the strengths they have, and we’ve got our strengths. For us it’s to go out there and play our game, not worry too much about the outside noise and focus on what we can do.” — Max O’Dowd on how the Netherlands will keep the focus on Tuesday’s game.

“Somehow we have to win. No matter what, we have to win the next two matches. I think the boys all know that. We are definitely going to put more than 100% in the next two matches.” — Sri Lanka’s Chamika Karunaratne feels the pressure, perhaps explaining his wonky mathematics.

“They have been beaten by Namibia, and they can be beaten.” — Robin Singh, UAE’s coach, isn’t going to let the Lankans forget what happened on Sunday.

First published by Cricbuzz.

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Cricket’s place in cross-country basketball land

The men’s T20 World Cup starts in a place where cricket seems to be an alien irrelevance.

Telford Vice / Geelong, Victoria

“WHO?” Namibia and Sri Lanka. “What?” The opening match of the men’s T20 World Cup. “When?” Sunday. Where was self-evident to the friendly, 50-something man in the Elephant and Castle on Geelong’s McKillop Street on Friday night. But he was baffled by why.

He screwed up his face at the thought of it, contemplated the reassuringly full glass of Carlton Draught on the bar in front of him, and said, “Nah mate. T20? That’s not cricket. And also …” He made a movement that fell somewhere between a shrug and a gesture, his hands pointing everywhere and nowhere. We’re in bloody Geelong, mate. He didn’t say that. He didn’t have to.

Along with a slightly mangy, full-sized, stuffed African lion, four chunky trophies gleam on the mantelpiece behind the bar. They are replicas of the premierships won by the Geelong Football Club — the Cats to you, me and the friendly, 50-something man — in 2007, 2009, 2011 and on September 24 this year, when a crowd of 100,024 saw them beat the Sydney Swans by 81 points in the grand final at the MCG. Geelong, founded in 1859, have claimed the title 10 times in all. Only Carlton and Essendon, who have been champions 16 times each, have triumphed more often.

Geelong is a footy town, first, foremost, last and always. Footy as in Australian Rules, the only kind of football that matters in these parts. In other parts of Australia, it is sometimes derided as “cross-country basketball”. Maybe it’s a Victoria thing. The rest of us wouldn’t understand.

“I’ve watched so much of it on TV,” a South African working on the tournament in Geelong said, rolling their eyes. “Can’t they just play some rugby?” Happily, the South African wasn’t at the Elephant and Castle when they said this. Otherwise the kangaroos couldn’t have been tied down, sport. Even using the scarf in Geelong colours — navy blue and white — that hangs around the stuffed lion’s neck.

At Geelong’s home ground, Kardinia Park, where the Namibia-Sri Lanka game will be followed on Sunday by a match between the Netherlands and the United Arab Emirates, the club’s authentic trophies are displayed behind bulletproof glass. Among the 16 plaques standing two metres tall in “Legends Plaza”, built on an outer concourse, to “give testimony to our greatest sports men and women” and which were “selected by an independent committee from a long list of nominees”, Ian Redpath and Lindsay Hassett are the only cricketers represented. To be fair, figures from the world of Aussie rules garner only one more plaque than cricket. But those for whom cricket is unshakeable at the centre of sport’s universe, and beyond, will take a dim view of their game being lumped in with Geelong’s finest exponents of baseball, wrestling, boxing, tennis, and even real — or royal — tennis.

The inner walls of Kardinia Park are lined with photographs of footballers down the ages. Some feature men looking out balefully from pictures headed “Geelong Cricket and Football Club”, the result of a merger in 1884 that was undone in the 1950s. The city’s wikipedia page doesn’t acknowledge that aberration. It mentions, in its section on sport in Geelong, Aussie rules, basketball, netball, football — as in soccer — horse-racing, harness racing, greyhound racing, triathlon, motor racing, sailing, golf, water skiing, rowing, fishing, hiking, athletics, skateboarding, bodybuilding, powerlifting, and cycling. But there’s not a single word on cricket, even though the Australia and England under-19 teams played a four-day international in Geelong in January 1990, that Australia’s women’s and men’s sides clashed with New Zealand and Sri Lanka in a T20I doubleheader there in February 2017 — maybe because the Lankans won? — and that the BBL came to town for three matches in January.

What does all that say about the decision to start a global cricket tournament in a place where the game seems to be an alien irrelevance, complete with drop-in pitches nurtured far from the Cats’ hallowed sandbox? A few things: that the ICC are confident enough in what they’re selling to put it in unlikely places; that games featuring less fashionable teams playing away from home are more easily consigned to out of the way venues; that the organisers know the tournament won’t be taken seriously until the second round starts on October 22 with a match in Sydney between Australia and New Zealand.

It doesn’t tell us clearly that the Geelong Football Club does not control what happens at their 36,000-seat venue, which is owned by the Kardinia Park Stadium Trust, a statutory authority established in 2016 by an Act of the Victoria state government. The Trust is keen to make more varied use of the facility. Hence its increased exposure to cricket.

No doubt the Trust is inspired by what it sees happening 75 kilometres away in Melbourne. Despite what the C in MCG stands for, it has never been filled by people coming to watch cricket. The biggest crowd for that is the 93,013 who saw the 2015 men’s World Cup final between Australia and New Zealand. That’s 7,011 fewer than the number of spectators at this year’s AFL grand final.

Considering the natives don’t seem overly interested, whether Kardinia Park’s capacity is reached on Sunday will depend on how many south Asian visitors and expatriates make it to the venue on Sunday. Even so, there are at least 7,011 reasons why big, or even biggish, cricket should come to footy towns like Geelong.

First published by Cricbuzz.

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Group A’s Goliath and three Davids

“I want to be the man-of-the-series in this World Cup.” — Sri Lanka’s Bhanuka Rajapaksa isn’t short on confidence.

Telford Vice / Geelong, Victoria

FOUR teams, two matches, one day. Or around seven hours of Sunday. Geelong, Victoria’s second city, will kickstart the men’s T20 World Cup with a pair of doubleheaders featuring a Goliath and three Davids. Who will cast the first stone? Who will be shown to be living in a glass house? Who will gather moss?

Enough with the stone analogies already. Except to say that two of Sri Lanka, Namibia, the Netherlands and the United Arab Emirates will want to be the rocks from which the statues of the two Group A qualifiers for the 12-team second round are sculpted.

Closer to the truth is that the Namibians, Dutch and Emiratis will contest a single berth. It was difficult to imagine the Lankans slipping up against any of the other teams in the group even before Dasun Shanaka’s side won the Asia Cup in the UAE last month — which only underlines the islanders’ status as favourites to go through.

It’s tempting to consider Namibia or the Netherlands the favourites to snag the second spot, not least because the UAE have lost seven of the 13 T20Is they have played in 2022; most of them against the modest likes of Nepal, Germany and Singapore. On top of that, they have gone down in all three of their previous T20 World Cup games and 11 but of their dozen ODI World Cup matches. But the Emiratis have also beaten middling Ireland all three times they’ve played them in the format this year. So upsets — and any win for the UAE in this tournament would be an upset — are within their reach.

As a drop-in pitch, Geelong’s surface defies historical analysis and adds to the uncertainty of what might unfold, although the forecast for early rain — which washed out one of all four teams’ warm-up matches on Wednesday and Thursday — could enliven the surface at least for the initial exchanges of the day’s, and the tournament’s, opening fixture.

Sri Lanka look like they have too much firepower in all departments to be undone by Namibia in that match. The return of Dushmantha Chameera and Lahiru Kumara from the injuries that kept them out of the Asia Cup fits that script, and creates the prospect of a showdown with David Wiese, Namibia’s nuclear option.

If the UAE are to flip someone’s applecart, they would do themselves and everyone watching a favour by getting it done early in the piece rather than when it no longer matters. And there’s an even chance of that happening on Sunday — the UAE have won exactly half of their eight T20Is against the Dutch. The Netherlands prevailed the last time the teams met, in Dubai in October 2019, but the Emiratis reeled off four consecutive wins against them earlier in the same year.

You might not expect Zlatan Ibrahimovic and Yoko Ono to have some wisdom to contribute to this conversation, but this is all about the unexpected so sit tight. “Nothing is written in stone, as a career is an unpredictable journey,” Ibrahimovic said. Ono said something similar: “Nothing is written in stone. So don’t prepare yourself for a long and lucrative career. You might die tomorrow. Your gold holdings might become dust. Just make the music you want to make now and enjoy it.”

You heard them. Nothing is written in stone.

When: Sunday, 3pm and 7pm Local Time

Where: Kardinia Park, Geelong

What to expect: Morning rain that should clear before the start of the first match and stay away, thermometers that hover a degree or three under room temperature, and not a deluge of runs — 200 was breached nine times in the 2021/22 BBL, but not in any of the three games played at this ground in January.

Team news:

Namibia: The impact Morné Morkel makes as bowling consultant in his initial foray into international coaching is sure to be closely watched.

Possible XI: Stephan Baard, Michael van Lingen, Jan Nicol Loftie-Eaton, Gerhard Erasmus (capt), David Wiese, Zane Green, Ruben Trumpelmann, Jan Frylinck, Bernard Scholtz, Pikky Ya France, Ben Shikongo

Sri Lanka: Dilshan Madushanka seems in doubt having limped out of the nets holding his hip after bowling four balls during Saturday’s training session.

Possible XI: Pathum Nissanka, Kusal Mendis, Dhananjaya de Silva, Danushka Gunathilaka, Bhanuka Rajapaksa, Dasun Shanaka (capt), Wanindu Hasaranga de Silva, Chamika Karunaratne, Maheesh Theekshana, Dushmantha Chameera, Lahiru Kumara

Netherlands: Scott Edwards, the Dutch’s Melbourne-raised captain, has played 68 white-ball internationals — but is set for his debut in Australia.

Possible XI: Vikramjit Singh, Max O’Dowd, Stephan Myburgh, Bas de Leede, Tom Cooper, Scott Edwards (capt), Teja Nidamanuru, Roelof van der Merwe, Logan van Beek, Shariz Ahmad, Fred Klaassen

United Arab Emirates: At 16, left-arm spinner Aayan Afzal Khan is the youngest player in the tournament. He won’t turn 17 until two days after the final on November 13.

Possible XI: Muhammad Waseem, Chirag Suri, Aryan Lakra, Vriitya Aravind, Chundangapoyil Rizwan (capt), Basil Hameed, Zawar Farid, Aayan Afzal Khan, Karthik Meiyappan, Sabir Ali, Zahoor Khan

What they said:

“I look at the team compared to the first World Cup we played in, and there was a nervousness around. Of course there is again but there is more of a sense of calm.” — Stephan Baard on the progress Namibia hope to have made.

“I want to be the man-of-the-series in this World Cup. It will all come with the hard work that we’ve put in.” — Sri Lanka’s Bhanuka Rajapaksa thinks big.

“I suppose all the pressure is on Sri Lanka and Namibia from our group having played in the Super 12s last year.” – Colin Ackermann indulges in a spot of deflection, Netherlands style.

“What’s passed has passed. It’s a completely new team. There’s not even one person who has played a World Cup for UAE before on this team.” — Chirag Suri hopes for a brighter future for the UAE.

First published by Cricbuzz.

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