Namibia – Bulletproof Truth

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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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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Namibia turn tables to crash Sri Lanka’s party

“It’s a massive event in our lives.” – Gerhard Erasmus, Namibia’s captain, on his team’s shock win over Sri Lanka.

Telford Vice / Geelong, Victoria

SRI Lanka had won, surely. If you had fallen gently from the quickly chilling evening sky over Geelong onto the concourse at Kardinia Park on Sunday, no other result would have seemed possible. Somebody had to lose the opening match of the 2022 edition of the men’s T20 World Cup, and that poor team must have been Namibia. Except that, of course, the reverse was true.

So why was the concourse heaving with the happiness of thousands of Lankan fans as they made their way, ever so slowly, out of the ground? Because another of their obsessions, not their boys in blue, were in the house making themselves heard loud and proud.

The Papare Band Melbourne, a bouncing brassy bunch of expatriates who have taken the party everywhere they’ve gone around cricket’s world to support Sri Lanka’s teams for around 20 years, were in full brassy bounce. The clamouring of the crowd to communicate their appreciation surfed on top of their idols’ sweet rhythms, lapping and leaving and lapping again like the waves of the Asian island itself — where similar bands come standard with any respectable cricket match, come rain, shine or a hiding. As the unofficial papare mantra goes: “Even if the ship sinks, the party will go on.”

And on this party duly went, regardless — or perhaps because — of the fact that Sri Lanka’s ship had been sunk by 55 runs in a game they had to win to keep their bid to reach the second round as uncomplicated as possible. The Lankans sailed full steam ahead while their aggressive, incisive fast bowling was reducing Namibia to 93/6 inside 15 overs.

That must have made them think they had arrived, because they promptly dropped anchor by reverting to a dribble of slower balls. In fact they were nowhere in particular, and Jan Frylinck and JJ Smit were able to share 69 off 33 deliveries in a marauding stand that was ended with the last ball of the innings.

Still, Sri Lanka’s beefy batting line-up should have been able to navigate their team to a target of 164. Instead they floundered to 92/9 in six balls more than the Namibians had scored one more run while losing three fewer wickets. But, unlike in their opponents’ innings, there was no lifeboat partnership. The Lankans were dismissed for 108 with an over of their innings unbowled, their lowest completed innings against associate opposition in the format. That earned the Namibians their first victory over a top-10 ranked team. David Wiese had suffered a first-ball duck, but his 2/16 was the tip of an iceberg that bristled with two wickets each for Bernard Scholtz, Ben Shikongo — who took his with consecutive deliveries — and Jan Frylinck.

With that, the result of last year’s meeting between the teams in this tournament in Abu Dhabi was capsized. Then, Namibia were bowled out for 96 and Sri Lanka headed for the showers with seven wickets standing and 6.3 overs still in the bank.

“The tables have been turned,” a beaming Namibia captain, Gerhard Erasmus, told a press conference. “It’s not just about what we did tonight. We put in solid preparation for 12 months as opposed to just the 20 overs we had to bat. It was all down to hard work and preparation.

“There was hype and childish belief last year, and this year it was more that we had played at that level and knowing we can relate to it physically and mentally. We’ve seen it, we’ve tasted it, and because we’ve closed that gap by becoming one step closer to [more established teams] and getting the physical feel for what it’s like, that’s really what gave us the belief this time that this is a game of cricket, and if we execute better than our opponents on the day, we stand a good chance of winning.”

Was he surprised the Lankans had eased up after almost powering through his batting order? “At 93/6 there was some pressure on us. We had to resurrect the innings or finish stronger, and 164 was a lot of runs to get on this wicket, in batting conditions that were quite tough.”

Erasmus said he learnt in the media on Sunday morning that his team had been given “about an 11% chance”, and that “reading that gives you an underdog feeling, and that backed by a bit of real belief — not the childish kind — I think that’s what happened today. We went onto the field on an equal footing to the Sri Lankan side.”

Now for the hard part; easing down from the crest of euphoria gently enough to be ready to do it all again when Namibia return to the scene of their triumph on Tuesday to meet the Netherlands.

“It’s going to take a massive mental reset because you can get carried away with celebrations and historic events like this,” Erasmus said. “Everyone, rightly so, is very glad to have beaten Sri Lanka for the first time, and on the world stage in the opening game. It’s a massive event in our lives, and as such it should be celebrated. But because the recovery between games is so quick we have to put the celebrations on hold. We really want to get our eye in on qualifying for the Super 12s, which is really the main goal.”

Indeed, because Sunday’s success could mean nothing if Namibia lose their other two first-round games. And the Dutch will be buoyant after hanging tough in the second half of Sunday’s doubleheader to beat the United Arab Emirates by three wickets with a ball to spare in a competitive but scrappy encounter that never rose to the heights of what went before. By comparison, it was a cricket match and nothing more.

Bas van de Leede was slippery enough to take 3/19 in three overs in the UAE’s total of 111/8, of which Muhammad Waseem made 41. The Netherlands approached their reply like a docile dog might an injured bird. They seemed to lack plan and purpose, and needed brave running between the wickets by Scott Edwards and Tim Pringle in their seventh-wicket stand of 30 off 27 to tilt the match firmly in their direction.

By the time that was done, the Papare Band Melbourne were long gone, taking with them almost all of the crowd of 16,407 — the vast majority Sri Lanka fans — who had dominated the space earlier. The smattering of orange-shirted spectators who remained were noisily passionate in their support and rewarded for the commitment they showed in the cold. Somehow they didn’t sound the same.

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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Proof of SA’s pudding bowl of talent running over being eaten at T20 World Cup

“Teams like Afghanistan and Scotland attract the type of guy who wants to move his career forward and is probably blocked from doing so in South Africa.” – Ray Jennings on the slew of SA coaches at the tournament.

Telford Vice | Cape Town

EVEN by South African cricket’s singular standards, it’s been an interesting few days. On Saturday, CSA managed to congratulate Lungi Ngidi alone on his team’s triumph in the IPL. On Sunday, Ray Jennings highlighted that the head coaches of seven of the 16 teams at the T20 World Cup were his compatriots.

Also on Sunday, Chris Greaves — a former delivery driver and current golf course greenskeeper who went to the same Johannesburg school as Graeme Smith — rocked and rolled with bat and ball for Scotland. And Curtis Campher — who went to another Johannesburg school, which was also the alma mater of Kagiso Rabada — took four in four for Ireland.

On Monday, under the radar of all that, Temba Bavuma made a stolid rather than spectacular return to action after 50 days out with a broken thumb. And CSA’s Social Justice and Nation-Building hearings resumed with rebuttal testimony from some of those implicated in the first round of cathartic, necessary, long overdue scab-picking.

“Congratulations Lungi Ngidi on claiming the 2021 IPL title with Chennai Super Kings,” CSA posted on social media, despite the fact that CSK’s squad also featured Faf du Plessis and Imran Tahir. Du Plessis, whose 59-ball 86 clinched the final against Kolkata Knight Riders in Dubai on Friday and made him the tournament’s second-highest runscorer, justifiably responded: “Really???”

David Wiese, these days of Namibia, blasted the snub as “absolutely shocking”. Dale Steyn came off his long run in a series of posts that included a description of the message as “disgusting” and warned CSA were “opening a can of worms for themselves”. He also offered advice: “Delete the post and add all the men involved, save yourself the embarrassment and ridicule.”

CSA did just that: “Congratulations to all the South Africans who competed in and claimed victory in the 2021 IPL Final with Chennai Super Kings. Notably Faf du Plessis who put in a man of the match performance.”

By then the toothpaste was well out of the tube — and, not for the first time, all over CSA’s face. That Ngidi didn’t play a single match in this year’s IPL only made the damaging episode more difficult to understand. Neither can the mess be explained away by the fact that, unlike Du Plessis and Tahir, Ngidi is contracted to CSA. If the suits consider worthy of their recognition only those who are currently in their employ then they have shambled to a new low. It also doesn’t wash to argue that, of the three players, only Ngidi is at the T20 World Cup. Any discussion on that topic would have to start with Du Plessis’ shocking omission from the squad. With depressing predictability, social media’s bottom feeders didn’t need long to posit the poisonous nonsense that Ngidi was named because he is black and Du Plessis ignored because he is white.

There was something of that ugly narrative in the reaction to Jennings, also on social media, doing the math on the nationality of head coaches at the tournament; Mark Boucher, Russell Domingo, Graham Ford, Mickey Arthur, Lance Klusener, Shane Burger and Pierre de Bruyn are in charge of South Africa, Bangladesh, Ireland, Sri Lanka, Afghanistan, Scotland and Namibia.

Asked to elaborate, Jennings told Cricbuzz on Monday: “There’s been a period of time where people like Lance Klusener, Pierre de Bruyn and Shane Burger have gained quite a lot of experience as coaches. They’re recognised at a certain level. Teams like Afghanistan and Scotland wouldn’t attract top international coaches. They attract the type of guy who wants to move his career forward and is probably blocked from doing so in South Africa.”

Blocked by what? Essentially, by an overabundance of excellence. The country’s elite schools produce more quality talent than the comparatively inadequate professional system is able to absorb. The same holds true for coaches, so they go elsewhere. Still, there are anomalies. Like Jennings himself. Days after returning from the UAE in 2014 with the under-19 World Cup trophy in his squad’s luggage, CSA said his services were no longer required. Cue more clumsily squeezed toothpaste.

Regardless, the proof of South Africa’s pudding bowl of talent running over was there to be eaten in Oman and Abu Dhabi on Sunday. Greaves, until recently an Amazon driver and — according to his LinkedIn page — still a greenskeeper at St Andrews, came to the crease with Bangladesh having reduced the Scots to 52/5 inside 11 overs. His 28-ball 45 set them up for a respectable total of 140/9. Greaves then took 2/19 in three overs of sniping leg spin to clinch a famous six-run win. Not bad for someone who might have remained firmly out of the limelight had he not, while bowling to England’s players in the Wanderers nets in January 2010, told Jonathan Trott his mother was British.

If that sounds familiar it might be because word that Campher’s grandmother was Irish became part of dressing room conversation during a game between an Easterns and Northerns Combined XI and Ireland in Pretoria in February 2018. With that the course of the former South Africa under-19 player’s career was rerouted to the northern hemisphere. For him, there would be no emptying trucks of parcels or keeping the fairways fabulous to earn a crust. And he showed why by dismissing Colin Ackermann, Ryan ten Doeschate, Scott Edwards and Roelof van der Merwe with consecutive deliveries to wreck the Netherlands’ innings and set up Ireland’s seven-wicket win. Here’s the twist: Ackermann, Ten Doeschate and Van der Merwe were all born in and made their way in cricket in South Africa.

Bavuma’s first innings since September 2 didn’t have a hope of competing with the drama of those plots, unless he sustained another injury. Happily, he didn’t. But his return couldn’t have come in less auspicious circumstances: a T20 World Cup warm-up match against Afghanistan on an unhelpfully sluggish pitch at Abu Dhabi’s Tolerance Oval, one of the Sheikh Zayed Stadium’s out grounds. Bavuma batted in accordance with the lowkey script, facing the first dozen balls of the match for a solitary single, and needing 22 deliveries to reach double figures. He had made 31 off 38 when he swiped at a wide delivery from Mohammad Nabi, and turned on his heel and walked without waiting for the umpire to confirm the edge to Mohammad Shahzad. It wasn’t as pretty as Bavuma’s batting usually is, but it will do for now.

Across the equator and far away, some of South Africa’s domestic administrators were going chapter and verse through claims of racist treatment made against their organisations at the SJN. Where previously the room had been filled with the white-hot emotions of those who had been wronged, this was all about coldly calculating another version of what had happened during the game’s troubled past. Some sins were admitted, others denied, and still others cast as fiction.

Interesting. But probably no more than the next few days.

First published by Cricbuzz.

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If you’re David Wiese, home is where the kit is

“I’d like to think there is still a place for us in the South African set-up. Whether there’s too much animosity towards us for deserting and going away, or whatever, we’ll have to wait and see.” – David Wiese on cricket after Kolpak.

Telford Vice | Cape Town

DAVID Wiese keeps “a couple of crates in my garage” in Pretoria, where he still lives despite being among cricket’s most travelled players. Into those boxes goes the kit he has amassed from turning out for, at last count, 19 teams in every format except Test cricket and including new-fangled novelties like T10 and The Hundred.

“I need to make a plan with it all at some stage,” Wiese told Cricbuzz from his hotel room in Abu Dhabi. “You think you might need it someday, and then the next tournament comes along and you get another kit and another helmet. It just keeps piling up.”

When next he’s home — briefly, no doubt — the pile is set to grow. Wiese will play for Namibia, the country of his father’s birth, in the T20 World Cup. That may seem a mercenary move for a 36-year-old allrounder who has 14 T20 franchises on his CV. It isn’t, as he explains: “Back in the day when I was playing for Easterns [regularly from October 2005 to October 2011], Namibia played on the domestic circuit in South Africa. As soon as they caught wind that my dad was born there and I could get a Namibian passport, they started talking to me.

“It was always something that was in the back of my mind, but then I started playing for the Titans and got picked for the Proteas and it kind of fell away. And after playing for South Africa I would have had to wait four years to play for Namibia. So while the thought has always been there I’d be lying if I said I expected to be here. I never thought I would actually end up using my Namibian passport.”

Now that he has, what did he think of the chances of a team who were last at this level at the 2003 World Cup? “We are underdogs of note, and I think everybody has written us off. But what I’ve gathered from the Namibian side is that’s almost the way they like it.” In a country that is 64% desert and where teams travel hundreds of kilometres to play a club match, toughness comes standard.

Then there’s Pierre de Bruyn, Namibia’s coach, who also played for Easterns and the franchise they were part of, the Titans. But never with Wiese, who is eight years younger. Even so, the hard-scrabble culture of cricket at Willowmoore Park in Benoni — famously the flat pitch and small, fast outfield where Denis Compton plundered 300 in a minute more than three hours in December 1948 — is not a long way from what it takes to succeed in Namibia. “Pierre was one of those hard Easterns players, and he’s instilled a lot of that into the Namibian side,” Wiese said. With Albie Morkel, another Easterns and Titans stalwart, also aboard the good ship Namibia as a consultant, fighting spirit shouldn’t be in short supply. There’s more South Africaness on hand in Richard das Neves, the assistant coach and strength and conditioning specialist, and Maurice Aronstam, the team psychologist. The mere fact that the Namibians have those kinds of bases covered suggests they are serious.

“Nobody’s expecting us to make it through [the opening round], but we can use that to our advantage,” Wiese said. “We’re playing Sri Lanka in our first game [in Abu Dhabi on Monday], and they could easily under-estimate us and we could catch them unawares. It’s going to be hard work, but I feel we have one or two surprises up our sleeve.”

He sounded like he meant it, which doesn’t fit with the idea of the hired gun who arrives, plays and leaves in short order. In 2019 — the last time cricket was unaffected by the pandemic — Wiese featured in 66 matches for six teams in five countries. He popped up for the Tshwane Spartans in the eliminator and final of the MSL that year. In August this year he replaced Mohammad Nabi, the Afghan allrounder who went home for personal reasons, for the London Spirit’s last two games in The Hundred. Could he, unlike many of us, make sense of cricket’s latest terrible infant? “Everyone thought it would be a 16.4-over T20 game, but it wasn’t. It had a completely different feel and it was a good tournament to be involved with. Fortunately for me I came in a bit late. By that time the guys had kind of … not figured it out, but they had realised it was completely different to T20. They’re only small shifts but they’re really significant. Small things like bowlers can bowl back-to-back overs and the new batter has to face when he comes in. The T20 game could take a leaf out of that book.” From there it was across the Atlantic to play five matches for the St Lucia Kings in the CPL.

How did Wiese stay focused in the maelstrom of travelling and playing? “When you get that busy and play so many games you rely on momentum. There’s not a stage where, for two or three weeks, you’re not hitting balls. You’re constantly playing, so you have to catch momentum and keep going. Your body gets trained for that and you just keep working and switching on for the next tournament and the next tournament and the next tournament …” Sounds awful, unless you’re Wiese: “I love travelling and playing in all these different tournaments, and meeting new people in the different teams. It’s been hard work, but I’ve thoroughly enjoyed it.”

Did he feel he belonged anywhere, or was it all a blur of batting and bowling on far-flung fields punctuated by adding another layer to the crates in the garage? “I’ve played for Sussex for the past six years, so I’ve got a deep emotional attachment to them. I’ve always had a good time there and they’ve looked after me nicely. In the PSL, I’ve played for the Lahore Qalandars for the past three seasons. The owners have stayed the same, the management has stayed the same and they’ve kept the core base of local players. So you start building relationships with those guys, even though it’s only for a four or five-week period every year. But within those weeks you spend a lot of time together and you get to know each other well. There’s an emotional bond there because of the opportunities they’ve given me. They’ve shown a lot of faith in me by retaining me. You want to repay that faith to the owners and managers and everyone.”

Wiese hit the road in January 2017, when he signed a Kolpak contract with Sussex. He had played six ODIs and 20 T20Is for South Africa with middling success, and Dwaine Pretorius and Andile Phehlukwayo loomed as threats. “I saw that the door was shutting, not necessarily in T20s but definitely in ODIs. Dwaine had done well, Andile had done well.”

He had kept the Titans in the loop for “three, four months”, and had told them of his decision by the time he answered a call from CSA to hear he had been picked for South Africa’s white-ball series against Sri Lanka. “I was in a bit of shock, and I said, ‘OK, cool … Thanks’. The next morning, when I woke up, the media all over were saying I had signed Kolpak. I didn’t make that announcement. I had to phone back and say I was withdrawing.”

That doesn’t square with the conventional narrative of South Africa’s racially targetted selection policies forcing white cricketers to go elsewhere to stay in the game. “I felt that CSA had moved on from me and it was the right time to make that change,” Wiese said. “If I hadn’t signed Kolpak could I have played a couple more ODIs? Is the argument that when Andile took my spot, it filled a demographic need? But his ODI stats were really good and he deserved his position. My Kolpak move was never about me thinking the system had screwed me over. I had a family and they offered me a three-year contract; it was financially appealing.”

Although Wiese’s choice was revealed in the same few days that brought news of Kyle Abbott and Rilee Rossouw doing the same, he escaped the lashing they took in public. But he didn’t avoid CSA’s efforts to make Kolpaks unwelcome in South African cricket. “The way they treated us you can argue that we could have contributed more to the domestic set-up than what was allowed,” Wiese said.

The Kolpak era ended on January 1, and several previously vilified figures have since returned to the South African domestic fold. “For CSA it’s probably a good thing because they won’t be losing so many players. From a UK point of view, the Kolpak rule strengthened the county circuit. They can’t say we just went there and didn’t do anything. We made their players better by playing against them.”

Now what? “Could we get back into the system at CSA? Have too many bridges already been burnt? I’d like to think there is still a place for us in the South African set-up. Whether there’s too much animosity towards us for deserting and going away, or whatever, we’ll have to wait and see. I’d like to think there’s a bigger picture.

“Last year Andrew Breetzke [the chief executive of the South African Cricketers’ Association] got in touch with us and said they want to sit down with the Kolpak guys and mend fences so we could play domestically again to add experience and almost help out. I’d love to play another season in South Africa. The Titans will always be close to my heart and I’ll always consider them my home team.”

Home. Where is that, exactly? Maybe where the kit is. Until it’s in a crate in the garage.

First published by Cricbuzz.

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