The World T20 may have been crash-em bash-em stuff, but it contained some genuine cricketing brilliance. Let’s look back over the top performances.
8. England’s one bright moment
They’re no longer the Old Enemy so much as the Old Bloke We Argue Half-Heartedly With While Eating Chips and Calling Each Other Names, such is the amount of time England and Australia have spent together this past year. But we’ll grant they had one more nice day than us at the Cup.
Being set 190 by Sri Lanka was hard. Two wickets for none in the first over didn’t help. Alex Hales cover-drove his first two balls for four, but that didn’t stop the required rate climbing above 12.
England kept pace, including 25 runs from one Ajantha Mendis over, but lost 2 for 5 in the 17th over. With 34 runs required, Hales remained at the crease, cover-driving one six to bring up his hundred, then two more in his next four balls to seal the game and finish 116 not out from 64.
While it was England’s only highlight, at least they influenced the overall winner. Mendis was dropped next match for Rangana Herath, the key man to bringing Sri Lanka’s title home.
7. The panoply of spinning spheres
What a great time it was to watch spinners at work. Imran Tahir got a victim every 10 balls, in his first truly dominant display for South Africa. Samuel Badree bowled fast leg spin, Amit Mishra bowled. Ravi Ashwin’s carrom balls turned a foot, his off-spinners jagged the other way. The quartet were all in the top five wicket-takers, with 44 between them.
Krishmar Santokie bowled left-arm spin masquerading as pace, gripping the pitch. Sachithra Senanayake mixed offies with a distinctive finger-flicker that wobbled down the other end like Miss Daisy driving herself – he was no destroyer, but 17 overs at 4.88 let the champs control batting sides. Skunk-haired Sunil Narine also resembled a geriatric motorist, liable to turn either way at any moment with no warning.
One-off bowlers aside, Narine and Herath were the most economical in the tournament at 4.6 per over.
6. Darren Sammy, executioner
I mean no disrespect, but the epithet ‘murderous’ does not often call to mind men named Darren. The West Indies captain has shrugged off this limitation, turning himself from a modestly talented all-rounder to MS Dhoni’s rival as the world’s best finisher.
Where Dhoni brings calm, Sammy is intent on violence. His shots soar from the bat with a noise of blunt-object trauma. The ball hides among crowds and begs not to be thrown back. His physical presence at the crease did for Australia, their bowlers coming apart as he muscled their full tosses down the ground. Then among the brutality, a Dhoni touch: a hybrid helicopter leg-glance that sped for four.
Against two of the best death bowlers in the world, Pakistan’s Umar Gul and Saeed Ajmal, Sammy and Dwayne Bravo took 59 from three overs, among 85 from the final five. The captain ended the tournament with a strike rate of 224.
5. The new master of the batting crease
Virat Kohli is so good these days that it’s almost mundane. Aside from a healthy 46 average in his fairly young Test career, he tops 52 in one-day cricket and 45 in T20 internationals. Glance around the paltry averages the shorter forms afford his peers and you’ll start to digest the magnitude.
Kohli made four half centuries in six attempts, with three not-outs. He topped the run tally with 319 at an average of 106. No one could have done more for India, Kohli screaming with frustration in the final as he was stuck down the non-striker’s end, then sacrificing his wicket attempting one more run from the last ball, desperate to claw something back India’s way. If not for that run-out, his average would have been 160.
But of all his exploits this time around, Kohli’s finest moment was in defeat. Having ridden every delivery in the field with anguished concentration, Kohli approached Sri Lankan legend Kumar Sangakkara mid-pitch and gave him a warm embrace.
4. The rise of the mighty Dutch
The men in orange face a period in the cricketing wilderness, but they have won many fans with their best showing on the international stage. Sure, Netherlands may have had an extra game or two, but who would have tipped Dutchmen to be second and third on the runs list and equal first on the wickets?
The comprehensiveness of their win over England will give as much joy as the result itself, firing out their dispirited European rivals for 88 in an attainable chase. Then there was the way they swarmed South Africa in the field, so nearly setting up a win before faltering in the chase. Had that one gone their way, a semi-final spot would have been decided on net run rate.
But the real fairytale for Netherlands was in even qualifying for the second round. In a pool with Ireland and Zimbabwe, no one expected the Dutch to progress. Facing Ireland in their final match, they needed a win with a huge run-rate boost. That hope was dead when Ireland monstered 189, meaning Netherlands would need to chase in 14.2 overs.
Yet somehow, Stephan Myburgh and Tom Cooper hooked the body up to lightning. There were 4 sixes in the second over alone, the first 50 runs from 19 balls, and a Powerplay world record of 91. The total fell with three balls to spare. The impossible had been brought to pass, something the Netherlands will need to keep believing they can do in years to come.
3. Australia’s skipper cracks a monster
A new world record probably wasn’t on Meg Lanning’s mind after two single-figure scores in her first two matches. Again it was Ireland to take the punishment. Batting first with Delissa Kimmince, who sounds for all the world like a delicious Christmas pastry, Lanning began with a measured 18 from 17 balls. Then in the ninth over she went off like a burning firework factory, adding a further 108 by the final over.
It was one of those games where a player is in the zone and just needs strike. Alex Blackwell understood: in an 83-run partnership, Blackwell scored 12 from 12. Lanning made 69 from 29. In all, 18 fours and 4 sixes rained from her bat, in a record women’s T20 score of 126 from 65 deliveries.
It ignited Lanning’s series, as she scored well in each match thereafter on her way to a World Cup win.
2. The nicest men in cricket finally get a break
You won’t find two greater statesmen among current players than Kumar Sangakkara and Mahela Jayawardene. Over lengthy careers the pair have been unfailingly decent, courteous and insightful about the game. They also had an unwanted distinction, that of losing four World Cup finals since 2007 and never managing a win.
Retiring from T20 Internationals is not the most emotional time in cricket – many players do it on a Tuesday whim. But when Sri Lanka’s veterans announced this tournament would be their last, it was very deliberately timed. They wanted one more crack at a title.
Having made the final, they couldn’t help thinking about a losing run of five. Even after Sri Lanka had kept India to 130, the nerves were palpable. Jayawardene helped settle them with a fluent 24, including a lovely late dab, but his dismissal and another wicket got the nerves going again.
Fortunately, in a dream result, Sangakkara was able to surpass a struggle with form from the previous few matches, posting an unbeaten 52 to carry Sri Lanka home. It literally couldn’t have happened to a nicer guy.
1. Actually, this is a country for old men
Sri Lanka would never have made that final, though, if not for the greatest performance in the tournament. Rangana Herath is an unlikely athlete: a small, slightly portly, unassuming gentleman with a kindly face, who I’ve described before as looking like he owns a petrol station. He was into his 30s before he got the chance to emerge from Muttiah Muralitharan’s shadow. No one noticed. He took the most Test wickets in the world in 2012. No one noticed.
Herath, though, is a truly fine purveyor of his craft, and being underrated doesn’t hurt – as long as it’s by the opposition. His problem was Sri Lanka’s management hadn’t picked him for a T20 in two years, seeing him as a Test player. But after Mendis had struggled, Herath was called in for Sri Lanka’s final pool match against New Zealand.
The equation was simple: winner makes the semi-finals. When Sri Lanka were bowled out for 119, there was only one result in sight. Something extraordinary was needed. Someone rarely credited as extraordinary provided it.
From Herath’s first ball, with New Zealand a comfortable 0 for 18 after three overs, Martin Guptill drove toward mid on and was sent back. Herath charged, gathered, and threw the ball in for a run out. Brendon McCullum arrived, a feared batsman in this format, but after four claustrophobic dot balls he charged, Herath turning it past the slogged drive for a stumping.
Captain Ross Taylor, an excellent player of spin, also lasted five scoreless balls. One was nearly a catch to short leg, one a plumb lbw shout turned down. Increasingly flustered, he couldn’t read a wider one that came in with the arm, and was finally trapped in front. With one left in the over, the left-handed Jimmy Neesham groped forward as it drifted across him. This time it turned back to bowl him middle and leg stump. Three wickets hadn’t cost a run.
By the time Luke Ronchi was lbw to one that straightened appreciably, New Zealand were 5 for 29, with a batsman absent injured. Sri Lanka’s other bowlers took over until Herath returned for the 16th with two wickets to get. His first ball was a sliced edge that fell safely, but confused the batsmen enough to see Herath take the return and run out Kane Williamson. The third prompted a charging cut shot from Trent Boult caught at slip.
3.3 overs, 2 maidens, 5 wickets for 3 runs, with two run-outs for good measure. A Test-only player had come in and delivered Test-match bowling, with teasing flight, loop, drift and turn all on display in a format that so often prompts the dart. New Zealand had been tied in knots, Herath had produced one of the immortal World Cup performances.
This time, people seemed to notice.
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