3 minute read
The most limited form of the game of cricket has exploded in the last decade. Domestic franchise tournaments are highly touted and visibly vibrant but this is the biggest representative version of the sport.
Racing and Sports will cover some feature matches of the 2021 T20 World Cup tournament played in the Middle East. We'll provide a look at the form going in and a few betting predictions.
AUSTRALIA v SOUTH AFRICA
Saturday 23 October @ Abu Dhabi
The hit and giggle is about to begin – but there hasn't been much hitting of late and not much to giggle about as cricket traversed its virus intermission.
Perhaps correlated is that on very few occasions since the mid-1980s has an Australian Mens cricket team entered an international tournament lacking in such confidence and form.
But that is a reflection of how much the game has failed to gel in Australia in the shortest format from a representative viewpoint as compared to the success of the BBL and their players' participation in the IPL.
The best way to offer quantifiable proof of that is that the bookies have them equal 4th favourites from the start and to be honest that is being kind.
It is player reputation and player reputation only that substantiates that position. In 16 years of these matches, Australia has played 146 International T20 games with exactly a 50% win rate. That is very much lower than their ODI record and incredibly worse than their 'non loss' Test percentage.
But compare that to the influence and ubiquitous nature of Australian cricketers on the world T20 stage. They are often high up on the IPL bidding system – be they inventive whackers of the cherry or purveyors of hooping inswingers. Those skills have not been replicated into regular Australian teams.
The recently completed (and longest cricketing tournament ever given the coronavirus hiatus between May and September) 2021 Indian Premier League has to be the formguide for this World Cup.
It showed just what influence this style of cricket, and where it was cultivated, has over the cricketing world. A premature end to the England/India Test Series is the cautionary tale of that authority.
And while Indian locals, by virtue of numbers, had huge effect on that IPL, there were some international exploits worthy of significance.
One of them was Glenn Maxwell who seems the bedrock around what, if any, Australian foundations there are to success here. He scored 513 runs in 14 innings for the Royal Challengers Bangalore at a superb strike rate of 144.
He could nearly win the whole event off his own bat on those figures though logic says this is a team recital with an ensemble cast rather than a one-person show.
Not many other Australians this time frolicked over the 22 yards and that is the heart of this team's positioning in this style.
While he is the positive, the conundrums around him abound. And it starts at the top.
With two 34yo openers who are definitively nearing the end, how is the vibrancy maintained? Finch had his own concerns in recent times regarding selection but the grander one right now is David Warner's position.
His feet movements are astride the crease. There is no punchiness to his impact on the ball – reaching and manoeuvring rather than his pugnacious dispatch of the past.
Warner was never ever going to be a constructer of an innings – Test, ODI or T20. And maybe Australia's distinct lack of competitive cricket since the pandemic began, as opposed to other nations, has left him behind.
His record has been superb. You don't make 24 test centuries without being able to concentrate, manipulate and create good time at the crease.
But you only have to recall how so many of the elite hit the wall hard and it can come fast. Some of the greats like Ponting, Taylor, Hayden just for some saw father time hit them between the eyes. It happens to most but when you are a big name, it becomes the story. He starts the matches, surely, but for how long?
At least SPD Smith looks like he's enjoying being back on centre stage.
While the batting has issues, the bowling revolves around the regular suspects.
Starc, Cummins and Hazlewood have been staples for a decade. It is possibly an indictment that they aren't even able to be rested for something like this event.
Cummins does have the equivalent of a 'four-leaf clover' in his corner. The birth of his first child was touching. He should also know a birth is a lucky charm.
But with that comes a fair lack of match fitness and practice. Please don't exert him with the Ashes but a month away. Conceding it is only four over spells, strangely there are never four over spells in T20s.
They are often one, sometimes two at a time and that can create its own mandate for a strong fitness foundation.
Given it is played in the Middle East, you'd think the pitches will be at worse spin friendly. Agar and Zampa have a role to play. If they foul then Swepson might get a taste. He is a smokey for the Ashes campaign too.
You add in the lack of bowling sustenance from Stoinis and Mitchell Marsh, who they clearly want to include, and it's a team light on real options. Those two have had so many physical ailments that whatever bowling they do now has not a great deal of solidity behind it.
They face South Africa in the opening proper of the World Cup and they too are a cricket nation in some transition.
As Australia has been having its own domestic administrative kerfuffles, South Africa has been in its own 'crisis'.
Government intervention is not endorsed by the ICC for cricket nations but what has occurred in South Africa of late had recently raised cause for concern.
Administrators have come and gone and the playing component have been dragged into it as well – previously feeling a need to express their anguish at the goings on.
But they are here as a part of this cricketing congregation and take their place with some big names not involved.
In fact considering the lack of Australian context in the IPL, players of South African bent were much more to the fore. Faf du Plessis, AB de Villiers and Quinton de Kock all played big roles. Sadly for them two of those former captains are not part of this squad.
South Africa's bowling is their strength. Kagiso Rabada is in his prime at 26yo and around Pretorius, Nortje and the allrounders, plus the spin of Shamsi and Maharaj, they can win the odd game.
They do seem very hit and miss atop the order and rely on de Kock with his brazen attack as well as the hitting of Miller and van der Dussen.
As with nearly every T20 match there will be ebbs and flows, back and forths, swings and roundabouts – can I explain it any other way than anything goes.
Form can and does often not provide one scintilla of reasoning.
Chasing allows you the opportunity to know how long you have to attack for. Scoreboard pressure is more a prevalent angle in the longer forms.
The Power Play was the original be all and end all of these games. That has changed slightly now with the use of spinners early and the employment of that Americanism 'Analytics' whereby strategy is based around statistical reasoning and history as much as game feel.
It's not just all about hitting sixes. Moving the field around, scoring twos and knowing when and who to attack is critical. You don't have to try and carve it in every over.
Well the game feel here is Australia must come out of the Covid-lull they have been in for months. So many times 'first up' in a cricketing season they start like Chautauqua.
And their Warm Up game, even granted it was the favourites India, showed little to appease that notion. The top order needs to bat well but not confident of it being fulfilled.
Tipping they might walk into a roadblock called form and not get past it.
Suggested Bets: South Africa @ $2.05
Suggested Bets: Steve Smith Top Australian Runscorer @ $5.50
Suggested Bets: Glenn Maxwell Top Australian Runscorer @ $7.00
