Buzzin Cricket

Pakistan win the Mens ICC World Twenty20

Pakistan 139-2 (18.3 overs) beat Sri Lanka 138-6 (20 overs) by eight wickets.

Pakistan were the surprise winners of the ICC World Twenty20 cricket competition.  They convincingly beat Sri Lanka in the final at Lords yesterday, and in a post match interview, Pakistan captain Younus Khan, draped in a Pakistan flag dedicated the famous victory to his former coach Bob Woolmer who died suddenly in Jamaica during the 2007 World Cup.

Khan took the opportunity to announce his retirement from Twenty20 cricket, and also pleaded for countries to reconsider the current boycott of playing cricket in Pakistan following the terrorist attack on the Sri Lanka team bus in March, while on thier way to play in Lahore.

Following the attack, Pakistan were also stripped of holding the cricket World Cup in 2011.

England Women win the ICC World Twenty20

Meanwhile, England won the Women’s ICC World Twenty20 in style by bowling New Zealand all out for 85 and win by six wickets, also at Lords yesterday.

England Women’s cricket captain, Charlotte Edwards said it was the “proudest day of her life.”

The England Women’s cricket team add the World Twenty20 trophy to the Ashes and the World Cup.

As the world of cricket is more divided than ever before, all eyes will be focused on the ICC World Twenty20 this Friday as England play Holland in the opening match of the tournament.

England is staging this prestigious event after the success of the first World Twenty20 competition in South Africa in 2007.  Since then Twenty20 cricket has become even more popular, something that is clear to see with the recent success and second year of the IPL (Indian Premier League) that was recently held in South Africa due to security concerns that police could not cope with staging the event in India at the same time as policing India’s general election.

It seems plenty of cricket fans love both the excitement of Twenty20, with its offensive slogging approach to cricket, as much as the slower, more tactically aware five day test matches; and the world’s top cricketers aren’t complaining either, as some of them have become millionaires overnight.  But some players from previous generations, commentators and cricket boards and associations are concerned with whether Twenty20’s popularity is going to change cricket for good, and interfere with the quality and style of younger players and generations to come.

Furthermore, concerns have been voiced that there is now too much cricket being played, altogether. Top cricketers now play county cricket, test matches, Twenty20 and the IPL which it is argued is resulting in exhaustion and more injuries.

As the World Twenty20 starts this Friday, Andrew Flintoff will be missing through injury he sustained while playing in the Twenty20 IPL earlier this year. Flintoff will be a big miss for England, but in Twenty20 cricket the focus is more on the batsmen and their batting styles.

Strokes such as slog-sweeps, switch-hits and shovel shots will all play a part over the next couple of weeks.

For the first time, both the men’s and women’s World Twenty20 cricket finals will be taking place simultaneously.  The men’s tournament consists of 12 teams, and will be played at three venues – Lords, Trent Bridge and The Oval.  The women’s tournament consists of eight teams.  All group games will be hosted at Taunton.

The majority of match days will include two matches with four teams. So anyone with Twenty20 tickets could be getting to see two matches.

What Twenty20 does do is to make cricket more accessible, more exciting and something that you can watch in hours more than days.  There’s no doubt that tickets for the World Twenty20 tournament are going to be worth getting your hands on.

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When Andrew Flintoff isn’t playing for the England cricket team, they need someone else to take over as the ‘go-to’ man with the ball. They need someone else to scare the opposition with aggression and they need someone else to take his share of One Day International wickets.

Well, it seems that Stuart Broad is the man prepared to step up to the task. The Nottinghamshire seamer – who took four wickets during Saturday’s ODI win over the West Indies - has revealed that he ‘thrives on the extra responsibility’ he has been handed since Andrew Flintoff’s absence.

Stuart Broad has taken the new ball for England recently and he admits that this is something he enjoys doing very much. He says that it is a ‘fantastic opportunity’ to be responsible for setting the tone of the innings in the first ten overs or so.

This is, of course, something Stuart Broad and James Anderson did very well over the weekend. The West Indies were 46-3 after the first ten overs at Bristol with Stuart Broad taking two of the wickets.

England then went on to win the game comfortably and did so without the influence of injured duo Andrew Flintoff and Kevin Pietersen. This is a good sign for Andrew Strauss’ men. It shows that they can win matches without their star players.

Stuart Broad agrees that ‘it’s important you don’t rely on certain players’ and that ‘everyone needs to step up’ to the standard required to help England win more matches than they lose.

This is certainly something that Stuart Broad is doing right now. He is an integral part of this England team in every form and he is set to play a massive part in the future of English cricket.

In fact, if he keeps dealing with the extra responsibility so well and if he continues to bowl above 90mph, he could be the star of the summer for England, so bear this in mind when you place your 2009 ashes bet!

After helping England to a comfortable victory in the first test of the summer against the West Indies, Stuart Broad has set his sights on defeating Australia to retain The Ashes later this year.

Stuart Broad was handed the new ball against the West Indies and managed to bowl at over 90mph regularly. With this extra yard of pace behind him, he believes that he can form a formidable opening partnership with James Anderson this summer.

Speaking about his progress as an international bowler, Stuart Broad said that he was keen to make the new ball spot alongside James Anderson ‘his own’ in the coming weeks.

As for the partnership with James Anderson, the 22-year-old says that they have played a ‘lot of cricket together now’ and this has led to them talking ‘about deliveries’ all of the time.

An example of such a situation occurred when Chris Gayle was driving Stuart Broad for four regularly at Lords. James Anderson then advised him to change his line of attack and this led to the dismissal of the West Indian captain.

As the Nottinghamshire all-rounder says, ‘communication is key in test cricket’ and it seems that England’s current new ball partnership understand this all too well.

Stuart Broad will obviously be keen to keep this going in the second test against the Windies which gets underway on Thursday at the Riverside. This will then stand England in good stead for when the Ashes come around in July and will undoubtedly make Ashes cricket betting very interesting indeed.

Moving the IPL (Indian Premier League) to South Africa this year has not affected its popularity, and all the time there is so much money on offer, the best cricketers from all over the world will want to play in the tournament.

But reading recent cricket news concerns have been raised as to the importance young and emerging cricketers may now place on playing Twenty20 style cricket, which lends itself to fast, furious, slogging over the more  sophisticated tactical awareness of defend and attack batting necessary for traditional Test Match cricket.

Twenty20 is exciting, fast-paced and for that alone is very popular, but more importantly easier to watch as a spectator or armchair fanatic as it has condensed the game of cricket into a few hours.  It has even spawned free Fantasy Cricket IPL games.

Until Twenty20 and the IPL, cricket had not changed and was very much steeped in tradition.  Apart from the late 1970’s when Kerry Packer attempted a similar league in Australia has the ECB (England Cricket Board) and others faced such a threat to the importance of test match cricket.  And there lies the issue.  Traditionalists and the ECB don’t want to lose control to a new version of the game of cricket.

Yesterday former Yorkshire and England cricket legend, Geoffrey Boycott firmly argued that players could not switch from Twenty20 to Test Match cricket without consequences.  He argued there was nothing wrong with cricketers playing both but the styles are so different for a batsman that there would be repercussions for the England cricket team.

But England’s Ravi Bopara, who has only just returned from playing for Kings XI Punjab in the IPL appears to be silencing such a view by making 118 not out after his century helped England to 289-7 on day one of the 1st Test Match against West Indies.

But even then Boycott and BBC commentator Jonathan Agnew suggested there were lapses of concentration from Bopara towards the end of the day which they agreed was possibly due to the different mentality of Twenty20 and Test Match cricket batting styles.