For me, today was the first real exciting day of the World T20 with the thrilling finish in the Sri Lanka V New Zealand match, and the West Indies V Eoin Morgan match which followed afterwards.
It has been a bit of a frustrating few days with a spate of rain effected matches before today, so I hope this is the turning point for the competition and that the whole tournament takes off now.
Not sure what to say about England, don’t want to criticise them too much as they are out there with a pretty inexperienced side, and in all honesty I didn’t expect them to be contesting the trophy with this side.
That said, there was two pretty awful shots at the top of the innings, the bowling hasn’t been great considering it is supposed to be the more experienced part of the unit, and the fielding hasn’t been too clever, for which there is no excuse really.
Just why we have such an inexperienced team is another story and bug bear of mine, but we are where we are and that’s that. The most stupid thing about it all, is that Pietersen is actually out there working for television.
Anyway I’m not going to go into that again.
I did today listen to TMS while I was out at work, Niall O’Brien has joined the commentary team (I presume for this tournament only) and I thought he was a decent summariser.
He did have me in a state of shock when he claimed that Craig Kiewswetter’s wicket keeping had improved over the last 18-24 months, but I bow to his superior knowledge in that department. Although I will add, it must have been bloody bad to start with.
Of the West Indies, well I’m not 100% sure what to make of them. In the (so called) summer when they played England, I thought they had a strong side on paper and could be a serious contender for winning this competition.
I still do to an extent, but their performances in the field against Australia and England could have been better. Maybe against England they took their foot off the gas as the game was won early, although that is not a great attitude to have.
While against the Aussies, they were in control after they had batted and somehow contrived to lose with some bloody awful bowling in my view.
With the bat, they are awesome, I’m not just not convinced they are tight enough in the field, although that could become irrelevant in any game if the batsmen click.
In cricket betting terms, West Indies are joint favourites with South Africa with some online bookmakers at 4/1 or 9/2. Other bookies have South Africa (just) as their outright favourites. Personally I think the Saffers are very capable of winning this competition, but if you’re thinking of investing in them, remember they still have their chokers tag!
If you fancy chucking your money away, England are 16/1 with some online bookmakers to retain their title, give me 50/1 and I might just have a couple of quid on them!