Trevor Chesterfield
Not only did Kevin Pietersen get a good dollop of egg on his face at Newlands last week. So too did Pakistan's new coach, Geoff Lawson.
There are far too many, as with any number of betel chewing crooked politicians with their big mouths and bullying pals, who shoot from the lip before thinking of the mess they will step into.
Pietersen, with certain arrogance of the politicians, suggested Australia could easily end up being humiliated by England at the Cape Town venue in their Group B T20 outing. Like the politicos he found that (metaphorically speaking of course) chewing an excess amount of betel maybe led his thinking astray.
And Pietersen, by allowing his tongue to runaway with him, it was the England team that was embarrassed by the end of match remarks from Ricky Ponting with his careful but well aimed jibe. Or was it that Pietersen was also high on something else while offering braggadocio style sound bytes for the television?
Pietersen added to England's downfall by failing with a totally forgettable batting performance with an innings of 21 that was barely remembered among some of the gems that have been played before and since that Newlands innings. It really doesn't pay to act too smart, which he tried to do but fell out of the pram.
At least Ponting admitted that not only had they paid scant respect to Zimbabwe and less or the T20 format, but knew they were well 'underdone' when they lost to a side who won because they fielded well and a young batsman in Brendan Taylor who was prepared to take on the Australian bowlers.
Still only 21, Taylor is the type of thinking player who could do with more exposure of this style of combustive batting that in a sense suits his gameplan. Zimbabwe were always going to be found out in the long term. But they did have a series of slogs against South Africa to help them find some semblance of form after most countries decided it was sensible to bypass Mugabe's fiefdom run by corrupt politicians.
Peter Chingoka and his overblown government henchmen Ozias Bvute and Lovemore Banda would have been surprised at the support Zimbabwe had at Newlands in their two games. It was interesting, yet pleasing to see the multicultural mix (as in all venues) at the games. A decade a go it was decidedly pale, but since 2003 the demographic mix explains how the normalisation process has taken place.
Naturally Taylor's innings was headlined in some media as his 'coming of age'. Wow. If you really think about it, that is among the top five tired clichés in the written (and spoken too if you wish) English language. It sucks. It says precisely nothing that is really intelligent. Yet browsing the newspapers on the internet is enough to make you really wonder if the subeditor writing the headline knows why he slapped it on a story that says nothing of a sort.
Anyway, whoever within the International Cricket Council's playing affairs committee dreamed up the idiot clause in the playing conditions of deciding a tied match in such a farcical manner as a 'bowl out,' should be forced the walk the plank off Durban bay with a school of hungry great white sharks waiting.
Lawson, could of course be excused into thinking Pakistan had the bowlers to hit an unguarded set of stumps. But even then they were unprepared as no one it seems read the tournament's playing conditions fine print. After all, that is one of the jobs of the team manager and coaching staff.
Anyone with commonsense would agree with India's captain, Mahendra Singh Dhoni comments that he didn't want to see a game end in such fashion as they had played hard to get a result 'and it should always stay on the field'.
It was far too gimmicky and all for the sake of expediency and denies the spectator the enjoyment of having watched a tight, hard game between two hyped teams. Not all the glib and facile PR chatter is going to convince thousands otherwise. They had the net run rate to decide the final places in that group, why fuss about with a needless 'bowl out'.
In England, to get a result a match of T20 slogs they use a single stump, which would have made it tougher. But India in this case were a lot more streetwise than Pakistan, admitting they had practised for such an eventuality: in this case a matter of covering all eventualities.
It is how my dear late friend Bob Woolmer would have reacted. He was from the old fashioned school, and that meant careful study of the playing conditions and re-reading the laws, especially the new ones.
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