Col­in Croft

Be­fore the In­ter­na­tion­al Crick­et Coun­cil (ICC) World Twen­ty20 (T20) starts, let me di­vert quick­ly to an­oth­er pend­ing T20 com­pe­ti­tion - Cham­pi­ons League in South Africa - which fol­lows im­me­di­ate­ly af­ter, to in­form about two bets that I made re­cent­ly. Not very sur­pris­ing­ly, I won the first! So Dwayne Bra­vo (Chen­nai Su­per Kings), Kieron Pol­lard (Mum­bai In­di­ans) and Sunil Nar­ine (Kolkata Knight Rid­ers), will play for In­di­an Pre­mier League (IPL) teams, not for home coun­try, T&T, come Oc­to­ber. On­ly ex­treme­ly un­in­formed id­iots would have ex­pect­ed any­thing dif­fer­ent. On Ju­ly 25-26, T&T's Sports Min­is­ter Anil Roberts con­firmed that "these three play­ers will play for T&T in Cham­pi­ons League T20 in­stead of their IPL teams, in con­trast to pre­vi­ous sea­sons." I was sure that he was wrong! Roberts con­tin­ued: "An agree­ment had been reached with the three play­ers to turn out for the na­tion­al team and not for IPL teams. While fran­chis­es may be up­set, I told them that I am very sor­ry that they are up­set but T&T's pop­u­la­tion and gov­ern­ment want our best play­ers rep­re­sent­ing us. The play­ers want to play for T&T and will play for T&T." Yeah? What?

These three ex­cel­lent play­ers are caught up in a mix not of their do­ing, re­mind­ing much of Ker­ry Pack­ers' World Se­ries Crick­et (WSC), when most of us played for WSC while a Test se­ries - In­dia ver­sus West In­dies-was on-go­ing in 1978-9.

I al­so be­lieve that the play­ers re­al­ly want to play for T&T but big nois­es do not al­ways make big sense! Sure­ly, Roberts, the T&T Crick­et Board (TTCB) and the play­ers, should have re­alised that those fran­chis­es are ran by ex­treme­ly as­tute, world­ly and high­ly ef­fec­tive ex­ec­u­tives. Knight Rid­ers' team di­rec­tor, Joy Bhat­tachar­jya, and chief ex­ec­u­tive Venky Mysore, did ac­tu­al­ly get their po­si­tions for know­ing ex­act­ly what they are do­ing, hav­ing air-tight con­tracts on each play­er. Pay­ing that pal­try, by their stan­dards, US$150,000 per play­er to T&T is iron­i­cal­ly, chick­en feed! It was "Venkys" poul­try con­glom­er­ate, who spon­sored T&T's very first ap­pear­ance at Cham­pi­ons League. Oh, I ex­pect rel­e­vant re­tal­ia­to­ry, stu­pid big nois­es, like a bal­loon or is that in­di­vid­ual, ex­pelling wast­ed breath. I am on­ly the mes­sen­ger. I on­ly bring you what is the true, re­al mes­sage.

Any­way, I am so far bat­ting 100 per cent! That sec­ond bet that Kevin Pietersen, Eng­land's bats­man supreme, will de­spite every­thing, even­tu­al­ly be se­lect­ed for his coun­try's next full tour to In­dia, which is still pend­ing, but that sit­u­a­tion is be­com­ing more pos­si­ble with names for that team be­ing present­ly con­tem­plat­ed. Back to this year's World T20. Some­one once sug­gest­ed that in Test crick­et, a team can­not win on day one but that team can cer­tain­ly be on its way to los­ing, even af­ter the first day of any Test. Quite so! Sim­i­lar­ly, Afghanistan, Ire­land, Bangladesh, New Zealand and Zim­bab­we can­not win the World T20 ti­tle but can be spoil­ers for teams that could ac­tu­al­ly win the com­pe­ti­tion as were high­light­ed last week. In 1995-6 World Cup, won by Sri Lan­ka, West In­dies, mem­o­rably, was em­bar­rassed and hu­mil­i­at­ed, los­ing to Kenya by 73 runs af­ter for­feit­ing an­oth­er match to Sri Lan­ka for se­cu­ri­ty rea­sons.

In World Cup 1999, which Aus­tralia copped, min­ions Bangladesh sur­pris­ing­ly beat Pak­istan by a mas­sive 62 runs. To this day, as men­tioned again last week in Eng­land, there is still grave doubt about this match with in­nu­en­does, sug­ges­tions and down­right ac­cu­sa­tions fly­ing every­where.

Bangladesh was then ap­ply­ing to be­come a full-fledged Test team. Al­most un­be­liev­ably, Pak­istan bowled 28 wides and sev­en no-balls in that af­fair! Hence, vary­ing thoughts! Any­way, Bangladesh won. As re­cent­ly as ICC World Cup 2007 in the Caribbean, Bangladesh again beat one of that tour­na­ment's fa­vorites, mighty In­dia by five wick­ets thus aid­ing in send­ing In­dia home ear­ly. Sim­i­lar­ly, on that very same day of Bangladesh ver­sus In­dia, March 17, 2007, Ire­land's biggest hol­i­day -St Patrick's Day-the Irish paint­ed Sabi­na Park ab­solute­ly green! They sent Pak­istan pack­ing, beat­ing the high­ly favoured but un­pre­dictable Pak­ista­nis by three wick­ets. Many an Irish cof­fee was drunk that day. Afghanistan can pull an up­set, even if hold­er Eng­land and one favourite again, In­dia, are al­so in Group A. Cap­tain Nawroz Man­gal lends so­lid­i­ty to team as­pi­ra­tions while vet­er­an all­rounder Karin Sadiq and fast bowler Hamid Has­san are use­ful play­ers. Ire­land could again put skids on Aus­tralia or West In­dies in Group B. Big fast bowler Boyd Rankin is fir­ing again. Cap­tain William Porter­field, very ex­pe­ri­enced Trent John­ston, Ed Joyce, Kevin and Niall O'Brien, George Dock­rell and Alex Cu­sack would be try­ing des­per­ate­ly to make coach Phil Sim­mons proud. Bangladesh and New Zealand are in Group D as is Pak­istan. This is the re­al "group of death", as any of these three teams could qual­i­fy for the semi­fi­nals, each be­ing so un­pre­dictable on its day. Zim­bab­we could be the fly in the oint­ment in Group B, which in­cludes Sri Lan­ka and South Africa. Cap­tain Bren­don Tay­lor has done a great job so far so they too could sur­prise the big teams. With T20's be­ing so hit-or-miss, to­tal­ly un­pre­dictable, look out for spoil­ers along the way! En­joy!