Cow Corner Blog

India needed a sacrifice fly

Sun Jun 14 09:43PM

In baseball, there is a play called a 'sacrifice fly' where a batsman hits the ball high in the air, enabling an on-base runner to score after it is caught by a fielder.

India's defence of their World Twenty20 crown came to an end at Lord's due to the lateness of Ravindra Jadeja's sacrifice fly.

The clue is in the title - it's Twenty20. Twenty overs, 10 wickets - you don't need to be Stephen Hawking to work out that means you can lose one wicket every two overs.

That may be a crass, over simplified rationale - as there's always an advantage of having a set, established batsman at the crease - but the most successful teams in this format are the ones who react on the spot to that notion.

In T20, a batsman scoring slowly is more of a danger to his team than a batsman that comes and goes.

Suresh Raina had the nous to accept he was seeing it like a marble and departed relatively quickly whilst attempting the big shot.

Sadly for the masses of Indian fans at Lord's it took Jadeja 34 balls to realise it wasn't his day - a period in which he scored just 25.

Thirty four balls is a lifetime in T20 cricket. In the truncated version of the game there is no need to play yourself in for an extended period of time.

England's defeat to the Dutch came as a result of them failing to kick on from a base of 100/1 from 11 overs. Just 28 were taken off the next five overs as they failed to react to the fact that they could lose one wicket an over at that stage.

And the home side were just as guilty in their innings today. Dimi Mascarenhas and Owais Shah put their side under pressure by playing themselves in during overs 14 and 15, taking just eight runs off two overs when England had seven wickets in hand.

Not everyone has the ability to do a Yuvraj and hit their first ball 102 metres into the crowd but when the wickets left to over ratio is around one - and with every team batting deep with tail-enders capable of playing a brief agricultural cameo - after a couple of sighters it's time to hit out or get out.

But it would be wrong to solely blame 20-year-old Jadeja's failure to react quickly to the situation for India's defeat.

The Indian brains trust had placed key men Yuvraj, MS Dhoni and Yusuf Pathan too late in the order and their ground fielding was not up to scratch.

As Ian Bishop noted at the end of the England innings they had gifted 10 runs to the opposition and the final margin of victory - three runs - was the exact number of runs Yuvraj conceded when he allowed what should have been the final ball of England's innings to squirt past him at short fine leg.

But full credit to Andy Flower for putting together the plan to bowl short to India's top order and full marks to the attack for executing the strategy.

They now have just 20 hours to conjure up a plan to stymie Gayle, Bravo and co in the 'virtual' quarter-final.

It has been 17 years since England made the semi-final of a World tournament, a period in which there has been four World Cup flops and a dismal showing at the inaugural World Twenty20.

Since 1992, each of the other seven major Test playing nation plus Kenya have made the last four of one of these tournaments. The men in blue are overdue.

David Lloyd noted that England are the 'new Pakistan' as you never know what is going to happen as they lurch from shambolic to impressive.

Let's hope they don't repeat their last 'virtual' quarter-final - a thumping nine wicket defeat to South Africa in the 2007 World Cup!

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