Geoff Lemon's Blog, page 16

Everything was stacked against Australia except their belief they could beat India | Geoff Lemon

The Cricket World Cup was won by a team that looked at the steepness of the challenge and decided to climb it

It was clear just after the World Cup final on Sunday that the Australia players had a particular turning point in their memories. “None for 120 against Sri Lanka seems a long time ago now, and being 0 and 2,” said a broadly smiling Mitchell Starc as the PA system blared dramatic music and his teammates gathered in anticipation of the trophy presentation.

His captain, Pat Cummins, referenced that game as well: at one point Sri Lanka’s openers had slammed 125 by the 22nd over against a team that had been belted by India and South Africa. Our coverage after those two losses identified that the road was running out. “From a maths perspective, Australia’s World Cup campaign is not yet at crisis point,” we wrote. “But it’s going to need something, some sort of spark that can get this team enjoying the challenge instead of being daunted by it.”

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Pat Cummins made all the right calls while India’s World Cup dream died | Geoff Lemon

Australia supporters may have considered their captain mad to invite Sharma and Kohli to bat first, but he was vindicated

Decisions. Make the right ones and you’re a visionary. Make the wrong ones and you’re an idiot, a spendthrift, a waste of space, any of the infinite list of insults. The judgments will be made in hindsight, naturally, but you – you should have known better.

So when Pat Cummins called correctly at the toss, Australian supporters would have celebrated. And when he chose to bowl a few seconds later, a large proportion of them would surely have thought he was mad. Perhaps he had lost his grip. Perhaps he had overthought it.

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Australia hope for best Cricket World Cup win with pressure heaped on India in final

While the hosts have so much riding on the result, their opponents have already rounded out a successful year

The day before the World Cup final, the giant stadium in Ahmedabad is cavernous. When nobody is there, its emptiness only emphasises its size. It rises up on all sides, seats burning bright orange in the sun. White-clad kids on the outfield rehearse flag choreography while the PA rolls music around vacant concrete canyons. A day later, all of these seats are supposed to be full and for the visiting Australians it will be an exercise in withstanding intimidation.

Australia dished it out in the final of 2015, when the similarly vast MCG had more than 93,000 people. Gold clothing heavily outnumbered black that day. New Zealand wilted. This crowd will be even more intense, more uniform in its uniforms, a blue sea where the only distinction between shirts will be Virats or Rohits at a ratio of roughly nine to one.

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Echoes of 1999 swirl but Proteas fall short of turning the tables on old foes | Geoff Lemon

Semi-final followed an eerily familiar script but Australia held their nerve to ensure there was no redemption for South Africa

In the world of history repeating or otherwise, this was a half-rhyme – some matching assonance, some sympathetic consonance, the parts that followed the shape of the corresponding match in 1999. Most of the ingredients were there: a strong South Africa, a World Cup semi-final, a score of 213 being enough to send Australia through. This version was not as heart-twitching: the final chasing pair were operating at seven wickets down rather than nine, and the game was done with 16 balls to spare rather than two. But it was close enough that a sense of the past shivered through the present, for those of an age to remember it.

Sometimes, fortune finds you where you least expect to meet it. Australia’s fast bowlers had taken three wickets in their first two overs of this World Cup, then been battered hither and yon by every opening partnership in their path for the six weeks since. South Africa had batted first five times in the tournament and scored between 311 and 428. The captains flipped and the coin fell Temba Bavuma’s way. There were sighs of South African relief, fist pumps of South African triumph. Fate was finally showing a hint of kindness.

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Australia seeking flash of inspiration as sun goes down on class of 2015 | Geoff Lemon

They may not have South Africa’s clockwork game plan, but Australia’s unpredictability could yet secure a spot in the final

For both Australia and South Africa, before their World Cup semi-final, the main feeling could be relief that neither has to play India. The downside for the winner is that they have to go to Ahmedabad to play India. After the hosts racked up nearly 400 in the first semi-final against New Zealand in a gout of liquid stats, the second has a much lower profile.

At least, lower profile locally. In the competing countries that won’t be the case. Although another thing out of balance, aside from India’s dominance so far, is the significance of this result. In a year when South Africa has already won the Rugby World Cup, adding an elusive cricket prize would be huge – a moment of national vindication and celebration. Australian supporters might roll over in bed, grunt approvingly at the scorecard, and throw the World Cup on the pile with the other five.

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Mitchell Marsh the latest to flourish as Australia’s momentum builds | Geoff Lemon

Magnificent 177 to sink Bangladesh maintains winning streak as South Africa semi-final looms

If you’re a casual cricket watcher in Australia, you might not have twigged that Bangladesh are a pretty good team these days. They win at home more often than not, and especially in 50-over cricket have won regularly on the road. By their standard, this World Cup has been dismal. One win early before Afghanistan built confidence, one win late when Sri Lanka were out of contention. In between, scores from 142 and 256, beaten easily five times in a row.

On form, then, even though the result could not affect the semi-final standings, it was a surprise Australia conceded as many as 306 in their final group game in Pune on Saturday. A potential hiccup was overridden when Mitchell Marsh brought to life the Marshmallow Man – a relentless, cheerful, monster of an innings that ploughed through everything in its path, reaching 177 not out in a sweet final explosion.

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Robelinda2: the lamentable demise of a much-loved YouTube cricket channel | Geoff Lemon

The cultural institution run by Australian Rob Moody has been pulled; with it goes public access to a swathe of cricket history

If you’re reading an article about cricket on the internet, then at some point in your life you have watched a Rob Moody video. It would have bobbed up, a YouTube link in a group chat or a thread of replies. It might have been a compilation of Damien Martyn drives with the frame inverted to make him a left-hander. A collection of Steve Waugh run outs. An hour of West Indies swagger from a Test in 1988.

The video title would have been exclamatory, lapsing partly into caps lock, telling you that this clip was hilarious or this performance a work of genius or that the whole episode qualified for Rob’s greatest compliment, “old gold”. Most often the title would be true. From a meticulous archive of every cricket match televised in Australia for 40 years, an archive that began purely as a personal hobby, he edited and loaded thousands of hours of footage online for the enjoyment of millions of people.

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Maxwell’s sequence of impossibility beggars belief to rescue Australia | Geoff Lemon

Afghanistan were cruising to victory until batter’s astonishing double hundred sparks bewildering and exhausting run chase

Sometimes, in any sport, all you can do is sit and look and ask: what the hell just happened? Sometimes, it defies any conventional understanding. Glenn Maxwell has produced more moments like this than most. This one, though, in Mumbai on Tuesday night, was the apogee. More than a moment, a string of them. An extended sequence of impossibility, one after the other spiralling off into the floodlights and the smog and the endless jubilant roar, sweat and bewilderment and metallic adrenaline in an impressionist smear.

For decades, nobody made double hundreds in one-day cricket. Belinda Clark took one off the might of Denmark, the anomaly that proved the rule. Sachin Tendulkar got the first in the men’s game, creeping to the mark in 2010. Nine others have done it since, but all in the first innings, beating up a team from well on top. They were brilliant exhibitions without the pressure. Nobody had ever done it in a run chase, from miles behind, needing to win a game on their own.

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Starc and Australia still searching for perfection but progress is undeniable | Geoff Lemon

Although victory against England was not flawless a dogged winning streak augurs well for World Cup knockout stage

“We still haven’t put the perfect game together,” Mitchell Starc told ABC radio just after Australia wrapped up a win against England and all but sealed a World Cup semi-final spot. It’s a common refrain in sport, the idea that even in success there remains something more to strive for. In theory it is what keeps athletes turning up at training day after day, year after year. Higher, faster, stronger, or the Daft Punk variation – take your pick.

Five wins in a row for Australia at this World Cup after losing the first two, and Starc is right to identify things to improve. Opening bowling was one thing that Australia did get better at in Ahmedabad on Saturday night. Middle-order batting is one that still needs work.

The middle order was what sank in a mire of dot balls in the losses to India and South Africa. The wins have relied on the openers scoring quickly up the top and Glenn Maxwell marshalling some assistance to do the same at the far end.

Against Sri Lanka, a modest chase was whacked on the head by Mitchell Marsh, then finished off by Maxwell’s 31 from 21 balls. Against Pakistan it was David Warner and Marsh’s stand of 259, followed by a subsidence after Maxwell didn’t come off. Against New Zealand, Warner and Travis Head made 175 from 19 overs, then came a run slump until Maxwell’s 41 from 24 revived it.

With Maxwell and Marsh out of the side facing England, the challenge sharpened. When Head and Warner both fell to Chris Woakes inside six overs, it started to break the skin. Steve Smith and Marnus Labuschagne had repair work to do, but like some tradies did it slowly. The run rate they inherited above six an over fell towards four, the pair treating with great suspicion a pitch that sometimes gripped the ball.

Both raised their tempo as time went on, Smith eventually making 44 and Labuschagne 71, the latter’s innings increasingly clever and an important contribution. With a critical eye though, you wonder whether their early approach needs a tweak, because players don’t always get the chance to catch up.

Labuschagne for instance has contributed 272 runs in his seven hits this World Cup, but at a strike rate of 79. Of players with more than 100 runs in this tournament, 46 have scored more quickly. The only one with more runs than him to score more slowly is the Afghanistan captain, Hashmatullah Shahidi.

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Australia breathe sigh of relief as the Cricket World Cup finally lights up | Geoff Lemon

A competition that has failed to capture the imagination belatedly sparked into life thanks to two thrilling contests

Finally, after three weeks of World Cup austerity, came a couple of games where the match was all that mattered. Until this point, aside from the good vibes of underdogs the Netherlands and Afghanistan knocking over a couple of established teams, we’ve heard fewer stories than talking points: what a result means, how it affects position on the table, how that table affects the tournament itself.

There have been individual performances but a lack of competitive tension, while home supporters are treated to the sight of India moving from city to city as a kind of travelling moral lesson, ritually spanking each opponent for the righteous enjoyment of the crowd.

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