So there you have it, the first big victim of the T20.
First this happened.
The Gayle Bitchslap
And then , this:
The Sangakkara Bitchslap
And so the Aussies got served with a giant double-decker Calypso-Lankan flavoured turd sandwich. Not sure what really went wrong. It’s all quite easy in retrospect. If you look at the folks who’ve gotten action in the recent past (I meant the cricket variety, and not what Warnie does for a living these days), we can quite quickly narrow it down to:
Warner ( performed in 1 game)
D.Hussey (chipped in a little in both games)
Bret Lee (well, he did play a few games in the IPL and did ok in a couple of them)
We’ve got the rest of the guys, who’ve got caliber but have been inactive for a long while now:
Watson
M.Hussey
Haddin
We’ve got a couple of queer looking dudes:
Bracken
Clarke
Johnson (what do you expect with such a name , just kidding. decent bowler and an Irfanish batsman)
A what-the-fuck or hopeful selections:
Howritz (though he did bowl ok)
Hopes….er..
And to top it all , this guy:
Fail-El-Capito
Gone is the team you might loathe but respect. A team filled with some delightful talent such as Mark Waugh (the on-side play) ,Warne or Gilchrist, or the dogged determination of Steve, Mcgrath or Hayden , is now not all that jazz, nor is it that awe-inducing. The only guys I ever feel like rooting for is Mr. Cricket himself – one of my all-time favourite players.
First they run into WI, who have this habit of playing 1 match out of their skin (and it’s almost always Gayle to the party), and then totter around later. For Australia, the kings of calypso decided it be the match against them. While Gayle did school the boys from down under on some power hitting, A.Fletcher on the other end provided quite a surprising and stunning start to ease some pressure of the King, and let him know,
“Yo Mon, I’m here too. Dun havfta do it all alone.”
The batting lineup for WI looks fairly good , for now. Gayle on his day cannot be stopped, and you’ve also got Bravo and Smith (who can forget him absolutely brandishing the bowling in a couple of games). But they’ve got this tendency to either have this big game altogether, or fail collectively .While one could argue that that is true teamwork in both aspects, let’s not reach that far. Hence, we find them either winning big or losing bigger. Plus, outside of the two very impressive opening bowlers, I am not very confident in the rest of them; there’s not much variety. When the going gets tough, I think it will be left to the old boys (chanderpaul, sarwan) to do the work, and I am not sure if they have it in them (unless they play India).
SL too have started out strong. Jayasurya is an older, less consistent Gayle, but then again, 1 crucial innings is as good as gold in such a tournament. Jayawardane and Sangakkara will do what they do, consistently build the innings , and go for the big shots on-demand.
Dilshan is the one that scares the crap out of me. He seems to be a cold-blooded killing machine of late, and really seems to give them a strong dose of agreession and edge at No.3/4. Pretty scary. Their mid-lower order unknowns sort of impressed with their hitting yesterday. The bowling begins and ends with 3M- with the heat-seaking missle that is Malinga, Mendis, and the Murali (I thought of giving the remaining 2 lame suffixes like mystical and magical respectively). These guys are capable of playing the restrictive or attacking role , and the batsmen seem to play them with a lot of caution. The islanders seem to have the weapons to succeed in such a format.
As for the Aussies, they’d probably win the Ashes, but bright flame that once was is slowly dimming. I think the cricket-world’s a little more balanced now. For now, we all can heave a collective sigh of relief that we don’t have to see the following specimen for a while:
"Am I sexuuual? Yeaaaa--eaahh!"
"Who-stole-my-candy"
"We suck"
And joy for these gents:
"weee!let's make out and slap each other!"
"How do you like me now bitches!!"
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