Pakistan are CT Champions!

Congratulations to Pakistan for lulling everyone into a false sense of security with that embarrassment at Edgbaston two weeks ago before trouncing England and now India to claim their first Champions Trophy and first ODI crown since Imran’s men held aloft the World Cup 25 years ago.

After that Group B defeat to India, coach Micky Arthur described it as “a reality check of where we are in ODIs”. Seeing as Pakistan were ranked eighth entering the competition, this seemed an appropriate response. So how did his charges transform so quickly from no-hopers into irresistible champions?

I suspect the answer is not a simple one; a mix of good fortune, hard work, strategy and brilliant individual performances when it mattered. The India opener excepted, Pakistan’s strength lay with their seam bowlers. The strategy of softening up the opposition with Mohammad Amir and Junaid Khan, entice them with the spinners then – POW! – introduce Hasan Ali and bring back the opening pair. Crucial spells did for South Africa and Sri Lanka then in the Cardiff semi, everyone played their part in a game few expected them to win.

The England engine room of big hitters failed miserably to attack the Pakistan bowlers of all speeds. Yet again it was Hasan who stole the show with three wickets but the team’s major improvement was in their batting. Azhar Ali and Fakhar Zaman shared a century partnership before Babar Azam and Mohammad Hafeez finished the job in style, defying the country’s reputation for failed run chases.

Once India had made similarly short work of Bangladesh the following day, the assumption was that Pakistan’s renaissance would come unstuck against Kohli and co in the final. Surely the Indian batting would be too strong even for a full-strength Pakistani pace attack?

The India skipper has been condemned for winning the toss and inserting Pakistan. However, it’s not such a stupid decision when there are himself, Sharma, Dhawan, Yuvraj, Dhoni et al to charge towards any target. Where it began to look fragile was when newbie Fakhar followed his two 50s with a maiden ODI century. Hafeez demonstrated his ability not only to plod in Tests but also to strike sixes and suddenly they were 338-4. No probs. All week, counties were knocking up scores of 350+ in the Royal London Cup so why not India?

Amir took the new ball and trapped Sharma plumb third ball. His tail up, he continued to bowl superbly, ably assisted by Junaid, and India’s famed batting order was in tatters. The top five were all back in the pavilion with just 54 on the board and this time Sarfraz would not let his side’s collective boot off the Indian neck. Pandya showed some aggression and singlehandedly kept India in the hunt for three quarters of an hour. However, a farcical run-out mess with Jadeja left the tail exposed and that man Hasan Ali did the rest.

The 180-run victory margin was by far the biggest for a side batting first in an ICC one-day final and high on the list for any global competition fixture against a Test-playing nation. Hasan was named the Player of the Tournament, surely a no-brainer. He took the most wickets (13), had the best average (14.69) and the meanest economy rate (4.29). His youth (just 23) and inexperience were further demonstrated by the necessity of using an interpreter for the post-match interview. Ludicrously it was a one-sided translation so only Urdu speakers were able to understand his answers! Hopefully we’ll hear, as well as see a lot more of him in the future.

So are Pakistan now a global force once more, even without the retired Younis and Misbah? The CT triumph will undoubtedly boost the confidence of the team, the management and the PCA. New players have come through fro the discredited domestic cricket set-up. And yet the latter’s consistent cock-up tendencies will probably not disappear overnight.

And India? Well, their strength in depth is undimmed. Even if MS Dhoni calls it a day, Kohli leads a formidable squad and they must remain the side to beat when the World Cup comes along in 2019. England will also be hoping to shrug off the Cardiff debacle, and become champions for the first time ever.

Team of the Tournament:-

Tamim Iqbal (Ban), Dhawan (Ind), Kohli (Ind), Root (Eng), Williamson (NZ), Shakib (Ban), Sarfraz (Pak + *), Plunkett (Eng), Junaid Khan (Pak), Hasan Ali (Pak), Hazlewood (Aus)

Champions Trophy: Pakistan Punish Poor England

Following the excitement of last Friday’s triumph of Bangladesh over New Zealand, today’s trip to Sophia Gardens resulted in one of the most one-sided contests I have witnessed first-hand!

It all started so well. For once, warm sunshine was beaming down on Cardiff, and uninterrupted play was on the cards. The crowd was a healthy mix of England and Pakistan fans and I took my seat in the little Castle Stand beneath the scoreboard anticipating a great day’s cricket and probable win by Eoin Morgan’s men. That seemed more likely upon hearing the line-ups without the name of Mohammed Amir and with Jonny Bairstow replacing Roy.

With Sarfraz Ahmed inserting the home team, the scene was set for another blistering 300+ total. In the first few overs, the gods seemed to be English, too. Bairstow and Hales must consider themselves highly fortunate to survive LBW reviews. The Yorkshireman bristled with aggression as usual, and his partnership with Joe Root promised so much. However, it delivered few boundaries.

The bowlers were switched frequently and everyone stepped up to the mark. Junaid Khan, debutant Summan Raees and Hasan Ali generally kept to a good line and length, while the trio of spinners were also in a mean mood. Nevertheless, at 128-2 just after halfway, the situation demanded the customary acceleration we have come to expect from the likes of Morgan, Buttler and Stokes.

In actuality, the run rate slowed down. Not once in the second half of the England innings did they manage more than six an over. More startling was the dearth of fours or sixes. Stokes was strangled impressively and had produced not a single boundary in his 34 when he skied an attempted hook from the lively Hasan. There were spectacular catches and a few drops but respect to the Pakistan attack for persevering throughout and restricting England to a paltry 211 all out. The pitch may have been used before but surely this wasn’t a low-200s track?

In their reply, Pakistan’s openers knew they didn’t need to go mad, yet they didn’t hold back. Mark Wood’s first over went for 10, including four leg-side wides. Fakhar Zaman was the leading strokemaker while his right-handed partner Azhar Ali was more about finding the ones and twos. This was looking an easy task. They took their stand past the century mark and looked pretty invincible until Adil Rashid lured Fakhar out of his crease and Buttler removed the bails.

Was this the moment when Morgan put his foot on the neck? Er, no. Unlike England, Pakistan merely carried on as before. Babar Azam joined the six-hitter club. Azhar Ali was out attempting a weird hook, and merely deflecting the ball down onto his stumps, which brought the usually circumspect Mohammad Hafeez to the middle. By this stage, the England supporters were definitely disgruntled. Indeed, many were trailing out in search of an early train, and I found myself alone on my row.

Ben Stokes was just as bad with the ball as the bat. 2 million dollar man?? Even Hafeez flat-batted him for a straight six, the result of a free hit because Morgan had placed too many outside the circle. In the end, the field was brought in for Hafeez but these were desperate measures. The coup de grace was applied by the same batsman, pulling another short Stokes delivery to the mid-wicket boundary with a ‘mere’ 77 balls remaining.

What a sensational result! England had been put to the sword and maybe even India must be a little nervous at meeting again the side they beat earlier in the competition. Nevertheless, Bangladesh have proved they are no pushovers and CT17 may yet yield another surprise.

Team of the Week ending 30th May Viru goes Batty!

With wet weather restricting the action in England, there were only two County Championship centuries this week. That just makes it more surprising that there were two scores of 99 and one of 98! The unlucky trio of Westwood, Patel and Hildreth also fail to make my team of the week. Instead my opening batsmen come from the IPL. Virender Sehwag has largely been living off past glories for a while now but, with a place in the final at stake, the old Viru returned to the fore. Against CSK, the Kings XI star plundered 122 from 58 balls, 96 coming from boundaries. Rajasthan's teenage wicketkeeper Sanju Samson also produced a brilliant 74 in 47 balls against Mumbai Indians.

Sehwag's innings had to be special to outshine Suresh Raina's scintillating response of 87 in 25 balls for the Super Kings. All bar three came in fours and sixes, and 33 runs were thumped from a single seven-ball over (including a no-ball) by Awana before it took a brilliant piece of fielding from George Bailey to run him out.

Back now to the Championship for the next selections. Will Porterfield's 118 for Warwickshire against Somerset was his first with the red ball for his county while Gordon Muchall's unbeaten 158 in Durham's draw against Notts was the top score of the week. Two Glamorgan players vied for the number six position, and I've plumped for Jim Allenby's all-round consistency over Chris Cooke's two lively performances in the Championship and T20 Blast.

Tom Smith struck 54 and claimed 5-49 in the otherwise damp and dismal Roses contest, folowed by a 27-ball 54 as Lancashire's T20 opener, enough to make my Eleven. The contrasting ODIs between England and Sri Lanka witnessed several excellent bowling displays. Principal amongst them was Chris Jordan's 5-29 at Old Trafford where the home team dismissed SL for their third lowest ODI score ever. Fortunes had been reversed just a few days earlier. In chilly Chester-le-Street, Dilshan scored 88, Kulasekera took 3-15 but spinner Sachithra Senanayake trumped the lot with his mean 4-13 to complete England's misery. He has accumulated some pretty decent career stats over the years, particularly in limited overs formats, but will surely add to his single Test appearance.

My final two choices are Junaid Khan and Gareth Batty. The Pakistani aggregated 7-33 in Lancashire's two T20 victories and certainly doesn't deserve to be ignored in favour of some England has-been called Flintoff when he makes his debut, as he surely must, if only to attract more through the turnstiles next week. I'm no fan of Batty's spiky on-pitch demeanour, as illustrated by his aggression against Somerset last summer. However, 8-68 for Surrey against Essex was the bowling performance of the week.

2013 One-day Players of the Year

With just a few days to go in 2013, here's the first of my reviews of the past calendar year. South Africa are firmly esconced as the leading Test nation in the ICC rankings, while India's dominance in the Champions Trophy helped them to top spot in the ODI table, albeit closely followed by Australia, England and the Proteas. The West Indies have looked sadly meek and Sri Lanka have a tired reliance on Sangakkara, Dilshan and Jayawardene, even if it were Chandimal and Malinga who helped them to a consolation victory over Pakistan today. But who would make my ODI Team of 2013?

This was the year which brought two very different opening batsmen to global attention. Shikhar Dhawan announced himself on the Test scene with a blistering 187 on debut, very different from the two-ball duck he suffered on his first ODI appearance three years earlier. In 2013, he built on that record-breaking innnigs against the Aussies by outscoring every other batsman in the 50-over format and all bar four in ODIs, notching five centuries in the process. I watched his silky hundred in that Champions Trophy opener at Cardiff with particular pleasure. Accompanying him at the crease should be South Africa's new kid on the block, Quinton de Kock. As well as relieving AB of some of the 'keeping pressure, he has produced some superb innings, highlighted by three successive three-figure scores in the recent series against India. He keeps out Dhawan's usual partner Rohit Sharma from the team, but only just.

Virat Kohli and Misbah-ul-Haq each represented their contries 34 times during 2013. The Pakistani captain may be, at 39, nearing the end of his career but nobody in world cricket was more consistent at scoring valuable half-centuries. Incredibly, he has never reached three figures in ODIs but this year alone he reached 50 fifteen times! Not a big hitter he has carefully kept the scoreboard ticking over while others have gone for their strokes. At 1,373 runs, nobody scored more in ODIs. Not even Kohli who, aged 25, may not yet be in his prime, an ominous thought for opposing bowlers. Scoring at almost a run a ball, and also a brilliant fielder, Kohli is an obvious choice for my middle-order.

So is AB De Villiers, who edges out Sangakkara from my team this year. Topping both Test and ODI rankings, he is simply the best batsman in world cricket right now, despite his wicketkeeping duties in most games. Mohammad Hafeez's late burst of runs for Pakistan and Shahid Afridi's occasional all-round fireworks have pushed for selection but I've gone for Australia's promoted captain George Bailey as another specialist batsman. In 22 matches, he produced more than a thousand runs at exactly a run a ball, including some impressive scores in India a few months ago. Somehow I can't find room for MS Dhoni. Maybe next year....

Hafeez and Sharma offer the option of fill-in spin bowling but India's Ravindra Jadeja was the outstanding ODI all-rounder of 2013. 52 wickets at 25 and almost 500 runs at a respectable lick bring him in to my side as left-armer. Topping the ICC ODI rankings as well as the wicket table for 2013 is Saeed Ajmal, once again the most successful off-spinner in world cricket.

Junaid Khan of Pakistan has developed in to a very useful one-day swing and seam merchant and his 52 victims and average of 21 propel him into my XI of the year, if not yet the ICC top ten. Aged 24, he has the young legs which Umar Gul no longer possesses, and hopefully he has a long future ahead of him. England's Finn and Anderson both sit in the official top ten but that relies on past glories. Two Mitchells, McClenaghan and Johnson each enjoyed great years but the sheer brilliance of Dale Steyn makes him a definite new-ball man. He played only 13 ODIs yet took 27 wickets at just 16 apiece, conceding fewer than four an over. End of argument. My final choice is another Pakistani late developer, Mohammad Irfan. Not just a giant fast bowler, he took cheap wickets all around the world throughout 2013.

Therefore, at risk of being a batsman short (make Rohit Sharma or Afridi the twelfth man), my ODI XI is as follows:-

Shikhar Dhawan (Ind), Quinton de Kock (SA), Virat Kohli (Ind), George Bailey (Aust), AB De Villiers (SA +), Misbah-ul-Haq (Pak*), Ravi Jadeja (Ind), Dale Steyn (SA), Saeed Ajmal, Junaid Khan, Mohammed Irfan (all Pak).

So what about Twenty20 in 2013? Best summarised thus: Brisbane Heat, Mumbai Indians, Northamptonshire and Chris Gayle. Special mentions to veterans Azhar Mahmood (top wicket-taker), Brad Hodge and Alfonso Thomas, Sunil Narine (whose 54 wickets came while conceding barely five an over) and Aaron Finch, who plundered that world record 156, including 14 sixes, for Australia against England last summer.