God bless the England cricket team. Just when you think that they can’t plunge new depths of ignominy, they crash to a defeat so unexpected, so downright humiliating that it temporarily usurps all of their previous efforts. It doesn’t take long however for the latest shock to subside to merely another ignoble inscription on the pantheon of Great England Cricketing Disasters.
And so alongside Zimbabwe ’92, New Zealand ’99 and Australia ’07, we can add Holland ’09, after a memorable Friday night’s cricket at Lords when the Netherlands managed to defeat England off the last ball in the opener of this year’s Twenty20 World Cup. Never mind that England put on 100-0 off their first 11 overs, never mind that Stuart Broad had three run out chances and a potential caught-and-bowled in his shambolic final over; no, England still managed to achieve an impossible looking defeat.
As the Dutch celebrated their most unlikely triumph, captain Paul Collingwood was left with the unenviable task of trying to rally his men for their upcoming match against Pakistan at the Oval. This contest was suddenly transformed from a meaningless tie between two sides guaranteed qualification into a must-win match for England, lest they depart their own T20 tournament at the earliest possible stage.
And yet, despite all of this, England amazingly started the match against Pakistan as slight favourites. Now I don’t profess to be any great expert on cricket (or any other sport for that matter), but this just didn’t seem right. Pakistan have always struck me as a quality, if slightly erratic outfit, whereas England are – well – England, an erratic outfit distinctly lacking in quality. Having chosen to get with Pakistan for this match I had a couple of options: either I could simply back them to win at 11/10 with a choice of fixed odds firms or, more interestingly, I could back them on the spreads. It is often remarked that cricket is the perfect spread betting sport and on this occasion I liked the look of the supremacy market, which makes up 1 point per run, or 10 points per wicket won or lost by. The quote here was England / Pakistan 0-8, meaning it was possible to SELL THE SUPREMACY AT 0 and, in other words, back Pakistan off scratch.
DURING THE MATCH
Oh dear. This was one of those bets that was in trouble from pretty much the first ball of the match. England batted first and got off to a blistering start through Luke Wright, who pinch-hit an impressive 34 off 16 balls. What’s more, Kevin Pietersen was playing worryingly well on his return to the side, finding the boundary with what seemed like every shot. Non-stop sixes may be entertaining for the fans in the crowd, but they’re a merciless bombardment on your wallet when you’ve backed the bowling side. Even more frustrating was the Pakistani fielding, with dropped catches and mis-fields galore, not to mention the infuriating habit of attempting the unlikeliest run-out, regardless of potential overthrows. This all contributed to England setting a challenging target of 185, which in truth, Pakistan never got close to chasing. Wickets fell all too frequently in the reply, many of which were brought on by iffy shots, even by the standards of a Twenty20 slogathon.
As I was on course to lose a point per run that Pakistan trailed England’s by, a bit more spirit from the Pakistanis would have been welcome; instead, they meekly made their way to 137 and a 48-run defeat. As the rest of the country celebrated England’s resurgence as a cricketing superpower, I looked back on a Great England Cricketing Disaster of my own making.
JW
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