Actually having watched the semi final, i will say australia were pretty tough to beat even in this form.
It was a gigantic mammoth win comparable to courier stopping sampras in supreme form in the 94 FO or safin stopping federer in the 2005 AO . They were beaten by the exceptional talent of yuvraj singh and to a lesser extent uthappa, an up andcoming star. Other sides with lesser batting talent would have collapsed under the top notch accurate bowling. Its that decisive counter attack from these two players supported by contunuity in form of dhoni and rohit that took the match away from them.
Just like the 2001 calcutta epic , it was a set of high quality batsmen taking the match away from a high quality team ,allowing one bowler to capitalise on the kill.
Having said that he is not fully wrong in that India was able to hide its weaknesses in the middle overs and the singles game that exposes it so often in the 50 overs game. Also these batsman may not have contemplated such a decisive counter attack if over 30 overs were left to go and aussie bowlers would have maintained their stranglehold.
This shows cricketing factors do still matter in twenty twenty but some factors important in 50 are rendered irrelevant(just as some factors relevant in tests are irrelevant in this form) and its a relatively less genuine test of cricketing skills.
But the fact is aussies did lose the match on those relevant factors. there cannot be excuses here.
and it took yuvraj's exceptional talent to do it.
ICC Twenty20 World Cup, South Africa (11 - 24th September, 2007)
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- Atithee
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Re: ICC Twenty20 World Cup, South Africa (11 - 24th September, 2007)
For a talent to be called "exceptional," I would like to see more consistency in Yuvraj. His "exceptional" performances are rather infrequent. But when he is on song, boy, is he a delight to watch!
- prasen9
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Re: ICC Twenty20 World Cup, South Africa (11 - 24th September, 2007)
So, was this world cup won on the backs of domestic failures? Here is the experience of the teams in the final. Since T20 was a new format and this was the first WC, I am using international debut year as a proxy for experience.
Gambhir, debut 2003
Yusuf Pathan, 2007
Uthappa, 2006
Yuvraj, 2000
Dhoni, 2004
Rohit, 2007
Irfan, 2003 (MoM)
Harbhajan, 1998
Joginder, 2004
Sreesanth, 2005
RP Singh, 2005
Of these maybe Joginder did not have a exceptional FC record or prior record. Yusuf and Rohit were the newbies. The rest at least had 2-3 years. The most important thing was that the top four batsmen had averages over 40 in FC cricket, we took people who were clean strikers of the ball in Yusuf and Uthappa but they were reasonably capable bats. Uthappa averaged around 40 and Yusuf averaged around 35 when they were brought in (in FC cricket) along with very good SRs for that era. Sreesanth and RP had played around two years and were good, promising young bowlers with good records in FC cricket and domestics. Joginder was very promising: averaging around 25 with the bat and around 20 with the ball in FC cricket at that time.
Each of them had played quite a few years in domestics before being called.
The point is that, yes, we need to choose youngsters and give them a chance, but not just based on hope. Get people who have shown that they can bowl in the domestic tournaments. I am all fine with giving the likes of Yashasvi, Rinku, Sarfraz, etc. a chance but not the likes of Avesh, Yudhvir, etc. who have been pretty consistent failures in the T20 format. In 2007, we did not have much T20 work and thus had to choose based on List-As and FC performance. Now, we have a whole lot of T20 data. People who succeed should be given chances, people who fail like Avesh and Yudhvir should be told to master domestics first. In short, select youth but youth who are the most successful. Not based on crap like someone who has a sexy bouncer, yorker, etc.
Gambhir, debut 2003
Yusuf Pathan, 2007
Uthappa, 2006
Yuvraj, 2000
Dhoni, 2004
Rohit, 2007
Irfan, 2003 (MoM)
Harbhajan, 1998
Joginder, 2004
Sreesanth, 2005
RP Singh, 2005
Of these maybe Joginder did not have a exceptional FC record or prior record. Yusuf and Rohit were the newbies. The rest at least had 2-3 years. The most important thing was that the top four batsmen had averages over 40 in FC cricket, we took people who were clean strikers of the ball in Yusuf and Uthappa but they were reasonably capable bats. Uthappa averaged around 40 and Yusuf averaged around 35 when they were brought in (in FC cricket) along with very good SRs for that era. Sreesanth and RP had played around two years and were good, promising young bowlers with good records in FC cricket and domestics. Joginder was very promising: averaging around 25 with the bat and around 20 with the ball in FC cricket at that time.
Each of them had played quite a few years in domestics before being called.
The point is that, yes, we need to choose youngsters and give them a chance, but not just based on hope. Get people who have shown that they can bowl in the domestic tournaments. I am all fine with giving the likes of Yashasvi, Rinku, Sarfraz, etc. a chance but not the likes of Avesh, Yudhvir, etc. who have been pretty consistent failures in the T20 format. In 2007, we did not have much T20 work and thus had to choose based on List-As and FC performance. Now, we have a whole lot of T20 data. People who succeed should be given chances, people who fail like Avesh and Yudhvir should be told to master domestics first. In short, select youth but youth who are the most successful. Not based on crap like someone who has a sexy bouncer, yorker, etc.
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Re: ICC Twenty20 World Cup, South Africa (11 - 24th September, 2007)
Team got success as clean strikers of the ball were selected and 10 out of them had the ability to ball not as a part timers but had the ability to stop the flow of runs and pick wickets. When it comes to rewarding domestic performances they hardly does it, otherwise T20 specialist like Bisla, Valthaty, Asnodkar, Gony who had good IPL could have played T20IWCs. Selecting a T20I squad selector needs to put weightage on SMT & IPL not on Ranji & VHT
- prasen9
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Re: ICC Twenty20 World Cup, South Africa (11 - 24th September, 2007)
IPL is better quality than SMT. So, IPL alone is fine. Yes, get the clean hitters who can average 25. If a batsman can hit one six and is out, then they are useless as batsmen. We do not play with 30 wickets an innings. SR and the ability to sustain that SR for a while is the most important thing in a batsman. We should certainly choose based on that.