England vs Pakistan - final T20

First topic message reminder :

so here we are again, last game of the tour and the deciding T20 match between England and Pakistan. Broad has won the toss again and decided that England will bat, team news to follow shortly. How do you see this one panning out?

what an over- should have only given 1 or 2- amazing stuff

brilliant over from Broad that, just 4 from it. 13 needed from Dernbach's last over, Afridi on strike...

wowza- this is something else

ohhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh- 2 or wicket

OUT

oh brilliant from England in the field, Afrid run out! What a throw that was, and great work from Kieswetter!

congrats england

a wide

sweet

congrats england

cheers shah- great drama, its only 20/20- wouldnt bother me to much if we had cleaned up the tests as you did!!

great overall series mind! nice to end on a high

how well did England do to hold their nerve there?! Fantastic from Broad and Dernbach! last ball is straight, Misbah swings, misses, and England take the series, what a finish that was!

Fantastic bowling from England, excellent batting from Pieterson. Great experience overall, hopefully they can build from here.

Dernbach's last ball took so much nerve to bowl!

A slower ball? Leg cutter at that. Brilliance

This match (and the series in general) have been examples of how great t20 cricket is.

Utterly useless bunch of bottlers

i think this series just goes to show how good both sets of bowlers are- england in the first t20 couldnt chase it down- we blamed the bats, i think it just goes to show that the overall bowling in this series is of a very high standard and all of the batsman both sides have been made to look abit worse than they actually are!

I would honestly say with plenty of conviction that these two sides are the best in the world at T20 cricket. The low scoring ones are always the tensest!

I would like to praise Dernbach aswell. Took a lot of criticism, justified, but has come back well in this series and the T20's in particular. Keep up the good work.

Well England worked vbery hard a couple of years ago on developing specialist bowling tactics for T20 ahead of the world cup. Its still paying off now.

Their record in recent years in this format, given what a lottery it can be, is pretty remarkable.

Credit to them.

It's interesting that England actually bowl very few yorkers at the death, particularly on this type of pitch where timing the ball is difficult. I guess the reasoning is that if you don't get a yorker spot on it becomes much easier to hit, whereas on pitches where the ball doesn't come onto the bat well even length balls can be pretty tough to get away. So they just go for lots of cutters and slower balls with the odd yorker thrown in.

Compare that to Pakistan who tried to bowl a lot of yorkers at the death, got a couple wrong and KP hit them for four and six. Cheema has a great slower ball, but obviously didn't back himself to deceive KP with one, and that six proved crucial in the end.

Also can't praise KP enough for that knock, didn't get frustrated by not being able to hit boundaries or being a bit starved of the strike, it really was a very fine innings, and isn't it great to see him back in great form again?

An inform KP makes me very happy.

Mad for Chelsea wrote:It's interesting that England actually bowl very few yorkers at the death, particularly on this type of pitch where timing the ball is difficult. I guess the reasoning is that if you don't get a yorker spot on it becomes much easier to hit, whereas on pitches where the ball doesn't come onto the bat well even length balls can be pretty tough to get away. So they just go for lots of cutters and slower balls with the odd yorker thrown in.

Compare that to Pakistan who tried to bowl a lot of yorkers at the death, got a couple wrong and KP hit them for four and six. Cheema has a great slower ball, but obviously didn't back himself to deceive KP with one, and that six proved crucial in the end.

Also can't praise KP enough for that knock, didn't get frustrated by not being able to hit boundaries or being a bit starved of the strike, it really was a very fine innings, and isn't it great to see him back in great form again?

Yeah thats another England inovation I remember being surprised by at the T20 world cup. The slow bouncer became their death ball of choice instead.
Its very different to malinga who simply challenges people to try and hit him...but with that low action is so much harder to get under his yorker and whack him for 6.
After a pretty poor first few years England really did a good job of rethinking the way they play this format, and getting the bowlers to adjust.

As for KP, it just shows what a fragile genius he is. The guy is clearly a complex character and sums up just how much psychology can affect cricket. When hes hot hes a joy.

Malinga of course is good enough to produce the reverse-swining royer pretty much at will, and the perfect yorker remains the hardest ball to hit. He does mix up his pace though. England seem to have recognised that their bowlers couldn't produce perfect yorkers at will, and as such have adopted a different approach.

The "slow bouncer" always makes me laugh. A few years ago we'd have called balls like that long hops waiting to be smashed, but it seems they're quite difficult to pick up.

Mad for Chelsea wrote:It's interesting that England actually bowl very few yorkers at the death, particularly on this type of pitch where timing the ball is difficult. I guess the reasoning is that if you don't get a yorker spot on it becomes much easier to hit, whereas on pitches where the ball doesn't come onto the bat well even length balls can be pretty tough to get away. So they just go for lots of cutters and slower balls with the odd yorker thrown in.

Compare that to Pakistan who tried to bowl a lot of yorkers at the death, got a couple wrong and KP hit them for four and six. Cheema has a great slower ball, but obviously didn't back himself to deceive KP with one, and that six proved crucial in the end.

Also can't praise KP enough for that knock, didn't get frustrated by not being able to hit boundaries or being a bit starved of the strike, it really was a very fine innings, and isn't it great to see him back in great form again?

Good point. Mark Robinson was talking about this at a conference a couple of years back saying basically exactly that. On slow two-paced wickets, full-length balls are easier to hit so bowl length or even back of a length cutters. Australia did it in the second T20 back in Aus against England from what I remember (when England failed to chase mid 140?) with Johnson and Watson being particularly effective IIRC.

Having just caught the highlights: once more Kieswetter's run-out of Afridi shows that it is quicker to take the ball in front of the stumps.

But Id assume a harder skill to get right Mike?

Peter Seabiscuit Wheeler wrote:But Id assume a harder skill to get right Mike?

Yes because you need awareness of what's behind you as well as what's in front of you. However possibly not significantly harder, especially if taught from a young age (and certainly several counties are getting their youth coaches to teach this, and feeding the message down to club coaches to do so as well; a few of the club remain sceptical). I think what IS hard is to unlearn what everybody's always told you to do.

There is a bit of debate back home as to whether it is actually useful given we don't have TV umpires. I think the difference of 4 frames is probably worth it at all levels.

Id think it would be easier to get away with pretneding you have the ball and swing your hands into the stumps that way round too, a valuable skill at lower levels. If you miss it from behind its pretty obvious from the broken nose you never got it in the hands.