The Surfer

They were the first people at the stadium, milling around the periphery almost an hour before the gates were opened. They stood in line and applauded when the England team bus came in.

The English flag or St George’s Cross, a broad red cross on a white background that has been England’s emblem since the Middle Ages, fluttered from stands across the stadium. There were fans with their bodies painted in that stark colour scheme, and you could see a hint of why it was also the symbol of the Crusades—there is a primal and savage beauty to it that spells war.

But there’s nothing war-like about the fans themselves—they are gentle and friendly, and their cricket-watching ethos is based firmly on humour and encouragement. They take great pains to distinguish themselves from the English football fans, who have a long history of hooliganism.

Rule 3.2 (b) lays down that the demand for a review has to be made by the captain of the fielding team or the batsman involved in the incident within a few seconds. What has not been laid down with clarity is what these few seconds could mean; this could be interpreted as mere 5 seconds or 50 seconds.

Including Shaun Tait was a gamble. No bowler in the tournament can be as wayward. On his bad days the Croweater sends the ball spearing down the leg-side with a frequency inappropriate in this company. But he can change the course of an innings and the Australians are willing to invest in that. So far, too, the express merchants have been unexpectedly effective, taking hat-tricks and generally having the impact of a bugle on a dozing dormitory.

Now, Graeme Smith's side seems strong and sincere. Certainly it is a melting pot, with a formidable opener of Indian extraction, a coloured spinner and middle-order batsman, a black fast bowler and a leggie born in Karachi. And all of them deserve their places. And it was all achieved without the expected blood bath. With every passing year the game learns to focus a little less on faith, race, gender and sexuality and more on character.

Yes, it was a magnificent victory for Ireland, but it hasn't gone unnoticed that the air of national euphoria in a country that's had very little to crow about of late has been somewhat tempered by the unconditional magnanimity with which our win has been greeted by a generous English media. We Irish are a big people, but in so many ways we are a small people. After hurling, our second national sport is begrudgery, so it was with no small disappointment we realised, in the wake of our victory at the Battle of Bengaluru, that rather than rail against the injustice of it all, our vanquished opponents seemed genuinely pleased for us.

That aside, England's batsmen have done relatively well. It is the bowlers who are misfiring. The team will rightly tell themselves that they ran into a freakishly good innings from Kevin O'Brien on Wednesday, a classic example of a guy from one of the smaller teams coming out and playing as though he had nothing to lose. And once he was out, there was enough experience in the tail to see Ireland home.

There was nothing to foreshadow the amazing collapse; no clear sign that such a devastating wreck was impending, none whatsoever of a crash that shamed even the yo-yo stock market in Dhaka. In short, events seemed inexplicable. And when things are such, swearing, it seems, is the only way to ease the discontent souls.

For the second game in a row, the Tigers skipper Shakib Al Hasan's dismissal mirrored the team's mental make-up. To the naked eye, it seemed Shakib's heart was telling him to sweep while the mind tried to play straight. He got stuck in between, missing Sulieman Benn's tossed-up delivery. It was the similarly bewildering return catch he popped against Ireland that spelled doom for the Tigers, only to be retrieved but when you are bowled out for 58, there is no room for a comeback.

"Prior to winning the World Cup, rugby was more popular than cricket in Sri Lanka," Rohan Gunaratne, the executive director of the Sri Lankan RFU, said. "Now cricket is on the TV, which wasn't the case earlier, not on a regular basis, anyway. Because of that, cricket has reached the rural areas and everyone knows about it. In cricket, they are always playing within the top five sides. In rugby, we can't reach that level."

So 10 teams it is, and as it happens there are 10 full members of the ICC. It is not too difficult to see how that might work out considering the self-interest, not to mention self-aggrandisement with which cricket has traditionally been governed. They will presumably produce as evidence the form of the other lesser nations so far in this tournament, as if they can improve without better competition.

Why have New Zealand yet to field an unchanged one-day team in the John Wright era? Was Kyle Mills a better bet than Hamish Bennett for the match against Australia? Shouldn't Jacob Oram have batted at No7 instead of Jamie How in the same match?