Talking Cricket: England get lost in uncharted territory (23 June 1999)

23 June 1999

Talking Cricket: England get lost in uncharted territory

Sybil Ruscoe

Even as someone with nothing better than a Grade 1 Maths CSE, I found the World Cup arithmetic an absorbing preoccupation.

The most stunning calculation produced the alarming realisation that for those die-hard Pakistan fans who paid £1,000 a ticket for a seat at the final, the cost was just under £17 an over.

That is not the only mathematical googly to emerge from the Carnival of Cricket - something that occurred to me as I said farewell to my World Cup wallchart.

It begun as a promising project: how optimistic I was when I took the felt tip and marked up the score of Match 1: England 207-3 beat Sri Lanka 204.

But as the competition hotted up, complications arose - for my chart, and for England. The glossy sheet gradually became overwhelmed with scores, league tables and run rates. It was interspersed with crossings-out, arrows and the odd smudge.

From a distance it now looks like the spidery jottings of an eccentric scientist. Close up, Bill Frindall would detect numerous inaccuracies, and between you and me, it will be a great relief to remove the Blu-Tack and consign the chart to a scrapbook.

As the ink dried after that epic semi-final at Edgbaston I sadly cast my eye over the whole display. The absence of the word 'England' after the first round still hurts, but after thrilling to the exploits of the two finalists and South Africa, I have to concede that the England side does not belong in their company.

I was also struck by the sheer length and complexity of the competition, stretching from that damp-squib opening on a thundery morning in mid-May, to the blistering high summer that illuminated the semi-finals, with the occasional ball throwing up dust, Shane Warne turning it square and Mark Waugh tossing up eight overs of off-spin wearing shades. It was almost as if the World Cup was staged in two different seasons on two different continents.

The England and Wales Cricket Board have been criticised for creating a format that was meaningless to many fans. Duckworth-Lewis; mysterious run-rate calculations, and points carried forward into the Super Sixes. All lacked the blue-and-white simplicity of the tennis tie-break or football's penalty shoot-out and golden goal.

The arithmetic gave us headaches, but now that the trophy is back Down Under, the administrators deserve a pat on the back. It may have non-plussed the spectators, umpires and players, but the rulebook turned out to be a mini-masterpiece.

The key, I think, is Match 26, played at Chelmsford in front of a few thousand chilled fans on May 31 - Zimbabwe 233-6 beat South Africa 185. A game that seemed to be of so little significance at the time that Radio Four did not even bother to carry commentary on it. But that single piece of giant killing had enormous repercussions.

The immediate consequence was clear-cut - and cruel. England's defeat by India the following day meant the hosts were eliminated. Tough, but fair. It also meant that Zimbabwe not only qualified for the Super Sixes, but went straight to the top of the table, and later came within a whisker of reaching the semi-finals even though they failed to win another match.

Unfair, but not a factor in the final reckoning.

But there was a third, hidden, consequence of the Chelmsford upset that only came to light after that final calamitous delivery at Edgbaston, when Lance Klusener unaccountably charged down the wicket and straight off the field, carrying his country's hopes with him.

Bear with me while I try to get this right. South Africa had needed to win the match, rather than merely tie it, because they had finished behind Australia in the Super Sixes shakedown. The difference between the two sides was a few percentage points on the respective run rates: equivalent to a handful of runs that on any other day they would have scored off the Zimbabwean attack with ease. And so, on the day of reckoning, South Africa's strange lapse against the Zims came back to haunt them - and eliminate them.

I heard rumblings at the time that the South Africans had deliberately thrown the match to ensure that either England or India did not qualify. What nonsense. It is unthinkable that any team captained by Hansie Cronje would even contemplate such a thing. But the South Africans may have been guilty of subconsciously taking their foot off the accelerator. Two-and-a-half weeks later, they paid the ultimate price, thanks to a points system that can only now be seen to have had a touch of genius.

Finally, now that the pyjama carnival is over, let's look forward to the real thing: England and New Zealand fishing out their white flannels and playing a proper Test series. The grapevine tells us that there will be wholesale changes to the England set-up by the end of the week.

Whoever leads England on to the field at Edgbaston a week on Thursday has a massive task: to win the series and revive the support of a nation in danger of turning its back on cricket.

But everyone who loves the game should back the new team through these difficult days. You never know. Perhaps next time I come to fill in a World Cup wall chart, I'll be able to ink in England's name at the head of the carnival parade.

Source :: The Electronic Telegraph