The Shorter Wisden 2013 (72 page)

Gayle’s comeback helped provide his team with the self-belief to win the World Twenty20 in September, secured in fairytale fashion after they had come within one run of elimination during
the Super Eights against New Zealand. Gayle was Man of the Match in the semi-final against Australia, but the triumph was a fine collective effort under Darren Sammy. Gayle did little in a final
against Sri Lanka that ebbed and flowed in a way many thought impossible of a 20-over game. Instead, the hero was the hugely improved Marlon Samuels, who hit half his 78 from 56 balls in just 11
deliveries from Lasith Malinga, a notoriously difficult bowler to face. It was Sri Lanka’s fourth defeat in a major final since their World Cup triumph of 1996.

Pakistan
began the year strongly, with a 3–0 whitewash of England in the United Arab Emirates, but there was little chance to build on that outstanding result: because of
the security situation at home, they played only one more Test series in 2012, losing 1–0 in Sri Lanka. Plans for Bangladesh to visit were twice scrapped, amid suspicions the tour had only
ever been mooted as a quid pro quo for Pakistan backing the nomination of Mustafa Kamal, president of the Bangladesh Cricket Board, for the role of ICC vice-president. But, much to Pakistan’s
delight, an International XI travelled to Karachi in October to play two Twenty20 games. As a second home, the UAE was not ideal for Australia’s visit in August: the 50-over matches started
at 6pm to avoid the worst of the heat – and even then, the thermometer hovered around 36°C. Pakistan also resumed bilateral relations with India after a four-year hiatus, tying a Twenty20
series that started on Christmas Day, before winning the 50-over matches 2–1.

For the second year running, Pakistan’s Saeed Ajmal finished as the leading wicket-taker in all internationals, claiming 95, after picking up 89 in 2011. Next, with 84, came another
off-spinner, Graeme Swann of England, who had topped the list in 2010. But one of the features of the year was the rise of orthodox left-arm spin. Rangana Herath of Sri Lanka was the leading Test
bowler, with 60 wickets (one more than Swann), including seven five-fors, three more than the next best, fellow slow-left armer Monty Panesar of England. Two others of the breed, Pakistan’s
Abdur Rehman and India’s Pragyan Ojha, also had good years. In all, left-arm spinners claimed 172 Test wickets at a combined average of 27, seven fewer than any other type of bowling; their
haul of 15% of available wickets was their highest for 25 years. Spin held less sway in one-day internationals, where the use of two balls per innings may have had an effect, but it remained a
potent weapon in the Twenty20 format.

Bangladesh
and
Zimbabwe
both felt the impact of the ICC’s decision to revise the frequency with which they met the major teams. Across all formats,
Zimbabwe featured in just eight matches (and lost the lot), and Bangladesh in 20 – tallies as low as in any year since Zimbabwe entered the Test ranks in 1992, and Bangladesh in 2000. It was
also revealed that the Zimbabwean board had debts of $US18m. Bangladesh at least showed spirit at home to West Indies: after conceding 527 in the First Test at Dhaka, they lost by only 77 runs; and
in the Second, the debutant Abul Hasan made the highest score (113) by a Test No. 10 for 128 years. One of the West Indies bowlers, Tino Best, had himself set an unlikely record five months
earlier, with an exuberant 95 – the highest by a Test No. 11 – against England at Edgbaston. Bangladesh’s other consolation was to take the one-day series against West Indies
3–2 to move above New Zealand in the rankings.

It was not necessary to be a close follower of the careers of Gayle and Pietersen to grasp that the shadow cast by the 20-over format was growing. Although no window was formally declared for
the IPL, most international teams preferred to clear their diaries rather than risk upsetting – or even losing – their talent. During the eight weeks of the tournament, six Tests were
staged in Sri Lanka, the West Indies and England, but the one-day and Twenty20 international formats went into total shutdown. Bangladesh and Sri Lanka both launched new domestic Twenty20 events,
and Pakistan unveiled plans to follow suit in March 2013, only to postpone them. International cricket’s primacy was being paid lip-service only.

ICC WORLD TWENTY20, 2012-13

R
EVIEW BY
D
AVID
H
OPPS

1. West Indies 2. Sri Lanka 3= Australia and Pakistan

When the World Twenty20 drew to a close in Colombo, with the monsoon rains kindly delaying their arrival, even those most resistant to the charms of cricket’s shortest
format struggled to deny it had done the game a huge service. For around 20 years, West Indies cricket had seemed in permanent decline. Yet here they were, triumphant in maroon and gold, dancing on
the outfield at the Premadasa Stadium, winners once more.

Tipped by many from the outset as potential victors, they had revealed their credentials only in fits and starts. Indeed, had Australia taken three more balls to chase down Ireland’s total
in the group stages, West Indies would have fallen at the first hurdle on net run-rate. And, during an extraordinary final, they needed to recover a game against the hosts Sri Lanka that had seemed
beyond them – a result forged largely by one man, Marlon Samuels, his career at last flowering.

West Indies’ uncertainty made their achievement all the more appealing, while the unfailing decency and optimism of their captain, Darren Sammy, were all the more striking for rising above
his own limitations. Sammy, a St Lucian, personified their slogan of “One Team, One People, One Goal”, and his unbeaten 26 off 15 balls in the final – to follow Samuels’s 78
off 56 – dragged West Indies out of inertia and towards what proved a match-winning total of 137 for six.

As they confirmed their status as many neutrals’ favourite, there came persuasive evidence that Twenty20 was a game that a new wave of cricketers and fans could embrace throughout the
Caribbean. This encouraged the belief that their victory was not just a brief interlude in a story of decline, but the start of a genuine renaissance. In the London Olympics back in August, the
medal-winning sprinters Usain Bolt and Yohan Blake had proclaimed themselves Jamaicans, but were quick to stress they were also representatives of the wider West Indian community. Having reasserted
a Caribbean identity, whose existence many in cricket had grown to doubt, Bolt and Blake also revealed themselves as lovers of the game. Publicity as good as that does not come along often.

Two months later, Chris Gayle – another high-profile Jamaican – frolicked round the outfield with Sammy and the World Twenty20 trophy, and offered up one last rendition of the
Gangnam Style dance that, in cricket circles at least, he had made his own. He, too, could now claim to represent not just Jamaica but also a region that sport had again insisted was more connected
than politicians and activists would have you believe. There was even a Blake to Gayle’s Bolt, another Jamaican understudy in the form of Samuels – a player of stature in 2012, first in
the Test matches of a miserable English spring, now in the tropical heat and Twenty20 of Sri Lanka.

These West Indians were far removed from their illustrious predecessors, for they had none of their fearsome fast bowling. In fact, with the exception of Ravi Rampaul – chugging along
skilfully at around 80mph – they had no fast bowler of impact at all. But they did have batsmen who could slug the ball hard and long: Gayle hit 16 sixes, more than anyone, and Samuels 15.
And, in Sunil Narine, they possessed a spinner of genuine mystique.

As the excellent early-tournament pitches, at Pallekele in particular, gave way to tired, powdery surfaces, their lack of pace suited
West Indies
perfectly. They pummelled the
ball over the boundary ropes in a manner few could match, and fiddled through their overs as best they could. It was odd to see a West Indian bowling attack succeed that way. But it worked.

Somewhere, looking on in the Caribbean, there must have been young athletes yearning to grab a share of the adulation. Is it too much to hope we have heard the last of the basketball generation;
the conclusion that other sports, more favoured in the United States and beamed in on satellite television, have taken hold; and that West Indies’ decline is not cyclical, but an irreversible
malaise? The rejection of colonialism which had first identified itself in their determination to dominate the cricketing world had been replaced by a rejection of cricket itself. And the issue was
even broader than that: not merely that Caribbean youth was enthralled by American sport, as much as the fact that their interest in
all
sport was not quite what it was.

Perhaps the impact of the competition went even wider. But as the World Twenty20 gained a hold on the consciousness, international cricket had an instant format with which it could fight back,
so much so that even in the States there was ambitious talk of a professional league. Those who claimed there was no place for Twenty20 beyond the lucrative domestic tournaments were left
re-examining their conviction.

So appealing was the story of this competition that it was hard for anybody to contend that it did not matter, that it was an inferior game unworthy of attention, that it demanded no intellect,
created no tension, bared no souls. Like its three predecessors, it was a rare thing: a well-run, condensed tournament that, once it got over the preliminary stage, maintained interest.

Sri Lanka Cricket, which had blundered into financial trouble by building two new stadiums and upgrading another for the 2011 World Cup, now staged a slick event. The smart new venue at
Pallekele was particularly impressive, with a welcoming feel and a beautiful mountain backdrop. Its pitches were true and, initially at least, possessed surprising pace. It promised to enhance Sri
Lankan cricket for years to come.

The early overs in the final, as Gayle of all people made just three in 16 balls, possessed Test-match tension, and there can be no finer accolade than that. If it is not a worthy addition to
the game, how then to explain the despair felt by Mahela Jayawardene and Kumar Sangakkara, two players who have offered
Sri Lanka
wise counsel and stirring deeds for the past
decade, but who had failed yet again to win a major one-day trophy? Or the hurt of Lasith Malinga, who bowled four overs for 54, then turned off his mobile phone for a couple of days as he faced up
to the most painful moment of his career? Sri Lanka had surely never entered a tournament with more vigour since their breakthrough win in the 50-over World Cup 16 years earlier. Yet, for the
fourth time in a row, all they had to show was a losing final.

Even those who continued to argue that Twenty20 demanded more luck than skill had to concede that the right four sides contested the semi-finals: West Indies, Sri Lanka and Pakistan had played
the best cricket (Pakistan, needless to say, intermittently); and
Australia
deserved to be there because of a heroic tournament from Shane Watson, an all-rounder who combines
dominance and vulnerability in equal measure. At least Achilles only had to worry about his heel. Watson is a collection of opposites: tough yet soft, untouchable yet fragile, egotistical yet
rueful. Any moment he might bully a ball out of the ground, demolish the stumps – or crumple into a heap.

As he continually stoked Australia’s challenge – top-scoring with 249 runs, launching 15 sixes, and taking 11 wickets, second only to Ajantha Mendis – Watson revealed a greater
truth about Twenty20: that it is not, as many ex-professionals insist, so much influenced by fortune as potentially settled by a single outstanding performance. That was certainly true in the
final, when Samuels secured the match virtually by himself. In an age where individual achievement is so often valued above communal good, that is not about to hold the format back.

England
had their own star name – except that Kevin Pietersen, ostracised over the texting saga, was not there (or rather, he was, but as a pundit in a TV studio). Their
title defence suffered as a result. Paul Collingwood, who had captained them to a surprise win in the Caribbean in 2010, hailed Stuart Broad’s vintage as a more skilful bunch than his own
but, with a 19-run defeat by Sri Lanka, England’s involvement predictably petered out in the Super Eights.

There may have been an England side that could have reached the semi-finals, but it was not the one which lost three matches out of five. Their nadir came against India’s second-string
spinners in Colombo, where they careered to 80 all out and a 90-run defeat, and convinced the Indians that slow bowling would be the way to overcome them in the Test series at home that followed
soon after (well, it made sense at the time).

Statistical studies informed England’s strategy of preserving top-order wickets when batting, and taking them when bowling. Luke Wright, his standing already bolstered by experience of
domestic Twenty20 in five countries, responded gamely to the challenge. He averaged 48, with a strike-rate of 169 – the highest of any of the 24 batsmen who topped 100 runs – and hit 13
sixes. His most bitter-sweet episode came with an unbeaten 99 against a capricious Afghanistan side in Colombo, while his best innings was a 43-ball 76 against New Zealand in Pallekele.