There’s dancing on the streets of Kings XI tonight…

Bangalore got utterly destroyed by Kings XI Punjab after an Australian onslaught that meant the game was effectively won after about 15 overs.  Adam Gilchrist’s century – 106 from 55 balls – was well supported by Shaun Marsh’s 79 from 49 and 232/2 was always going to be far too much for the Royal Challengers, even if they can boast Chris Gayle at the top of their innings.

Gayle in fact managed only a seven ball duck as RCB spluttered their way to 121 all out.  Ex-Sussex T20 spinner Piyush Chawla showed that a few outings for the Sharks can work wonders by taking 4/17.

This is all very nice, but it doesn’t really feel like the IPL is capturing the imagination of the masses this year.  TV ratings have plummeted – down 25% across your six key markets is nothing other than a disaster no matter how your marketing men try and dress it up – and there isn’t the same buzz around the tournament as there has been in previous years.  Much of that could be to do with the scandal surrounding Lalit Modi’s downfall in 2010, but you have to partially attribute it to contempt of the familiar.

Not that Adam Gilchrist will be particularly bothered about that tonight.

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For a lot of people the Champions League Twenty20 is just a crass extension of the IPL.  And in some ways it is.  The cheerleaders, the commerciality, the general feel of the competition.  All mirror the IPL because it is derived from and driven by it.

But there is one important difference – the quality of cricket.

Whilst it becomes increasingly clear that the IPL contains too many distractions, is too drawn out and is too contrived to lend itself to cricket of the highest quality, the 2009 Champions League was a good quality tournament with a good, compact format.  The performances of the three IPL franchises were a marker of the quality of their league – i.e. roughly on a level with the counties, but nowhere near the Australians or South Africans.

The 2009 Champions League saw good quality cricket in a compact format

Trinidad & Tobago provided the storyline, swiftly becoming the neutral’s favourite.  Kieron Pollard made a name for himself with his brutal abuse of New South Wales and Daren Ganga showed that he might justify selection for West Indies as a specialist captain.  But the Australian bowling attack was too much for the islanders when the two met again in the final, and they took the crown.

The two English counties, Sussex and Somerset, returned early and somewhat chastened after being outclassed.  Somerset did manage a win, but overall both sides lacked nous in the batting department and gave themselves too much to do.  Both spoke of their desire to return and offer a proper challenge next time around.

Counties conspicuous by their absence

So there is much to anticipate for the 2010 edition, which is being staged in South Africa.  Except that none of the counties will be taking part.  Because the scheduling clashes with the end of the county season and England’s ODI series with Pakistan, the Friends Provident T20 winners and runners up will not be travelling to South Africa.

This is not the fault of the organisers, comprising the BCCI, Cricket Australia and Cricket South Africa.  The ECB is not a main partner in the competition and so can not expect to be given priority.  Nor is it the fault of the ECB – they can hardly be expected to tear up the domestic season and an international series for the sake of two, as yet unidentified, counties who could easily be on the first plane home again.

There has been a lot of talk in the last couple of years about creating an international window for the Indian Premier League to ensure that there is no conflict with national team loyalties.  This problem only arises because the amount of money available for the IPL, which is merely a domestic competition, far outstrips that at international level.  In April, ICC ruled out this possibility.

In pure cricketing terms, the IPL does not justify an international window.

The Champions League Twenty20 does.

A Champions League window?

The CLT20 has the potential to become a bridge between domestic and international cricket, offers a new twist to domestic competition and a chance for each nation to measure it’s domestic teams against one another.

At the moment it is only potential, but it’s a start.

Football’s Champions League, the inspiration for the cricketing version, is the main marker as to the strength of each of Europe’s major leagues.  Debate over which is the best is almost endless amongst both media and fans.  It is not hard to see how this could be the case in cricket as well.

For players too, the chance to test themselves against the world’s best is one of the reasons why they take up the sport professionally.  Many of the players on show for the counties last year will never get the chance to play internationally, although it is also interesting to note that three of England’s World Twenty20 squad – Craig Kieswetter, Luke Wright and Mike Yardy – all played in the 2009 competition.  Both Kieswetter and Yardy have broken into the squad since then.

The 2010 tournament is scheduled to take place over just 16 days, as opposed to the six long weeks of the IPL, so the ICC would have no problems fitting it into the schedule.

It has greater relevance than the IPL, and team loyalties are far deeper and more meaningful, both for fans and players.

With kind treatment and the right marketing strategy, the Champions League could become the marquee competition outside of international cricket. It would raise the profile of the teams involved, give young cricketers a chance to experience an atmosphere not far removed from international cricket, and increase the incentives within the domestic T20 competitions.

It also needs to represent each of the Test playing nations – this year England will be joined by Pakistan and Bangladesh on the outside. Currently there are a lot of divisions within international cricket (to put it mildly), and not just along traditional lines such as India/Pakistan and Asia/The Rest. Tension over scheduling and the fallout over the IPL scandal threatens to tear world cricket a new one.

Far more than the “allegedly” rotten IPL, the Champions League deserves to be coveted by ICC and the world of cricket, and it should be a given it’s own place within the cricketing calendar. It could just help to bring all those warring factions together.

Whether or not it will be remains to be seen.

Footnotes

[1] – The cover image for this post was obtained under a Creative Commons license from Wikimedia.

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Stuart Broad concedes an overthrow as England lose to Holland in 2009

5th June 2009.  The final ball of the opening match of the 2009 World Twenty20 at Lord’s.

Stuart Broad collects the ball in his follow through and shies at the stumps.  He misses, the batsmen complete the 1st run and turn for a second to win the match for Holland.

It was the 4th wicket taking opportunity in that final over that Broad had failed to take.  Had he taken 1 of them, England likely would have scraped the narrowest of wins.

But he didn’t, and England lost amidst worldwide pointing and laughing.

Perhaps in the light of yesterday’s decisive victory over Australia in the 2010 final, it was a good thing for English cricket in the long run.

Of the XI who took the field that day, only 5 remained in the victorious 2010 vintage.  England undoubtedly underestimated Holland – Pietersen and Swann were left out – but it was the lessons learned in that match and the rest of the tournament that enabled the team to move forward.

The rise of Eoin Morgan meant that there was no place for Owais Shah in the side, and Luke Wright was dropped down the order from his position as opener in 2009.  Wright is a good hitter of the ball, but his limitations make him more suited to the cameo role in the middle order.

The return to form of Kevin Pietersen has been crucial.  It was a miserable 15 months for Pietersen who, it was said before the 2009 tournament, had been slow to adapt his game to Twenty20.  Few would argue against his selection as player of the tournament, or that he is now one of the best in the world in the 20 over format.  The continued apathy towards KP amongst English fans and media is a complete mystery to me.

Tim Bresnan was derided as a bits and pieces performer with a penchant for pies when he was first drafted into the England side, but has proven himself to be  a canny performer with the ball, both during the opening powerplay overs and at the end of the innings.

Another key turning point was a trial match between England and England Lions in February, one which the senior XI lost due to a vicious assault by the Lions openers, Michael Lumb and Craig Kieswetter.  The emergence of Kieswetter was particularly important.  Matt Prior had up to that point been the resident ‘keeper, batting at 6 or 7.  By bringing in Kieswetter to open and keep wicket, England were able to replace two men and strengthen their spin bowling attack.

The man that was chosen to fill that role was not Adil Rashid, nor James Tredwell but instead the Sussex captain Mike Yardy.  This ranks as Andy Flower’s most astute choice of all – Kieswetter has long been tipped as an England star of the future – for Yardy is, for the most part, an accumulating batsman who can bowl a few overs.  For England, he bats as low as 9 and is in the side because of the way his bowling compliments that of Graeme Swann.

Aside from the obvious left arm/right arm combination, their styles of bowling are also a perfect fit.  Swann is an attacking, wicket taker who bowls with flight and spin.  Yardy is a converted medium pace bowler who runs in off a couple of paces and fires in 60mph darts that are hard for batsmen to attack.  Kind of like Sanath Jayasuriya with hair.

It now seems unthinkable that anyone other than Andy Flower should have been appointed as England’s coach, but beforehand there was a sizeable groundswell 0f opinion that he lacked the experience, that he was just Peter Moores’s man.  How wrong that has been proven to be.

He has taken a test side that was in dissaray after the Pietersen sacking, and constructed a tough, durable team that was able to grind out an Ashes win and then a creditable draw in South Africa.  This whilst dealing with a dressing room that was being disrupted by it’s “lynchpin”, Andrew Flintoff.

But turning England into a competitive limited overs side is an even greater achievement.  Not since the early ’90s have they been so consistently dismissive of quality opponents in a major tournament.  It’s not just the fact that they won the trophy, but the way they dominated matches against teams they would have struggled against in recent times.

The next frontier for Flower will be to win the Ashes in Australia, and England will be confident of being able to do it.  To become the best in the world in the longer format, they will need to add the attacking flair that will allow them to dominate side in Test matches in the way they can now do in Twenty20.

In the meantime, Flower will deserve all of the plaudits that are heading his way.

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The original title of this post read something like “The Duckworth/Lewis method was not designed for Twenty20 and therefore doesn’t work at all (and it smells)“.  It was a glorious essay on the reasons why it doesn’t work and why it’s all the  ICC’s fault.

That’s not to say I was at all bitter about England’s loss because, hey, I picked West Indies in my prediction league and scored a stack of points.

But I decided not to convert it into this sardonic aside it after I realised that a) it had been done to death about 2 hours after the match ended and b) the numbers and sums were even boring me, and that takes some doing.

So the new title of this post can be translated as “Paul Collingwood likes a moan, and Frank Duckworth is a typically belligerent Yorkshireman on the defensive because really he knows the lad from oop ‘t road might have a point“.

Besides, if the Coolest Man Alive™, Chris Gayle, agrees with the Northern Nurdler™, then Duckworth really doesn’t have a leg to stand on.

Now that the dust has settled and the angry mob is dispersing faster than a cloud of volcanic ash, Colly and England have managed to progress to the Super8, despite only bowling 9.2 overs in their two games, and Frank Duckworth has gone back to his garden shed to plot further hilarious mathematical chaos.

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It’s only 10 months since the last edition, but I am strangely exited about this tournament in a way that it’s impossible to be about the IPL right now.  The format is lean and snappy, the cricket will be competitive and it’s genuinely hard to call this one, although I am going to have a go.  The Caribbean is excited about the World T20 where it was indifferent to the 2007 World Cup.  So what’s going to happen?

All the signs indicate that the pitches are going to be dry and slow.  This won’t be much different to England’s tour last year, but in a way it could make for fascinating T20 rather than that dull-as-ditchwater test series.  Despite the IPL’s best efforts to convince otherwise, it’s still the contest between bat and ball that makes for the most engrossing viewing, rather than just cross-bat slogging.  140 is often a good score on slow pitches and slow outfields, so six-hitting will be important for teams to get above that and put themselves out of sight.  Conversely though, that could mean taking undue risks and getting bowled out for a really low score.

The fascinating thing about the format is that the Super8 seedings are pre-determined by the seedings.  It won’t matter who wins each group, just who finishes last.  So, for example, England are seeded 2nd in their group, and will enter into the first Super8 pool (Group E)  and would face Pakistan, New Zealand and South Africa.

If an unseeded team qualifies, they will take the position of the team eliminated from their group.  So if Ireland were to qualify they would enter Group E if England are eliminated or Group F if West Indies are knocked out.  It sounds more complicated than it actually is, and it simplifies the initial group phase.

Group A – Pakistan, Bangladesh, Australia

Last year’s champions, Pakistan, are as enigmatic as ever.  When you have Shahid Afridi as captain, know that absolutely anything could happen.  With a tricky first group they could be on their way home after a few days, or they could win the whole thing again, although I think this is less likely this time around.  Umar Gul will be missing, and I think this will be their undoing, although if someone like Mohammad Aamer steps up they could do well again.

Player to watch: Shahid Afridi
Prediction: Super 8s

Many will be expecting Bangladesh to disappear with a whimper, but I think they will be harder to beat than that.  With Shakib-al-Hasan and Mahmudullah leading the spin bowling, they should be able to exert pressure and keep things close, and in Tamim Iqbal they have a potential match-winner if he is fit.

Their seam bowling is poor so it will be vital that the spinners, and expect to see at least three selected, take wickets.  They are also prone to disastrous batting collapses, and I think the opposition bowling will be too strong for them.  But not by as much as people think.

Player to watch: Tamim Iqbal
Prediction: Group exit

Australia are many people’s favourites, which is strange considering that their Twenty20 pedigree isn’t great at international level.  They bombed in last years tournament, but won’t be as bad this time round.  Because of that performance they are not seeded in their group, so could end up in either of the Super 8 pools.

The problem they might face is the pitches – their squad is packed full of fast bowlers and lacking in spin options.  They also chose to leave Dougie Bollinger at home, an utterly mystifying decision when you consider the inclusion of the scattergun selections of Shaun Tait and Mitchell Johnson.  Having said that, you can never write them off, but I think the semi-finals will be their absolute limit.

Player to watch: Dirk Nannes
Prediction: Super 8s

Group B – Sri Lanka, New Zealand, Zimbabwe

Sri Lanka are the top seed in their group, and will be expected to challenge for the title.  They certainly have the talent, yet there is a large “but”.  Many of their stars, such as Tillekeratne Dilshan, struggled for form in the IPL, and Sanath Jayasuriya continues to be selected when he should be put out to pasture.

They’ll have enough to see off Zimbabwe, and if the “Three Ms”, Murali, Malinga and Mendis, hit their stride they will be a match for anyone and they have players of the quality of Jayawardene, Sangakkara and Angelo Mathews who can get them enough runs to defend.

Player to watch: Angelo Mathews
Prediction: Runners-up

New Zealand always tend to do ok in tournaments without being spectacular, but they have the players to make a go of it.  They’re the sort of team who are often labelled dark horses, but when you have Jesse Ryder, Ross Taylor and Brendan McCullum in your batting order, you’ve always got a chance.

On the flip-side, the bowling attack after Shane Bond and Daniel Vettori is workmanlike, so they will need these two to be at the top of their games if they are to exert control in the field.  They will be steady, but it’s will need something spectacular from Taylor or McCullum to beat the big guns.

Player to watch: Jesse Ryder
Prediction: Super 8s

It’s really hard to know what to make of Zimbabwe.  They haven’t competed effectively against the Test nations, Bangladesh excepted, for years, yet there is a sense thay they are on the up again.  The warm up victory over Australia will have given them confidence, and they are somewhat of an unknown quantity to many.

When you consider that one victory could be enough to get through to the Super 8s, you never know.  The offspin of captain Prosper Utseya will be important, and he does have a very good T20 record.  If bowling attacks get stuck into their batting, however, they will be in trouble.

Player to watch: Prosper Utseya
Prediction: Group exit, just

Group C – South Africa, India, Afghanistan

South Africa are amongst the favourites, and expect them to utterly monster Afghanistan.  They play without compassion against lesser sides, but have a habit of becoming inhibited (trans: choking) against the bigger players.  The essence of the playground bully.

There’s no doubting their talent, with Graeme Smith, Jaqcues Kallis, AB de Villiers and Dale Steyn giving them a very strong base.  Albie Morkel can be a destroyer with the bat, and is the most prolific bowler of all T20 time (albeit in far more matches than his nearest rivals).

But raw talent isn’t their problem, mental toughness under pressure is, and they can also be pedestrian in the field.  So it would be no surprise if they won it, yet it would be no surprise if they crashed out against a team that they should beat.

Player to watch: Albie Morkel
Prediction: Semi-final

India are the hot favourites again, almost entirely due to the hype of the IPL rather than it’s substance.  They certainly have talent, but there will be questionmarks over their preparedness after a long IPL tournament so recently.  Also, Virender Sehwag is missing through injury, which will deprive them of vital impetus at the top of the order.  It’s hard to tell just how good some of the younger players are, with the quality of cricket in the IPL being questionable.

Much will depend on Dhoni, Zaheer Khan and Bhajji, and a couple of the younger batsman will have to step up.  Most likely appear to be Suresh Raina and Murali Vijay.  At least they should be used to slow pitches.

Player to watch: Suresh Raina
Prediction: Super 8s

Afghanistan are the team everyone wants to see, and everyone’s second team.  Their rise has been miraculous for a war-torn country and few know much about them.  Recent results would suggest that they are a better team than Ireland, and you can expect them to have great team spirit and play with smiles on their faces.  A win is unlikely against India, and less so against South Africa, but it certainly won’t be boring.

Player to watch: all of them
Prediction: plucky first round exit

Group D – West Indies, England, Ireland

Ok, cards on the table time.  I think West Indies have a real chance to win this.  With Gayle and Pollard they can destroy any attack in the competition.  If those two fail there’s Dwayne Bravo and Ronnie Sarwan.  And if things get tough Shiv Chanderpaul can battle it out.

They’ve got good spinners in Benn and Deonarine, a top wicketkeeper in Ramdin and fast bowlers like Bravo, Taylor and Rampaul who can make things happen.  Add home advantage and a cavalier spirit, and they look a powerful, well balanced unit with lots of options.

Complacency could be a problem, but I can’t see them having any problems with England or Ireland and from then on anything is possible.  So I’m tipping them to win it.

Player to watch: Kieron Pollard
Prediction: Winners

England.  What do we make of England?  They have both expressed their confidence and played down expectations at the same time in the build up, and I think they’re right to be cautious.  They certainly have capable players throughout the squad, but at the same time there are a lot of question marks.

Biggest of these is the opening pair of Lumb and Kieswetter.  It’s (yet another) new partnership with no track record, and it remains to be seen whether either can make the sort of impact that England need in the first six overs.  Lumb was ok at the IPL, and had a good T20 Cup for Hampshire last summer, but it’s hard to shake the feeling that he is not international class.  Kieswetter probably is, but is young and new to the side.

The middle order looks good, with KP, Collingwood and Morgan with, probably, Bopara.  Swann is the main bowling option, and Broad and Anderson will lead the pace attack.  The rest of the bowling is uncertain – Tredwell is the 2nd, fairly untried, spinner, Sidebottom is on the decline, Bresnan is solid but nothing more, Shahzad is an unknown at this level and Luke Wright can take wickets but is often very expensive.

The complete lack of IPL exposure among the bowlers could work for them (they’re fresh) or against them (they’re rusty).  They will be hard to beat, and will squeak past Ireland in the manner to which we are accustomed, but to win the tournament someone will need to have the best 7 matches of their career.  And remember, it’s less than a year since they lost to Holland.

Player to watch: Eoin Morgan
Prediction: Semi-final

I would say that Ireland are the least likely of the non-test nations to spring an upset.  Having been the best of the associate nations by far for some time, they’ve probably now been overtaken by Afghanistan, at least in the 20 over format.

They won’t lack for motivation, especially against England.  In fact, expect motivation and a determination to put one over their neighbours to be the main reason why that match will be close.

The problem is that the main reason for that motivation is that they lost their batting mainstay, Eoin Morgan, to England.

They have played enough of these tournaments now to not be overawed (in fact, they weren’t in their first), and they have enough about them to cause a few problems.  But it won’t quite be enough.

Player to watch: Niall O’Brien
Prediction: First round exit after giving England a scare

So I’ve gone for West Indies to beat Sri Lanka in the final, but it could just as easily be any two of six other nations.  Either way, it should be fun.  I’ll be following the tournament closely, and the Test Match Sofa commentary will be available on the player at the bottom of this site.  Enjoy.

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There are seven English players performing in the 2010 edition of the IPL.  Even Paul Collingwood has seen some action.  Here’s how they are getting on:

Paul Collingwood (Delhi Daredevils)

6 matches, 152 runs at 30.4, top score 75, strike rate 133.33

4 wickets at 19.5, economy rate 6.59

Ravi Bopara (Kings XI Punjab)

10 matches, 248 runs at 31, top score 77, strike rate 115.88

5 wickets at 25.4, economy rate 9.76

Owais Shah (Kolkata Knight Riders)

5 matches, 115 runs at 57.50, top score 58, strike rate 121.05

Michael Lumb (Rajasthan Royals)

10 matches, 269 runs at 26.9, top score 83, strike rate 146.19

Dimitri Mascarenhas (Rajasthan Royals)

2 matches, 12 runs, top score 9, strike rate 120

4 wickets at 16.25, economy rate 8.12

Kevin Pietersen (Royal Challengers Bangalore)

3 matches, 105 runs, top score 66*, strike rate 136.36

1 wicket at 37, economy rate 9.25

Eoin Morgan (Royal Challengers Bangalore)

6 matches, 35 runs at 11.66, top score 17, strike rate 116.66

Note how the one player not to have played T20 for England is outperforming them all.  Of course, it is just a bit of silly old hit and giggle isn’t it…

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The best thing about Alistair Cook captaining England is that the press can use all of their Captain Cook headlines with gay abandon.  That’s not to say Cook might not make a good captain some day, but they have been waiting three years to use those headlines.

Anyway, Cook was captain in the 2nd T20 against South Africa, and had the opportunity to feed his bowlers one-by-one like lambs to the slaughter of Smith and Bosman.  England had no chance of chasing down a total of 241, yet for some reason it is the batsmen who are being grilled over the defeat.

Micky Arthur, South Africa’s coach, thought Cook should have changed the batting order:

I thought they would certainly have used Eoin Morgan and Jonathan Trott at the top of the order with KP batting three.

Cook had his own, highly intelligent, thoughts on England’s batting:

Unfortunately the big hits, we didn’t hit them as cleanly as they did.

Indeed.  But, having managed only 89 against South Africa A in the warmup match, they might be satisfied with 202-6 and 157-8 had their bowling not been so exposed in the 2nd match.  Of course, the attack was missing Broad and Swann so they can be given a little leeway.

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There is a certain class of English cricket enthusiast who will have barely registered that the Champions League was even taking place this past two weeks.  If you are a member of this class, you would probably snort in derision at the idea that it is set to become one of the most important competitions in cricket.

[quote]

Who wants to watch the Sri Lankan T20 winners taking on the Australian runners up when you could be busy replaying the 3rd afternoon of Leicestershire vs Glamorgan in your mind and wondering what that means for next season?

Far more important to consider whether Middlesex can sign that medium-pacer-who-can-bat-a-bit they need to bolster their flaky lineup.  Or to wonder whether next season will bring another unbeaten triple-century before the third sweaters have been dispensed with.

Time for a confession: 12 months ago, I was one of you.  The idea of the Champions League was, to me, quaint yet unimportant.  It wouldn’t matter if English counties took part because it was really only going to be an IPL exhibition event, a chance for Lalit Modi to expand his empire and his fortune.  I was much happier studying Derbyshire’s averages, hopeful of getting the inside track on their young prospects (I really did do this, and yes I am aware I have no life.  FYI, the youngsters were a mixed bag this season).

Then, something important happened.  Setanta, who had originally purchased the broadcast rights for the UK, collapsed and Eurosport stepped in.  This meant that I could watch LIVE cricket on TV for the first time since 2005.  I had been forced to rely on Channel 5′s measly highlights package during the Ashes.

This was pretty much the main motivation for me to tune in.  I wasn’t expecting much more than to watch the three IPL teams put on a tour-de-force.  That was what we were told was going to happen.  It didn’t.

Instead, JP Duminy started the mutiny by smashing the Royal Challengers into next week.  Delhi fell to Victoria, and then Somerset, puny Somerset, overcame the IPL Champion Deccan Chargers.  Suddenly, there was a genuine reason to pay attention, even if it began as a chance to have a laugh at the expense of Lalit Modi.

Trinidad & Tobago have given the Champions League it's identity

But then the point of this tournament became clear, and it’s identity was found in perhaps the most unlikely of places.  The West Indies.

Here is a part of the world where cricket is being torn asunder by inept administrators and impure motives.  The national team has been virtually rendered a laughing stock after the strike that reduced it to selecting a 3rd string to play against Bangladesh and in the Champions Trophy.

From this mess came Trinidad & Tobago into the Champions League.  And they have set it alight with the most dazzling cricket, fit to take it’s place alongside the best of what the West Indies have given the game through the years.  Electric in the field, versatile with the ball and led by the best captain in the tournament by a mile, Daren Ganga.  When they bat, no target seems big enough.  Just ask Moises Henriques.

Suddenly the world was willing them on, and self-esteem was being returned to West Indian cricket.  Their semi-final victory against Cape Cobras carried more meaning than an entire series of seven ODIs between England and Australia.

What of the counties?  They have returned home early, collecting just a single victory between them in 6 matches.  But both Sussex and Somerset have done so full of talk of lessons learned and a desire to return next year better and stronger.  And this is not just the formulaic response of media-trained professional sportsmen – Somerset chairman Andy Nash spoke passionately and eloquently of the response needed by English cricket – both on and off the field – to what he had witnessed.

Whilst all this has been going on in cricket’s living room, England has been busy pottering about in the garden shed, oblivious.  Coverage in main stream media has been there, but you get the feeling that it’s only because there is no other cricket to talk about.

Twenty20 is still percieved, in England at least, as “hit and giggle”, a bit of fun that shouldn’t be taken seriously. It’s referred to as a lottery, the ridiculous idea that a team’s level of skill has no bearing whatsoever on whether or not it is successful. Try telling that to Kieron Pollard.

When the BBC’s cricket correspondent posts on Twitter that the CLT20 “Is the most irrelevent, most contrived comp ever” it’s easy to recognise the general zeitgeist amongst cricket’s chattering classes.

They are missing the point.  To the people and cricketers of Trinidad & Tobago, this tournament has been anything but irrelevant.  To English cricket fans who – thanks to a combination of the ECB/Sky deal and the scandalous prices charged for England tickets – are no longer able to watch cricket, this tournament may well have been like manna from heaven.  To Sussex and Somerset, the Champions League has been an education and has given their cricketers new frontiers to try and cross.

“That’s all very well”, you might say, “but it is still contrived out of money and the desire to make it”.  And that is true, to an extent.  One of the biggest incentives for the counties to compete was the financial reward on offer.  Yet, here are two pieces of evidence for your consideration:

Exhibit A: The total prize fund for the entire tournament is $6m (about £3.6 million).  That’s less than Sunderland received for finishing 16th in the Premier League last season.  Manchester United received £15,220,000 for winning it.  In sporting terms, the Champions League Twenty20 is small beer in a world where big sport attracts the biggest of business as a matter of course.  Yes, it is more money than cricket is used to, but that’s not saying much.

Exhibit B: A lesson from history.  When football’s European Cup was introduced, the FA pressurised it’s teams into withdrawing, their attitude being that the domestic Football League was of primary importance.  It took a stubborn stand from Manchester United to begin to break that view.  Try telling any football fan that their Champions League is irrelevant and contrived now.

So to you doubters I would say this:  the Champions League Twenty20 is here to stay.  Despite, or perhaps in part because of, the relative failure of the IPL teams, the first tournament is widely acknowledged to be a resounding success.  There is talk of expanding the competition – it does not yet include teams from all of the Test nations – and of hosting it in England or South Africa next year.

If it seems contrived, that is because all of these tournaments have to begin that way.  Give it a chance to grow a history and a tradition of it’s own.  It is high time we drop the snobbery and start to take it seriously.

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Sydney has had a habit of outdoing Melbourne over the last few decades, and todays Champions League T20 semi final was no different.  In fact, the “contest” between NSW and Victoria was about the most one-sided match of the entire tournament.

I was making notes while the match played out on TV, and I have decided to provide a condensed version of events using these excerpts:

Pitch "unusual" (i.e. rubbish). NSW win toss. Match? Probably.

Warner  Siddle

Vics 2nd over: game over

That’s about all you need to know.  Victoria never had a chance after both openers had fallen to Hauritz in the 2nd over, and they barely managed to get half of the NSW total.

But the most important happening today was that I figured out what it is about Phil Hughes’ technique that is so familiar to me.

It’s been bugging me since the start of the Ashes, especially when assorted media authorities tell us it is without precedent in the history of man.

They are wrong.

Phil Hughes has the same batting technique as my 4 year old son.

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Somerset hoped to take advantage of Kieron Pollard-inflicted shell-shock when they played NSW Blues.  They didn’t want a backlash, and in the end got neither.  Instead they gave it away with careless batting early on, and got creamed as a result.

111/7 was never going to be enough to defend, but Somerset would have hoped to make NSW work harder for it.  Had the innings gone the full 20 overs, 200 would have been well on the cards.  It was unlikely that Somerset were going to qualify for the semi-finals, but they would have wanted to at least go down fighting.

But it’s been a real eye-opener for a lot of our guys. We were up against a world-class bowling attack.

said Justin Langer, highlighting something that county cricket does not have.

So that’s the end of English participation in the tournament.  What to make of the counties efforts?  We’ll give our verdict, written in the bloggers equivalent of a SuperOver:

Batting: Rubbish

Bowling: Ordinary

Sussex managed scores of 95/8 and 119/7, far below the standards they set in the T20 Cup.  Somerset were better, but still scored below par in all but their first match against Deccan Chargers, and even that was reliant on Alfonso Thomas batting at number 9.

I’m going to stick my neck out and say that the lack of classy bowling attacks in county cricket is the reason for the poor batting.  If teams are not used to facing that quality of opposition, then they will struggle to raise their game for anything more than a one-off.  In the same way that you see giantkillings in the FA Cup, you know that if those teams played Premiership opposition every week, they would be beaten out of sight most times.

Why are the bowling attacks in county cricket relatively poor?  Simply because they play too much, and are grooved into a steady holding pattern style – exactly as we saw from the Somserset and Sussex attacks in the CLT20.

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