Champions Trophy: Summary

Congratulations India on winning probably the last of its kind Champions Trophy. India deserved to win this tournament and so did they.

My impression about this whole tournament has been odd. First thing I felt was there should be a big "NO" to any big tournaments in England. England is synonymous with rains. You can not imagine any tournament happening there with out rain interruption. More than half of the matches were rain interrupted and their results were decided by the funny Duckworth-Lewis rules to such an extent that I renamed the trophy to Duckworth-Lewis trophy. 

Most of the matches in the tournament were reduced to around 20 overs match. Even yesterday's Final had to be reduced to 20 over a side match. It is absolutely ridiculous to decide about a one-day  match in 20 overs match. The difference between a One day Cricket match and 20:20 match is the kind of temperament required in one day match to stay on the wicket for 50 overs and still score runs at a quick rate. If you are reducing the match to 20 overs, there is no room to judge that temperament. With the outcome of such a match of reduced over you can not justify the selection of a one day match Champion. The ICC even don't wanted to allot an extra day to play Finals had their been no chance of play on Sunday. I started wondering why they took so much efforts of organizing the tournament. They could have just rolled dice and decided the Champion. The matches in this tournament were actually no different than that.

In spite of all the facts, I felt India was the only team that deserved to win and yes, England was the only team that deserved to appear in Finals along with India. I was wondering if rest of the Countries sent their secondary team for this tournament. Teams of New Zealand, Australia, South Africa, Pakistan were nothing but pathetic. I blame D/L rules for allowing South Africa to be in Semi Finals. They were not that good. West Indies should have made it to Semis. I am pretty sure they would have given better fight to England and might even have made it to Finals. But thanks to D/L rules, England got easy way.

Indian team stood out of the league. They looked too good to be with other teams. The way they won their league matches and Semi Finals, not to forget the practice matches, they looked in better shape. Except for New Zealand they played and defeated all the teams. They defeated England in the Finals yesterday in reduced 20:20 over match. I am not sure if the result would have been the same had it been a complete match. But India surely looked a better team than England and that's why it was the Favorite to win the Trophy.

I did not enjoyed the tournament. A tournament like this should be played to the full extent before declaring a Champion. But what the hell, India is probably the last Champions Trophy Winner. Congratulations India.

Champions Trophy or Duckworth-Lewis trophy

First round of Champions trophy is almost over. If I remember correct except for the initial few games, fate of all the games are governed by Duckwoth-Lewis rules.

First of all I feel England should never organize any such event. England is known for rain the whole year. One can not escape it. Unlike India where IPL matches organized over two months went through pretty much smoothly with very little rain interruption, any such plan is very difficult. That is why, rules like Duckworth-Lewis come into existence. These rules who try to lend a helping hand to predict the targets in rain effected matches have evolving over the years and recently have settled down with Duckworth-Lewis which again is evolving all the team. 

Frankly speaking I do not understand the rule at all and I have also not met personally  anybody who can explain in simple words understandable to a common Cricket fan, how a particular score is arrived at, to be use as  target. Since it is being implemented for so many years, I guess it is doing a fair work, but I can't understand its functioning and so I don't enjoy such matches. On the other hand, I personally could not justify many of its targets and kept wondering about the kind of statistics that is implemented to reach the target. Just for example in yesterday's match, which was reduced to 40 overs each between India and Pakistan, even before rain interrupted the match, Pakistan was down by three wickets and when the match was restarted over the time, they were all out at 165 with out playing all forty over. Still, the target was changed from 165 to 167 for India. Difficult to figure out for me. Later on, in the second inning, rain again interrupted the match that reduced the target to 102 runs from 22 overs. Which is pretty much like playing twenty-20. If overs are reduced, target is reduced, number of overs a bowler can ball is reduced, shouldn't the number of batsman allowed to play also reduced? In a case of big target set in lesser number of balls, batting team has a liberty to try anything to reach the target. Their Batsmen will take any kind of risk to achieve the target. But Bowling team don't have that liberty because the most of the main bowlers surely exhaust  pretty good number in their quota in the initial overs itself. In yesterday's match, India needed some 40 odd runs in 10 overs after D/L rule was employed which is a kind of slog over situation in new circumstance. But by that time Pakistan's main bowlers had already exhausted their overs and hardly had one over left in their kitty. This doesn't feel good.

Some how I find it difficult to enjoy matches where D/L rules are employed. It brings in so much of manipulation in the game that it takes away all the fun that comes in normal matches. I feel may be D/L rules try to give equal opportunity to both the playing teams, but in reality, it seems to be favoring one team. That is why I am not enjoying Champions trophy and I won't really believe any verdict of D/L ruled match. I feel WestIndies should have been in semi finals and not South Africa. But that is not the case. Thanks to D/L rules, SA made it to semi finals which changes all the equations. Who ever wins this last Champions trophy possibly won't be able to enjoy the real excitement of being a winner.