2007 Cricket World Cup Final
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Contents |
The Buildup
After approximately 23 years of "exciting" Super Eight "matches", the 2007 Cricket World Cup finally reached the finality of the final game. Namely, the final. Well, there were some semi-finals first, but they were just repeats of two Super Eight games that someone might have missed the results of the first time around.
The whole shambolic money-grabbing exercise limped to a predictably silly conclusion in the final, played out between deigned tournament winners Australia and deigned tournament runners-up Sri Lanka.
An early bout of rain meant that each team was given 38 overs as opposed to 50 for each innings.
The Aussie Innings aka "Fetch!"
The Aussies spent their 38 overs proving that, though the Sri Lankans may have earned their place in the final, the gap between first and second in the world was slightly wider than the Pacific Ocean.
Runs flew to every bit of the boundary, and had they been allowed to full 50 overs, a score of well in excess of 400 would have been easily attained.
Adam Gilchrist, their mongrel-faced wicket-keeper, top scored with 149 runs off 104 balls. England fans were reminded that their team had struggled to score that many between them, in 50 overs, on more than one occasion this tournament.
The Sri Lankan Innings aka "Its cold and dark and wet and I wanna go home."
The game was effectively over. The Sri Lankans lost an early wicket, and never looked like they were going to chase it down, but towards the end of their innings, another rain break precipitated glorious chaos.
The delay necessitated the use of the baffling Duckworth-Lewis method to calculate Sri Lanka's revised total. A breakdown in communication between just about everyone meant that not even the batsmen were now sure how much they needed to score to win, and off how many overs.
Not that it mattered, as the umpires ordered the players off for the charmingly esoteric cricketing call of "bad light" with three overs left to play.
At the call of bad light, the Aussies rejoyced, assuming that they'd won. The organisers brought out the tacky sponsor-bedecked podium for Picky Ronting to stand on, accept the trophy, and conduct a post match interview by squinting at the interviewer and saying "look" a lot, and the whole thing seemed to have reached a denoument.
This was fine, until the umpires pointed out that actually, even though there was no real way Sri Lanka could score however many runs in the 3 remaining overs, the match was still not technically over, and everyone would have to return the following morning to dutifully finish up and make their overs sheets balance. Which, technically, was probably right.
So now the fans were confused. Not only was it too dark to really see anything, now the match had reached a position where the team that was going to win hadn't won yet, but it was too dark for them to win tonight, and the other team still wasn't sure what they had to do to stop them winning.
Eventually, in truly embarrassing circumstances, the Aussies dutifully bowled a further three overs to the batsmen in pitch darkness. For safety reasons, they couldn't bowl full speed, so the Sri Lankans blindly fished around with their bat in the darkness, hoping to make some contact with a dibbly-dobbly 20mph off-spin delivery that the Aussies were feathering down to them.
Another wicket may have fallen, but frankly nobody was really sure what was happening anymore. Eventually, the umpire somehow deduced that the full amount of overs had been bowled, and declared Australia the winners.
The Aftermath
Joy for the Aussies, who wrapped up the foregone conclusion of a tournament that felt like it had started before some of the players had even been born.
Sadness for cricket, as the rest of the sporting world laughed at it's inability to do anything properly.
The Future
The 2011 World Cup will take place in the Guinness production facility, and will take the form of a drinking contest.
Tragically, the ICC fear the tickets they have sent would be for the wrong month and that nobody will turn up, proving that they are unable to organise the aforementioned piss-up in a brewery.
