10 Things #24

GH on the women's T20 World Cup, Steve Smith's travails, and launches aplenty

1/ New Zealand have won the women’s T20 World Cup.

2/ Repeating, in a tone of incredulity: New Zealand have won the women’s T20 World Cup, beating South Africa off the back of Amelia Kerr’s delectable leg-breaks and crisp hitting.  Amazeballs. They had lost ten on the bounce leading into the tournament and were probably lucky spared another encounter with Australia, whom they have beaten only twice in the last six years.  But Australia were themselves vaguely listless, troubled by the heat, affected by injury: having coughed games up in 2018 and 2020, they finally did so in a knockout scenario.  I’m not sure that Shelly Nitschke didn’t fetishise depth either.  What’s the obsession with Georgia Wareham as a top order hitter? What’s the point of having Test double-centurion Annabel Sutherland at number eight if she hardly ever gets to bat?  Why has Ellyse Perry bowled once in her last ten games?  Are we at risk of entanglement in our embarrassment of riches?  In the UAE, New Zealand kept it simple, knew their best players and deployed them accordingly.  

3/ Some talk about run out off a deflection, some of the leg-side strangle.  But surely there is no worse way to be dismissed than not offering a shot, as Steve Smith did yesterday, to the bowling of Scott Boland.  I have seen more convincing three ball ducks too.  Smith jammed his first ball between bat and pad as it swerved back, which should have conveyed a hint of the impending danger; he also put on a turn that would have shamed a ten-year-old on being given out.

The early overs, at any rate, were a good advertisement for Sheffield Shield cricket, insofar as they put NSW’s batting under high-quality pressure at a Test match venue.  But Smith would have preferred to survive them, especially given the shortage of opportunities before the First Test and the increasingly strange vibe around his abortive sortie to the top of Australia’s order.

4/ The latest from Smith is that his resuming at number four was not a ‘request’ per se; rather was it something more indicative in response to the preference of others, specifically Usman Khawaja and Marnus Labuschagne, in which he acquiesced.  Weird: I wouldn’t have thought Test players so seasoned would require such reassurance, but there you are.  Is there anything else they’re worried about?  I think we should be told. Is Smith really so suggestible? The very fact that Smith remains so sensitive on this issue suggests something else at work: a more general sense of feeling misunderstood, harshly judged, and generally aslant the system.  More than five years on from Smith’s best, we are free to wonder whether he will scale such heights again. Let’s hope so.

5/ Sam Konstas: three out of five. Compact technique, quick hands, a steady head when he makes contact, a calm brow under pressure: tick.  Still, he could yesterday have done a better job getting off strike: early on, Sir Leonard Hutton reminded us, the best opening bats spend most of their time at the non-strikers’ end.  He also survived an early chance, played a poor shot to get out, and…well, did he look any better than Josh Philippe, who seems nowhere near anyone’s calculations and typecast as a white ball specialist?  

6/ Stat of the day: Philippe is one of nine current or proficient wicketkeepers of the top twenty of the first-class averages at the moment - the others are Carey, Inglis, Harper, Doran, Whiteman, Pierson, McDermott and Handscomb.  It’s a further reflection of how modern batters, in the age of T20, have begun cultivating wicketkeeping skills in order to expand their palette, although one wonders how hard their glovework is marked.  As Brad Haddin used to say: ‘People always say you’re keeping well when you’re making runs.’ It’s also possible for a player’s auxiliary skill to confuse their status.  Our recent podcast guest Tim Paine, who should know, argued that Josh Inglis is in Australia’s best six batters at the moment, and wondered whether we are looking past this because he is perceived as a keeper? Another timely hundred has since helped his case….

7/ I’m in Sydney for this and have just seen the Sydneyest name for a ship ever: it probably has its own maritime sidebar of shame and is captained by an Edgelord. 

8/ This is out next week. 

More anon….

9/ So is this….

…and I’m launching it at Readings in Carlton on Wednesday night.

10/ A further reminder of the biggest launch of all: next Friday, 1 November, Cricket Et Al goes electric.  Some content will remain free, but we’ll mostly be behind a paywall.  It’s Craig Serjeant’s birthday, so you won’t forget…..