Insomniacs sleep on it (7 June 1999)
The 10,000 people who purchased tickets for this match before knowing which two teams would be involved did not exactly feel like Lottery winners yesterday
07-Jun-1999
7 June 1999
Insomniacs sleep on it
Martin Johnson
The 10,000 people who purchased tickets for this match before knowing
which two teams would be involved did not exactly feel like Lottery
winners yesterday. It was cold and wet, and when you've forked out
£60 in the hope of watching Shoaib rushing in at Tendulkar, the sight
of Gavin Larsen trundling away to Murray Goodwin is hardly calculated
to create a crush at the turnstiles. Not to get in, anyway.
In fact, one-day cricket's detractors would be able to suggest with
some justification that any format that involves Larsen and Chris
Harris bowling in tandem has got to be deeply flawed. In the unlikely
event of New Zealand ever running out of sheep to count, insomniacs
can always fall back on a video of this match, which continues today.
Fodder in a Test match becomes indispensable dibbly-dobbling in this
type of cricket.
No game in this World Cup has been entirely charisma free, although
this one was just about as close as it gets. While the likes of Lara
and Tendulkar are barely able to open their front doors without being
blinded by a battery of photographers' flashbulbs, most players in
the New Zealand and Zimbabwe squads would not be recognised by a film
developer at their local Boots.
However, unsung players have a habit of making an impact on World
Cups, and the odds on Lance Klusener and Rahul Dravid arriving at
this stage of the competition as the most productive batsmen were as
long as Geoff Allott being the leading wicket-taker. New Zealand,
though, will have to win the competition if Allott is to be
remembered for anything other than the most protracted duck (101
minutes) in Test match history.
Allott bowls his left-armers at a reasonably brisk medium pace,
although the speed gun - unsponsored and unused until this stage of
the tournament - once measured him at 91mph yesterday. All that needs
to be said about that is if the West Yorkshire Constabulary use
anything similar on motorway radar checks, the courts will be full of
Robin Reliant drivers charged with doing 130.
Another nondescript bowler used by New Zealand yesterday was Nathan
Astle, primarily an opening batsman but whose value in this type of
cricket was illustrated by his spell of one for 25 in nine overs. His
bowling looks innocuous enough, and David Lloyd (the former England
coach now enjoying half the pressure for twice the money in the Sky
commentary box) became very animated when asked about Astle's bowling
on England's last tour of New Zealand.
"If Nathan Astle's a bowler, my backside's a fire engine," said
Lloyd, which may have been a somewhat obscure saying from Accrington,
and which entirely baffled his audience, even though there was a
general belief that Bumble was not paying a compliment.
He certainly wasn't too complimentary in Bulawayo after England
"murdered" the opposition to a draw, after which Zimbabwe went on to
win the one-day series on that tour 3-0. Their record against England
in one-day internationals is 5-2, and they, effectively, took
England's expected place in the Super Six.
It is, however, one of the more curious aspects of this competition
that Zimbabwe can be on the verge of elimination one minute, and
virtually through to the last four the next. It is, in fact, absurd
to think that it is possible for Zimbabwe to lose all three of their
Super Six matches and still reach the semi-finals.
Whoever wins today, it is perhaps just as well that these two sides
are providing an antidote to a World Cup of unparallelled allure.
The organisers' blurb yesterday described Yorkshire (on the back of a
television programme about vets) as "UK's Hollywood". Thank God for
Zimbabwe and New Zealand. There's only so much glamour a cricket
lover can take.
Source :: The Electronic Telegraph