2 minute read
It ended as world tournament exits so often do: with a day of drizzle in a game they weren’t even playing. England sacked their coach after losing in the semi finals of the last T20 World Cup. Australia failed to make it that far in either of the previous two editions and this time they’ve gone one worse by being knocked out in the group stages. The big dead rubber against Oman is on Friday. We can’t wait to see how they go.
How did this happen?
The boilover against Zimbabwe stands out as the ‘upset’ but Australia’s loss to Sri Lanka is the one we can’t help but marvel at. We’re not sure we’ve seen such total commitment to self destruction since we read the instructions on how to commit seppuku with a frisbee on the Real Ultimate Power website in the early 2000s. (Step 1: Get a frisbee from the store or friend. Step 2: Clean the frisbee…)
To recap, Australia were 104-0 off 8.2 overs, batting first – a period during which Sri Lanka also lost their best bowler to a hamstring injury after he’d only bowled four balls. You need to lose pretty much every single subsequent moment to cede a T20 match from that position and that seems doubly unlikely when you’ve won pretty much every single moment up until that point. But that is nevertheless what Australia achieved. Quite the feat. It’s a game of four quarters, as no-one ever says.
This is of course not something a team can achieve on its own. Sri Lanka deserve huge credit for what took place in Pallekele. At the same time… this is not something a team can achieve on its own. Australia more than did their bit.
It takes two to tango, apparently, but this was no tango. This was one partner doing backflips and one-handed chair flare while the other just flops about like the titular character from Weekend at Bernie’s having invited Marcus Stoinis to open the bowling for the second match in a row.