For 24 hours now, Andrew Leonard’s commentary in the last over of the Nepal-England game has been resonating in my head. The game was incredibly tense, with an associate nation poised to pull of the first major upset of the World Cup.
10 off 6.
And Leonard starts talking about a mountainous province of Nepal that really likes cricket.
Lokesh Bam is on 35 (15), and is scoring a boundary every 2.5 balls. In the last three overs, he’s pulled off a miracle. The associate team looked down and out with 56 needed off 24 balls. Now they’re favourites because Bam hammered Jofra Archer and Luke Wood into submission despite wickets falling on the other end.
10 off 6.
And Leonard starts talking about how Karan KC, the tailender on the bowler’s end, has played such a big role in popularising cricket in Nepal.
What the hell is he talking about?
Scotland v Italy is very clearly a football game. They’ve got centuries of entwined footballing history. Even today, many of the best Scottish players ply their trade in Italy rather than just driving a few miles south to England.
Today, they faced off in India’s home of football, Kolkata, but were padded up to play cricket. Funnily enough, the two T20 sides have played each other thrice in the last three years – their footballing peers haven’t played each other in a decade.
Italy actually knocked Scotland out of the 2026 T20 World Cup qualifiers last summer. Last month, Scotland’s George Munsey – who scored 84 (54) and took four (!) catches today – was getting a friendly tune-up at Italy coach Dougie Brown’s academy.
Obviously, this was all before the Mustafissure saga that brought Scotland back into the tournament, and back into Italy’s group. A chance for Karmic retribution. The underdog Scots get to take on the big bad Italians with all their imported Australian stars (plus JJ Smuts for some insane reason).
Except, that’s not enough narrative or context to actually turn on the game.
If you’re a subscriber, you know that we write match reports in analytical depth, rather than as just pointless regurgitations of the highlights. Not just who won, but how they won. Not just who top scored, but why the opposition couldn’t get them out. Not just who picked up the most wickets, but what tactics were implemented to do so.
I came into today’s game with the same mindset; analyse the game, the players, the tactics, the field settings. And, almost immediately, I realised that there was a fundamental problem. The Italians didn’t seem to know what the hell they were doing.
They bowled first, and they struggled in the powerplay. Their bowling lines and lengths didn’t correspond to their field settings at all. Their opening pacer – Ali Hasan – was getting wicked turn on his off-cutters to the left-handed Munsey, but they had no one at slip or third for the accidental edge.
Unsurprisingly, Munsey scored two back-to-back 4s via uncontrolled edges to the third man boundary in the first over.
Similarly, Italy’s other powerplay pacers just kept bowling in the arc to both the Scottish openers, and kept getting hit through the covers. Their fielders always seemed a couple of yards away from where they should’ve been. Shots that could’ve been stopped instead ran away to the ropes, just past the despairing dives of the Italians.
Additionally, their matchup choices were weird for a team that beat this Scottish side less then a year ago.
They tried bowling spin to the Scots after the powerplay, but both openers strike at over 140 versus the bowling type. Worse still, they bowled the wrong spinner to the wrong batter – JJ Smuts’ SLA was up against the batter with a 152 SR against the variation, while Munsey faced the Italian offie (a variety he scores at 148.8 against).
And then the comms team mentioned something that clicked things into place in my head. Italy apparently doesn’t have a single full-turf pitch. It doesn’t matter that half their team are imports who grew up in cricketing countries, nor that they have a (relatively) star-studded coaching staff.
They just might not know these pitches well enough.
They might be getting their lines and lengths wrong because they didn’t have enough experience to accurately guess what the ball was going to do. Their fielders might be slightly in the wrong spots because the Italians were slightly off in their calculations of how the pitch would play.
The European qualifier last summer was played at The Hague. While exact details on the game are not available, all public information indicates that the venue uses a hybrid pitch. It’s the only time the two sides have met on anything less than a 100% turf pitch, and the only time Italy have beaten Scotland.
Except, this is all an unprovable conspiracy theory.
Everybody and their dog knew about Virat Kohli’s fifth stump weakness in Tests.
Every pacer in the world would repeatedly bowl the same ball to the King, and would eventually be rewarded with a desperate shot that edged to slip. And everybody following, in the ground, on TV, via ball-by-ball commentary, knew it was coming.
And so, we all collectively groan. And self-importantly lament his inability to fix his shot. “If I can see the problem, why can’t this multi-millionaire whose entire job is to hit cricket balls learn how to hit this particular cricket ball?!”
That’s also the appeal though.
Knowing what to look for when you watch, and collectively celebrating or commiserating about the outcome you could see from miles away. There’s a special joy in being able to predict the next ball, which is only compounded if you can accurately guess how the batter plays it.
Tell me how Abhishek Sharma will tonk you all around the ground, until you bowl a wide ball outside off pitched in the 6-10 metre range, and his SR drops to 72. The exact numbers don’t matter.
What matters is the pursuit of perfection with that knowledge; how many bowlers can bowl the same ball again and again – all while Sharma scores 6s every time you miss – until you get him out? Watching that pursuit is what provides so much tension as a cricket fan.
The depth and breadth of cricket’s possibilities – and getting lost down the spiral of those thoughts – are what makes it so appealing; what if Kohli resisted that fifth stump delivery? Maybe we could cause an Indian top order collapse (to say 77-6 in 12.4 overs), if we could just get Sharma out early?
However, there is an obvious problem. What if you can’t read or predict anything that’s going to happen on the pitch? What if the players and positions just make no sense to you? What if you have no context at all for what you’re watching?
Worse still – what if the entire cricketing ecosystem makes it impossibly hard to gain that context?
In late 2022, I was in Melbourne for a cousin’s wedding. Apart from my mom and her siblings, no one in our family follows cricket so there wasn’t any discussion about the ongoing World Cup. The closest I got to a cricket chat was with a local on a five-minute tram ride through the city centre.
So, when we found ourselves with ten last-minute tickets to the India-Pakistan game, we didn’t have enough takers. In the end, we convinced an Ecuadorian wedding attendee to come along; “Hey, it’s live sports and beer. How bad can it be?”
And so he came along. And we spent most of the game either explaining cricket’s idiotic rules to him – “why six balls to an over though?” – or going on beer runs. We were sat next to a bunch of Pakistani fans and most of the conversation was about what they had done in town, and what they recommended we should do.
We were losing anyway, may as well go on another beer run. And then Kohli hit a couple of 4s. We were still losing, but the beer run could wait. Then he hit that six. And another. Ugh, Hardik is out. Wait, that’s another 6. And a no-ball? And a wide! Oh shit, DK’s gone and got himself stumped. Wait, Ashwin, why would you leave that…IT’S A WIDE?!
The stands were going mental. A couple of Aussie wedding attendants who’d come with us had decided to side with our Pakistani neighbours, and every single ball was a rollercoaster of emotions. By the exhausting, exhilarating end, we were all just yelling and jumping and hugging each other.
That game – and the World Cup – came up constantly for the rest of the trip. Our Ecuadorian buddy was over the moon, and excitedly looking up the next fixture with available tickets. He completely ignored my warnings about South Africa v Bangladesh being an unpalatable second course.
It didn’t matter. He had enough context. He had acquired a taste for cricket.
This is supposed to be a match reaction to the Italy v Scotland game. So far, I’ve offered one conspiracy theory about a hybrid pitch, and two separate analogies about Virat Kohli. The jokes write itself; everything is about India in the modern game.
The game itself fizzled out a bit. Scotland were imperious with bat and ball, unsurprising given their massive difference off the pitch. The Italian Cricket Federation don’t have a single turf, while Cricket Scotland have four ODI venues and just announced a £40 million boost from the government.
The Italians were quick learners though. Remember Ali Hasan? The pacer who gave away two 4s off bad lines and poor field settings in the first over? He conceded 10 runs in that over, but just 11-1 in his last three.
His last over – Italy’s 19th – was particularly spectacular. He bowled the same ball again and again – wide and off, drifting away, with a deep backward point in place for a wild cut. A double, a single and two dots were followed by the most predictable wicket in the world.
You knew what the bowler wanted to do. You knew how the batter was going to try to respond. It was the lion circling a gazelle. You can jump around and swing wildly, but eventually I’m going to get you. I just need to keep my cool and stick to the plan.
Ali gave me context, and it made a difference to my viewing experience. I knew what he was doing, I knew that he knew what to do. The only question was whether he could pull it off, and that tension suddenly had me on high alert for one over.
Context. I’ve said the word six times already, not including the title. And you thought I was talking about Kohli too much!
It sometimes feels like trying to follow cricket online is like wading through a sea of clickbait trash. It’s why I started this newsletter in the first place, and why so many of you follow it religiously; it’s a way to enjoy the game without having to hear about all the superfluous bullshit that kills that joy.
However, that theory only applies to the concentric circles at the centre of the cricketing universe; India, the Big Three, the 20th century Test nations, the 21st century Test nations.
You know why I can’t figure out whether the last Scotland v Italy game was on a natural turf or a hybrid turf? Because there isn’t any reporting on it. Neither Cricbuzz, ESPNcricinfo or Wisden – the curators of our sport – even have a match report on a game that decided which teams would be at this year’s World Cup.
I wanted to check how the Scottish batters played last time, but I couldn’t find comprehensive highlights. I wanted to answer how Italy won last time, but there is no information. Hell, even the strike rates I mentioned above? They’re from Cricmetric, a third party source whose data I can’t even begin to actually verify.
I read through every piece of coverage about Italy and Scotland before the game to be prepped. I know that Italian bowler Thomas Draca wears Dennis Lillee’s gold chain. I know that JJ Smuts has never set foot on Italian soil. I don’t know much about Scotland because, well, the media didn’t have time with the last minute change.
I do know that none of this makes me give a shit about either Italy or Scotland. I know that even though I was watching as closely as possible, and could write five different analyses about what happened in today’s game, I didn’t care about it most of the time.
Until Ali Hasan gave me a reason to care. He gave me someone to root for, because he made the game about the game – not about who was playing. He was chasing perfection by bowling the same ball again and again and again. From giving up stupid 4s to forcing the wicket of Scotland’s captain through sheer persistence – it’s not a narrative arc I can resist.
That’s the big secret about cricket. It’s a stupidly watchable game.
Whether it’s an all-time match at the MCG or kids in a local park with a tennis ball, cricket can be fun to watch for the game – and not just for the name on the jersey.
It’s a hidden contradiction in how cricket is marketed too.
The millions spent on advertisements featuring Kohli don’t build his brand as much as that moment when the ball jumps up on the fifth line. You can see him itching to swing at it. The pressure is building, and the King needs to reassert his dominance.
But, occasionally, he lets it go. Sometimes, he does it again. And again. Over after over. Session after session. Day after day. And you can’t help but fall in love with someone who not only dares to dream of perfection, but actually achieves it more often than not.
Which brings us full circle back to Andrew Leonard and his seemingly inane facts about Nepal. The game was already tense. 10 off 6, if I haven’t mentioned it yet. The underdog beating the inventor is already a strong narrative, and most commentators would’ve leant heavily into the moment.
But Leonard pulls back. Instead of focussing on the granular – the 3rd ball, the 4th ball, the 5th ball. Should they have run? Is getting a 6 with the set batter easier than getting a 4 with a tailender? – Leonard zooms out.
As Sam Curran and Harry Brook have endless discussions between each ball, Leonard sees his chance to feed our growing, collective fandom. He has years of knowledge about Nepali cricket and he shares it. He took the game from a schadenfreude-esque glee at England’s potential loss, to a look at the perfection it had taken Nepal to even reach this point. Suddenly, I only cared about what this game could mean for The Cardiac Kids.
He gave me context, and it made me invested in the Nepali team’s journey. Maybe we could trying doing that with the other associate nation games too?