In the year 1999, as Daryl Cullinan (South African batsman) was on his way to the wicket, Shane Warne told him he had been waiting for two years for another chance to humiliate him.

“Looks like you spent it eating,” Cullinan retorted.

In this day and age of competitive sport, cricket is hardly the gentleman’s game any more thanks to events of sledging, ball tampering, match fixing and the one off… (Er… more than just once, I think) sex scandals that had cricket, thanks to its colorful players (both on and off the field) in the news for all the wrong reasons.

Yet rather than being a pretentious moral tight-ass and judging these events, I think that it would be downright boring without these events as the maximum excitement you’d get from cricket in the old days was when people would watch a Test match at Lord’s over a cup of English tea, while reading the daily newspaper… only applauding in a subdued manner when a wicket was taken or a four or six was scored.

Once the one-day form of the game came into being, the sport has reached out to a cross-section of viewers as compared to the bourgeois types that cricket has appealed to in the past years. And now we have the shortest version of the game, the ICC World Twenty20 Cup which India won in South Africa in 2007.

Come June 5 2009, and the second edition of the Twenty20 tournament begins in England where India will defend its title for the first time in the history of the version of the game.

In reading an article where Tendulkar states that India will win the trophy again, I don’t think this is going to be too easy playing teams like Australia, England and South Africa especially where the ball seams, darts and does things that can leave batsmen in a state of confusion. The ICC World Cup 1999 was enough evidence, if county cricket isn’t enough! It hardly resembles the dead pitches in the Indian sub-continent! One factor that goes against India’s chances is this cricket overkill in the form of tournaments all year round in some form or the other with no rest whatsoever. Yet you cannot rule these guys out!
These cricket pitches are tailor-made for the likes of cricketing nations such as Australia & South Africa, where the art of fast bowling and explosive batting (watching the retired ‘Gilly’ bat in the recently concluded IPL was a once in a lifetime opportunity) is at its zenith. And with only twenty overs per innings, there’s very little room for error where the game operates on a simple hit-or-miss dichotomy. And these guys are the masters, if you’ve watched them play this version of the game! Stats mean nothing when it comes to pressure-cooker situations like this… and they know how to deliver!

England, on the other hand, have the home-advantage and that counts for a lot too, as the pitches, the crowd and a comforting sense of familiarity will boost their chances to win this version of the World Cup Twenty20. Yet a lot lies on Kevin Pieterson (who claims he isn’t good at this version of the game) and Andrew Flintoff who is yet to find his form back with both the bat and the ball.

In summary, the battle for supremacy at this cricketing extravaganza will go down to the wire between the Aussies and the South Africans, and with a rollicking 21 days of cricket ahead of us, let’s hope the Springboks give Ricky Ponting’s boys a run for their money.

So, in closing… watch this amazing string of six sixes in an over by Yuvraj Singh (India) against England at the last Twenty20 World Cup in South Africa:

Yuvrajs-six-sixes-against-England

And regardless of who wins or loses, prepare yourselves for the cricketing rollercoaster of your lives!