WT20 throws curious curveballs

Times Media

TELFORD VICE, Johannesburg

JP Duminy and Dale Steyn rocketed up the charts with their explosive performances in SA’s World T20 match against New Zealand in Chittagong on Monday, and they are in unusual company.

Going into yesterday’s matches, Duminy’s unbeaten 86 against the Kiwis made him the tournament’s third-highest runscorer behind the Netherlands’ Tom Cooper and Pakistani Umar Akmal. Another Dutchman, Stephan Myburgh, and Cooper have hit the most sixes in the WT20 so far: nine and eight respectively.

Steyn’s 4/17 put him level with Bangladesh’s Shakib Al Hasan and Hong Kong’s Nadeem Ahmed on six wickets - one behind leading scalper Ahsan Malik, another Netherlander.

A trio of Bangladeshis, Sabbir Rahman, Mahmudullah and Shakib, own the best economy rates.

The Netherlands know the high of putting up the tournament’s biggest total so far - 193/4 against Ireland in Sylhet on Friday - and the low of being shot out for the lowest score in T20 international history: 39 in 63 balls by Sri Lanka on Monday.

A curveball amid all these straight stats is that - unlike major teams like SA - the Dutch, the Bangladeshis and Hong Kong played in the qualifying matches that preceded the main event, which started on Friday.

So while Duminy and Steyn have played in two games each, Cooper, Myburgh and Malik have had twice as many opportunities to shine. Ahmed, Shakib, Rahman and Mahmudullah have had three.

Another quirk is that Cooper is from Wollongong in deepest, darkest New South Wales. Myburgh was born in Pretoria and played for KwaZulu-Natal Inland in SA’s amateur competitions. What price Malik is from the subcontinent? Not on your Netherlands - he hails from Rotterdam.

Eleven of the 15 members of the Dutch squad are foreign-born - from Perth to Sydney, to Christchurch, to Johannesburg, Cape Town and Vanderbijlpark, to Punjab.

But don’t expect the South Africans to take this rag-tag orange army anything accept seriously when they clash in Chittagong tomorrow.

“The days of big nations rocking up and thinking there are easy games of T20 cricket are gone,” Faf du Plessis said after his SA team came back from the dead to beat New Zealand by two runs on Monday.

“I’ve seen it so many times. I remember the England-Ireland game (in Bangalore during the 2011 World Cup) in which Ireland played a fantastic game of cricket (and won by three wickets).

“The shorter the game, the more opportunities one or two guys can have to take it away.”

Perhaps SA, who need to win tomorrow to keep their bid to reach the semi-finals in good shape, should see their opponents as those individuals rather than as a team.

That way, they would be in sharper focus as a collection of South Africans, Australians, New Zealanders and a Pakistani with points to prove to the countries that let them get away.