World Twenty20 Final

It was always going to be a feisty affair India v Pakistan, but it also produced a great match, going down to the final over, with some great hitting, and some good bowling and plenty of wickets. India and Pakistan are the fiercest of rivals on the pitch, and this will have provided extra insentives going into the match.

Some tight bowling restricted India to 157 for 5, with Gambhir the mainstay of the Indian innings with 75. Unfortunately for India, Yuvraj was unable to fire today, and at the halfway point, I felt India were twenty runs light.

Most expected a tight finish, but at one stage, Pakistan were 70 odd for 6, losing star man Afridi for a first ball duck, and it looked as though India would stroll home. It was left to Misbah-Ul-Haq to rescue India, and he almost did it, bringing the equation down to 6 runs needed off 4 balls, but with just one wicket in hand. I don't know what made him attempt a flick over the keeper when having already hit 43, including several huge sixes, he didn't play proper cricket shots. The improvised stroke however was his downfall, but if he hadn't played that shot, I seem to think Pakistan would have won. However, it was India who came out on top, to win their first major trophy since the early eighties, and leave Pakistan deflated. Both teams can feel better about their efforts at this tournament, as opposed to results from the 50 over world cup earlier this year.

The Twenty20 world cup has proved a great success, in my humble opinion. The tournament has been fast paced, with lots of games in a short space of time, which helps add to the pace which is naturally derived from the high scoring nature of twenty20 cricket. Congratulations to the organisers for taking on board the points from this years world cup, which dragged on for so long it got boring in the end (infact I think it is still going on now)! It was also encouraging that a lot of the smaller cricketing nations seemed to have more competitive matches in this shorter format of the game, so hopefully they got more out of this tournament than they would from the 50 over version. It is also good to see 200 runs hit off 20 overs. Maybe this will help the scores of 50 over cricket continue to rise, which would help provide more interesting matches. Teams now know they can score consistently at 8, 9, or 10 runs an hour. Lets see them do it more consistently on the bigger stage!