Put out more flags. Dust the cobwebs from your blue and yellow BCCI-issue jesters hat. Pencil the words Pakistan Zindabad! across the plastic George Cross on the sill of your smudged white van. Its coming home. Its coming home. The near-defunct ICC Champions Trophy (2017 edition) is coming home. Just not, as it happens, to England.
Instead Sundays bravura final between the imperial might of India and Pakistans rag-tag band of rebels looks an appropriate conclusion to a tournament that has been dominated on the field of play by teams from the subcontinent and in the stands by the energy of the British south Asian diaspora.
Over 18 days of early summer, pitches have increasingly gripped and stopped, demanding a level of craft that narrowed the field decisively in the semi-finals. At the end of which a meeting of crickets fiercest neighbourly rivals seems a fitting showpiece, a final that has already seen tickets changing hands for £500 a head, and which promises to bring parts of its host nation to a stop on Sunday afternoon.
On a purely sporting level this is a meeting of wonderfully contrasting teams. Pakistan have been energised by a transfusion of fresh blood after the invertebrate collapse against the same opponents at Edgbaston. India have looked the classiest, most obviously state-of-the-art team in the tournament. It is also a final that embodies the wider weight of interest in the sport, and indeed within large parts of Britains steadily ossifying cricket base. The England and Wales Cricket Board has been desperate to use this tournament to sell cricket back to the people. Well, it turns out plenty of British citizens will be gripped by Sundays final. It just happens quite a few of them will not be particularly detained by Englands absence.
It has been a curious tournament generally. The fast-twitch format looks spot-on as ever, with eight competent teams, no rest days and an unforgiving tautness to every round of matches. The Oval has been the usual riot of mob-handed consumption, English crickets own relentlessly whirring light refreshments-based ATM. Cardiff has had its problems. The reasons for sticking to three grounds are clear enough. But it might have been better to include a northern venue.
In the event this has been a tournament that peaked with a tight last round to the group stage, and which has dished up plenty of fine, measured batting, but a dearth of thrilling finishes. There has been genuinely quick bowling from Adam Milne, Pat Cummins, Mitchell Starc and the slingy hamstring-stretch obsessive Rubel Hossain, and some fine fast-bowling moments: Mark Woods snorter to get rid of Kane Williamson; Hasan Alis beauty that turned Wayne Parnell inside out; Starc terrifying a Bangladeshi tail that seemed to be sidling off towards the pavilion five overs early. But no really devastating spell stands out, barring perhaps the least convincing six-for of Josh Hazlewoods fine career to date.
The tournament has lacked any outstanding spells of spin bowling, settling instead for some canny work on grippy pitches and Imran Tahir whipping his way through Sri Lanka, his four wickets interspersed with a series of wildly exciting on-field auditions for the world 60-metre heats in Kingston next year.
The most garish batting, the only real moment of pure jam, came when India smashed Pakistan around at Edgbaston, where Virat Kohli and Hardik Pandya brought a little whiff of Indian Premier League glitz. Shakib Al-Hasan and Mahmudullah provided the partnership of the tournament, carving their way to New Zealands total in Cardiff, high water mark of a breakthrough tournament for Bangladesh. Elsewhere Ben Stokes scored a wonderful hundred against Australia, then suffered the ignominy of Cardiff, one of the most painfully tense boundary-free 30-odds youre likely to see in a semi-final from a gun attacking batsman, and the kind of knock that would have seen Jonathan Trott burnt in effigy a few years back, or at least chided tersely on the internet.
The greatest waste of everyones time was Australias elimination by rain at the Oval, four overs short of a completed game in a day-nighter that could have been all but done and dusted before the skies closed in as a morning game. Still, it wouldnt be an ICC trophy without farcical scenes and camera shots of heads in hands through the dressing room window somewhere along the line.
At the end of which Pakistan remain the real surprise. Sarfraz Ahmeds team present an entertainingly baffling lesson in team building, a total contrast to Indias visceral powerhouse and Englands carefully-nannied three-year plan. This is the most hurled-together group of finalists, key players arriving from off stage midway through the tournament, their most potent looking bowler injured for the semi-final, and still toting around a player like the apparently indispensable Mohamed Hafeez, inherited like a chipped gravy boat by successive captains, and still lurking quietly on the sideboard trying not to get in anyones way.
A Pakistan victory would be a fine underdog story, but India have an ominous air of destiny about them. Shikhar Dhawan, Rohit Sharma and Kohli make up three of the top five tournament run scorers. If Pakistan can bowl first, get through that top five and make a slightly bits and pieces middle order bat for 30 overs they might just have a chance. Although not much of one. And dependent, of course, on forgetting that theyre Pakistan, up against India, in an ICC competition. As for England, the tournament provided a reminder that for all the hopeful gloss of the broadcasters the players even Joe Root, routinely lumped in with the very best batsmen in the world are still to prove themselves really top class in this kind of cricket. As a New England 1.0, a first shot at re-gearing into unbound adrenal entertainers, this team has been a fun thing to follow.
What was missing at the end were other gears, game management, the nous to take a difficult batting innings by the scruff and guide it to safety. Stokes, Jos Buttler and Eoin Morgan were excused domestic duties to learn these skills in the rarified buzz of the IPL. In an engaging paradox, the best preparation for the slow Cardiff pitch that baffled the top six might have been an extended early season in England.
Finally there is the issue of impact and legacy. This is an easy one. There isnt any. Harsh perhaps, but there is no evidence of any kind that the nation has used these 18 days to re-clasp its faded summer sport to its bosom. Timing is obviously an issue. Sport has seemed an irrelevance at times in the shadow of some horrific events elsewhere. But then the tournament also doesnt seem to have been marketed with any real energy in the cities where its taking place.
As is the pattern now, the final will be a triumph for those who already like cricket, who are pre-bound to the game. The spirit will be excellent, the noise levels high. And cricket in England will continue on its path towards something like golf status, a sport that happens for the few, in lovely places, with plenty of carefully guarded resources; but whose mass appeal resides, for now, elsewhere.
The Article First Appeared In Guardian
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