Is Virat Kohli “due”? Jos Buttler misplaces Bowling Ali, a naughty pitch + more in our T20 World Cup semi-finals round-up

4 minute read

In a colossal miscarriage of justice, England (one win from four versus Test-playing nations) were knocked out of the T20 World Cup by unbeaten India after not playing anywhere near as well as them in the semi-final. India will meet the similarly-unbeaten South Africa, who triumphed over both Afghanistan and also another dogshit pitch.

Naughty pitch

Afghanistan got back to their hotel at 3am after their final group game, a full five hours before they needed to leave for the airport to travel for the semi-final.

It had been quite an intense game and no doubt the adrenaline was still flowing. We can’t imagine it was the best four hours sleep they’d all had.

They arrived in Trinidad the day before the semi-final. South Africa were already there. History suggests the more established team probably didn’t need that advantage, but Afghanistan have shown consistent disrespect for history in recent years. You never know. We could, at least, have ended up with a bit more of a game.

At least they didn’t have to play on a completely unpredictable pitch.

Oh, wait.

“It’s a naughty, naughty pitch,” said Steven Finn on Test Match Special. “Not fit for a World Cup semi-final.”

But yet that is precisely what they played.

Is Virat Kohli “due”?

Openers are your most important batters in T20 cricket. Virat Kohli occupies one of those positions for India. His scores so far this tournament go: 1, 4, 0, 24, 37, 0 and 9.

His latest dismissal was just abject filth; the kind of thing you see a child do when they first pick up a cricket bat; a premeditated diagonal hack across the line and the stumps splattered behind him.

Does Kohli deserve a place in India’s T20 side? On current form, no.

Given his typical rate of scoring relative to many of his peers, there’s even a case for saying that he could become even more of a liability were he to ‘find form’ and hang around longer because he’d sentence his side to a few more overs of his presence.

At the same time, is he a bad batter? No, he is not. In the pantheon of batters who aren’t worth their place in the side, Virat Kohli barely registers.

There are dubious selections and there are dubious selections. Inclusion of one of the finest limited-overs batters of all time isn’t what you’d call a real stinker of a decision. Kohli has enough ability and expertise that it’s by no means impossible that he’ll play a defining innings in the final.

We’re not sure we could cope with the ‘form is temporary’, ‘big match player’, ‘delivered when it mattered’, gushing post-hoc rationalisation were that to happen. But he is “due“…

Misplaced Bowling Ali

The second semi-final was played on a pitch that favoured India over England – but that was always likely, simply because they’re the better side. Given the right conditions, the two teams can certainly qualify as ‘evenly-matched’ but the rest of the time it’s unquestionably advantage India.

That’s what being better is: a pretty important advantage.

The Providence pitch was widely predicted to offer a bit of assistance to spin bowlers and while we can easily see why England declined to give Tom Hartley his debut in a World Cup semi-final, one other decision was a little less comprehensible.

England began this tournament with what you might call ‘plenty of spin bowling options’ with Will Jacks, Liam Livingstone and Moeen Ali supplementing the eternally necessary Adil Rashid. At some point, Jacks was deemed expendable – quite possibly because pretty much every other batter is also right-handed – but that still left Livingstone and the Moeen incarnation we like to call Bowling Ali.

Given India picked three spinners and the fact Rashid and Livingstone barely conceded a run a ball, we assumed the latter was for some reason unfit to bowl.

Apparently not. Jos Buttler just… what… forgot?

“Our two guys bowled well, but in hindsight I should have bowled Moeen in that innings, the way that spin was playing,” said Buttler afterwards.

It’s a bit odd that conclusion should require hindsight given that Buttler had seen (a) the pitch, (b) the opposition’s bowling line-up, and (c) how well his spinners were performing – all while he was still making bowling changes.

The more important point is probably that it just wouldn’t have mattered. Axar Patel, Kuldeep Yadav and Ravindra Jadeja are a better spin triumvirate than anything England could have put together, so all that might have changed had Moeen got through a few overs is the margin of victory.

What’s next?

The World Cup final innit. Sign up for email to hear our take on it (a few days later).