Posted by Imagine missing a World Cup because you literally didn’t manage to get on the plane in time. Imagine how you’d feel about that tournament. You could forgive Shimron Hetmyer for perhaps feeling a smidgeon of relief that Ireland absolutely battered the West Indies today, knocking them out of the tournament.
“All right Mrs Hetmyer. Is your Shimron playing out today?”
“No, he’s not. He’s grounded because he keeps missing the flights that the West Indies Cricket Board book for him.”
If you don’t know the story, Hetmyer asked for his flight to Australia for this tournament to be rescheduled due to family reasons.
The WICB found him another flight, two days later, and on the morning of the flight he told West Indies Director of Cricket Jimmy Adams that he wasn’t going to get to the airport in time. The Windies dropped him.
It feels like we’re missing a fair bit of detail in that story, but we can all surely empathise with the position Hetmyer ultimately found himself in. All your team-mates are off to play a World Cup. You thought you were going to be there. What if they win? Imagine missing out on that because you missed your bloody flight.
Fortunately, Ireland took pity on him and annihilated the West Indies, ending their involvement in the tournament.
Leg-spinner Gareth Delany’s 3-16 kept the Windies to 146-5, which didn’t seem anywhere near enough. Paul Stirling, Andrew Balbirnie and Lorcan Tucker then got with the tonking and thwacking and larruping and Ireland eased home with 15 balls unused.
So now the WICB has some more flights to book.
Habitual link to King Cricket email sign-up page unexpectedly withheld to inject an invigorating shot of uncertainty into your life. ‘Whatever next?’ you wonder, adrenaline coursing through your body.
I did get to see Lorcan Tucker’s innings and was most disappointed that no-one used the phrase, “Tucker tucks into the bowling once again”.
Obvious, perhaps, but it still feels like an opportunity missed.
In other news, 150 quid to read about Geoffrey, don’t think so!
I cannot fathom what the £150 reference is about, Fred.
In other news, the World Cup proper is underway. Only 56 runs off the first 24 balls. What are you waiting for? Go Kiwis.
Pleased to announce that this site is now advertising me ‘silk slip dresses’. Which is fine, only I doubt they do them in my size.
David Warner’s dismissal was remarkable, I’m sure fans across the world will be united in sympathy for his bad luck.
Couldn’t possibly have happened to a nicer bloke.
KC often does a helpful round-up of how to actually watch the cricket in the UK.
Anyone got any idea this time? Aside from Sky sports, who has the terrestrial highlights? I can’t find it at all, nor can I find any other site that tells me…
The BBC have some rights, with ‘clips’ (“relive the best moments”) on their website, but I’m not sure about extended highlights on ‘normal’ TV. A lot of the schedule is taken up with the Rugby League World Cup(s) at the moment
There’s five or six minute packages on the tournament site.
https://www.t20worldcup.com/video
I wouldn’t bother with the ‘highlights’. As KC points out, you can see them on the tournament website, but the 5-6 minutes he writes of are the extended highlights while the normal highlights are about 3 minutes.
Which leads me to an open letter to the cricket authorities and broadcasters around the world.
Dear cricket authorities and broadcasters,
You’re crap at highlights.
Here are my suggestions for improvement.
1. Give enough time to actually show all the highlights including aspects of the match that doesn’t necessarily show a wicket (by the way, please show ALL the wickets) and sundry boundaries.
2. Do it in such as way that conveys the evolution of the match and not a series of 2 second memes. Youtube does that much better with farting hamsters.
3. Don’t go over the top on your websites telling us the result of the match before we’re able to watch it, not plastered over every clicky-link thing. Without letting on what happened, just place separate links on the front page to ‘match highlights’ and ‘scores’.
1 and 2 are exempified by the BBC many, many years ago where (before the advent of T20) they typically gave a whole hour to a one-day match thus enabling to capture the ups and downs, vagaries and nuances, twists and turns of the day, and also ensured that the viewer was made aware of the state of the match (i.e., score) as it progressed, without giving the result away. Channel 4 took it over and started the decline in quality culminating in Mark Nicholas stating towards the end of a one-day innings, “…and then another 3 wickets fell” without showing them, was the then low point of cricket highlights. The decline has continued. You, the cricketing authorities and broadcasters are responsible for that continuing decline. Stop it! I suggest you spend some of your multi-millions to employ a small group of people who are of reasonable intelligence and possess a skill set to succinctly and fluently summarise the progression of the day’s play for perhaps the most important people in cricket, the spectators. Half-hour for a T20 match would not be asking too much, would it?
Yours faithfully,
Disillusioned (AKA Butt Face)
Right, I’m now off to get my fix of farting hamsters, T20 highlights be buggered.
…and my apologies for the obvious grammatical error. I’m ashamed!