Aussies need to learn nuances of T20 cricket: Ponting

Australian captain Ricky Ponting on Monday confessed that his team did not take Twenty20 cricket seriously and needed to learn the nuances of the game to lift its modest international record in the shortest format.

“I don’t think there was any need for it to be taken ultra-seriously before the World Cup. The games that were played before World Cup were almost played as exhibition-type matches — to promote the other forms of the game,” Ponting said on returning home from India.

“I think that was the way it was used by most boards around the world, but now it’s pretty clear and apparent to us that we’ll be playing a lot more. When there’s a World Cup event in any form of the game, you want to make sure you understand the game well and you play the game well,” he was quoted as saying by the Australian Associated Press.

“Our international record’s not great, we’ve probably only got a 50-50 win-loss record and that’s something we’re going to improve on over the next couple of years,” he added.

Ponting admitted his team was still being educated in the nuances of the game. “We probably learnt a little bit through the World Cup about the format of the game. Going there we were all pretty new to it, pretty inexperienced in Twenty20 cricket,” he said.

The Australian captain said with the Indians winning the Twenty20 World Cup and talks of star-studded Twenty20 Leagues the game was sure to get further popular in the sub-continent.

“There’s no doubt the popularity of the game in the part of the world we’ve just been is amazing. With India having won the World Cup, the game is going to be massive over there.

“There’s a fair bit of talk about other Twenty20 leagues starting in India, so there’s a fair bit happening with that form of the game,” he said.

BCCI steps up security for Twenty20

The Board of Control for Cricket in India has said that it will take measures to prevent bad crowd behaviour during the Twenty20 international between India and Australia at the Brabourne Stadium on Saturday.

“The BCCI has appointed chief administrative officer Professor Ratnakar Shetty to deal with the crowd-control issue and it will be done in consultation with the Mumbai police,” BCCI vice-president Lalit Modi was quoted as saying in PTI. “We can only persuade the crowd to control themselves but cannot make any arrests. All we can do is to eject people from the ground.”

Another BCCI vice-president Rajeev Shukla said that police personnel would be posted in various enclosures to prevent poor behaviour.

These measures follow the issue of Andrew Symonds being subjected to alleged racial abuse once again during the seventh ODI at the Wankhede Stadium in Mumbai. An Australian photographer captured on camera certain spectators in the North Stand enacting monkey chants, a complaint that had been first made during the fifth one-dayer at Vadodara last week.

2007 ACC TWENTY20 CUP PREVIEW

Afghanistan are many people’s favourites for this tournament as well as being many people’s favourites in general. They play cricket with a single-minded desire to succeed comparable to that of Indians and Pakistanis from outlying districts.

Afghanistan have added grace and finesse to their fire and fervour and are now more than a team of big-hitting, stump-scattering individuals. They take instruction well and just need more top-class match experience to be a truly competitive force. Skill is what they are developing rapidly, match-savvy is what they need desperately.

Two of their players, Hamid Hassan and Mohammad Nabi, have represented the MCC this year, a remarkable achievement for players from an Affiliate country. “Nabi should be playing Test cricket,” said MCC President Robin Marlar in 2006 after watching Afghanistan tour England.

Should Afghanistan win the ACC Twenty20 it will be the country’s first ever international team victory. “The fans, the public will go wild,” says their coach Taj Malik, “cricket is the Number 1 sport in Afghanistan.” They’ve come close in past ACC tournaments, the Twenty20 could just be the one where they break through.

BCCI rejects Pakistan’s request for Twenty20 matches

The Indian cricket board Tuesday rejected its Pakistani counterpart’s request to replace one Test match with two Twenty20 matches during Pakistan’s tour to India starting next month.

Niranjan Shah, secretary of the Board of Control for Cricket India (BCCI), said here Tuesday that the request from the Pakistan Cricket Board (PCB) was very late and could not be accommodated.

‘No match can be added at this juncture. Their request came too late to effect any changes in the itinerary,’ Shah told IANS here.

PCB wanted to replace one of the three Test matches with two Twenty20 matches and wanted to help the family of its late coach Bob Woolmer with the money generated from one of the matches.

Pakistan’s tour, which also comprises five one-day international matches, starts with a limited overs practice match in Delhi Nov 2.