ABD rocks at World Cup final pitch

Rohit Mahajan
Tribune News Service
London, july 19

So, AB de Villiers did bat on the World Cup final pitch at Lord’s. He smashed an incredible 88 off 43 balls. Sadly, it happened four days after the World Cup ended.

During the World Cup final, batting seemed very difficult on this pitch; it was slow, and the pressure on the batsmen made them tentative, too. Four days on, AB de Villiers was at ease on the same pitch at Lord’s, on his debut for Middlesex against Essex in a T20 Blast match yesterday.

AB desperately wanted to play at the World Cup, and he spoke with South Africa captain Faf du Plessis about it. But the team management declined AB’s offer to unretire himself from international cricket to turn out for South Africa. Controversy ensued. The South African team management was criticised for being inflexible — any team with AB is, after all, much stronger than any team without AB. AB was criticised for being selfish — he had indeed put self before country, and no player can be allowed to pick and choose matches he’d play for his national team, all the while waltzing across cash-rich T20 leagues across the world.

AB for Middlesex

So, finally, AB played for an English county, Middlesex, whose home ground is Lord’s. He’s played no international cricket for nearly 18 months, and he was facing less-known bowlers such as Snater, Quinn and Lawrence; three names that were known were Simon Harmer (5 Tests for South Africa in 2015); Ravi Bopara, who last played for England in 2014, and Adam Zampa, who’s a current Australia player, The bowling attack wasn’t very scary — but the quality of AB’s play was exceptional, too.

He took a breathtaking catch, though his name didn’t appear on the scoreboard. It was a relay catch; Dan Lawrence had struck the ball high towards the wide long-on boundary; AB and George Scott ran to the boundary, AB got under the ball, he caught it, but realised he was going to step out. He tossed the ball to Scott, who completed the catch. AB then blasted six sixers and five fours in his unbeaten 88 runs. He hit shots few can hit — a six over extra cover, or one to the top tier of the grandstand, 90m away.

AB rocked Lord’s. And he’d had only one nets session before the game, he’d met his new teammates only the day-before the game. Just brilliant.

Eoin’s there

It was a sellout 28,000 crowd at Lord’s for the first match here after the World Cup triumph. “There’s greater buzz for this match than we expected,” said the man sitting next to me in the Tavern Stand. Sam’s claim to fame is that he played for Essex juniors and once opened the batting with Nasser Hussain in a charity match.

This was a very different sort of crowd from your usual Test/ODI crowd. There were a lot of young children, many teenagers and fewer older people. Also, this was a very chatty crowd whose eyes were not glued to the pitch every ball. They moved a lot, going regularly to the bars to get beer. There were very few Indian/south Asian faces.

A famous Irishman was there, with a large trophy — it was Eoin Morgan, England’s ODI captain, who walked around the ground, waving the World Cup trophy at the crowd, who cheered happily.

Naomi in crowd 

I asked a young south Asian woman if she’s come to Lord’s to watch the cricket before. Well, yes, sort of — in fact, people come to the ground to watch her play! She’s none other than Naomi Dattani, captain of the Middlesex women’s team, who is a coach as well. How close is she to playing for England? “I need a few good performances, and who knows, maybe I’d get there,” she says.