Insomniacs sleep on it (7 June 1999)

7 June 1999

Insomniacs sleep on it

Martin Johnson

The 10,000 people who purchased tickets for this match before knowing which two teams would be involved did not exactly feel like Lottery winners yesterday. It was cold and wet, and when you've forked out £60 in the hope of watching Shoaib rushing in at Tendulkar, the sight of Gavin Larsen trundling away to Murray Goodwin is hardly calculated to create a crush at the turnstiles. Not to get in, anyway.

In fact, one-day cricket's detractors would be able to suggest with some justification that any format that involves Larsen and Chris Harris bowling in tandem has got to be deeply flawed. In the unlikely event of New Zealand ever running out of sheep to count, insomniacs can always fall back on a video of this match, which continues today. Fodder in a Test match becomes indispensable dibbly-dobbling in this type of cricket.

No game in this World Cup has been entirely charisma free, although this one was just about as close as it gets. While the likes of Lara and Tendulkar are barely able to open their front doors without being blinded by a battery of photographers' flashbulbs, most players in the New Zealand and Zimbabwe squads would not be recognised by a film developer at their local Boots.

However, unsung players have a habit of making an impact on World Cups, and the odds on Lance Klusener and Rahul Dravid arriving at this stage of the competition as the most productive batsmen were as long as Geoff Allott being the leading wicket-taker. New Zealand, though, will have to win the competition if Allott is to be remembered for anything other than the most protracted duck (101 minutes) in Test match history.

Allott bowls his left-armers at a reasonably brisk medium pace, although the speed gun - unsponsored and unused until this stage of the tournament - once measured him at 91mph yesterday. All that needs to be said about that is if the West Yorkshire Constabulary use anything similar on motorway radar checks, the courts will be full of Robin Reliant drivers charged with doing 130.

Another nondescript bowler used by New Zealand yesterday was Nathan Astle, primarily an opening batsman but whose value in this type of cricket was illustrated by his spell of one for 25 in nine overs. His bowling looks innocuous enough, and David Lloyd (the former England coach now enjoying half the pressure for twice the money in the Sky commentary box) became very animated when asked about Astle's bowling on England's last tour of New Zealand.

"If Nathan Astle's a bowler, my backside's a fire engine," said Lloyd, which may have been a somewhat obscure saying from Accrington, and which entirely baffled his audience, even though there was a general belief that Bumble was not paying a compliment.

He certainly wasn't too complimentary in Bulawayo after England "murdered" the opposition to a draw, after which Zimbabwe went on to win the one-day series on that tour 3-0. Their record against England in one-day internationals is 5-2, and they, effectively, took England's expected place in the Super Six.

It is, however, one of the more curious aspects of this competition that Zimbabwe can be on the verge of elimination one minute, and virtually through to the last four the next. It is, in fact, absurd to think that it is possible for Zimbabwe to lose all three of their Super Six matches and still reach the semi-finals.

Whoever wins today, it is perhaps just as well that these two sides are providing an antidote to a World Cup of unparallelled allure.

The organisers' blurb yesterday described Yorkshire (on the back of a television programme about vets) as "UK's Hollywood". Thank God for Zimbabwe and New Zealand. There's only so much glamour a cricket lover can take.

Source :: The Electronic Telegraph