Like in 2009, T&T were the most popular team in CLT20 this year too
We have seen some exciting actions over the last 3 weeks from CLT20 2011. Players from various teams have shown their talent of hard hitting and excellent bowling in given circumstances. The very sad part in the tournament was the fact that two matches were washed out due to rain which resulted in giving opportunity for an ordinary team to be in last four and better teams out of the way. The 2 teams, New South Wales Vs Trinidad & Tobago, showed excellent skills and many of the fans across the globe would have expected them to be playing in the finals. These two were the most deserving teams to be in finals, but this year T20 saw more of luck favoring the teams rather than the performance.
David Warner and Chris Gayle played outstanding cricket throughout the tournament. The coaches of these two teams must have watched their performance several times as they have not shown only pure hitting, but played innings of character and sense which can be transformed from T20 to any other format of cricket. Definitely the players across other countries will be very much pleased if these two folks are not picked for their national teams in ODIs / Test matches. At the same time fans all over world will be missing their exhibition of stroke play.
Chris Gayle in particular showed a lot of maturity than his earlier years. Over the last two years or so, he has been appearing only in T20 cricket tournaments and it is really tough to end as top performers of the tournament. Now, twice in succession he has proved to be the batsmen in this format. His hitting has been phenomenal. The pitch at the M. Chinnaswamy also has contributed generously to his cause.
The tournament will be more exciting if the organizers think from a holistic point of view of promoting cricket by reducing players salary and prize money similar to an ordinary cricket tournament as the cricket loses some good talented players in International arena in the longer formats just because of the prize money and salary awarded to the players in T20. That’s perhaps a discussion for another day.
The CouchExpert 