ABOUT TWITTER AND IRELAND

A lot has happenned around the world since my last blog. A few more matches have been completed (subject to the moods of the Weather Gods) at the World Twenty20 Championship. No upsets yet... though Ireland almost managed one against England yesterday. Sachin Tendulkar has joined Twitter... stormed into Twitter would be more apt. He has 87552 followers when I last checked. That was in 37 hours and 19 minutes from his first tweet. And since I practice Sachinism, I decided to join twitter as well (http://twitter.com/cricsis).

Now back to the cricket that is happenning. Australia have just about wrapped up a win over Bangladesh... a commendable effort considering that they were looking down the barrel in the early stages of the match. Bangladesh showed promise, but once again the batting let them down. Sounds like a very similar story!

But its yesterday's match between England and Ireland that fascinated me a lot. In the end, the score books would show the result as "No Result", and the records would state that England have gone through to the next round. On one hand, the English team would feel that justice was served (they were unfairly declared losers by D/L Method against the Windies), whereas on the other hand, the Irish would feel that they were hard done by. They did extremely well to restrict the English team to a very gettable target. When the match was about the recommence, they would have needed 47 runs from 33 balls.

It would have been unfair for England had they been knocked out... but its not fair for Ireland either. But when was sport ever fair?

Ireland has taken big strides in international cricket over the past 3-4 years. Their progress has looked even more impressive after considering the fact that some of their promising players have been 'stolen' by England (Ed Joyce, Eoin Morgan). The contribution of guys like Trent Johnston and Niall and Kevin O'Brien has been very commendable and these guys deserve a pat on their backs.

One of my biggest reasons of me liking Twenty20 cricket is that it gives an opportunity to the lesser teams to shine on the big stage... if not shine, atleast show the promise (like Afghanistan). I really wish to see the Twenty20 World Cup expand to a 16-team format. It is difficult to play 16 teams in an ODI tournament, but can be managed in Twenty20s. So why not try it and allow more nations a chance to impress!