Tag: ICC World T20

Two Sundays At Lord’s For The ICC Women’s World Cup, Including Five Different Cricket Teams, Rita Ora, & Clean Bandit, 28 June & 5 July 2026

Thus, it ended

28 June 2026: Bangladesh Women v South Africa Women, & Australia Women v India Women

Unfurl the flags…

We plugged for an elevated view on the day of the Lord’s double-header. Janie’s favourite pavilion spot for relaxed viewing is the sun deck at the top. There was plenty of space for us up there, despite our late arrival, after playing our traditional Sunday game of lawn in Boston Manor Park.

Digging the relaxed dress code

We caught the end of the Bangladesh v South Africa match, much of which I saw on the TV while Janie was getting ready to go to Lord’s. South Africa looked well set when we left home, then tried hard to choke at the end of that match, then choked in the matter of choking, thus going on to win the match with very little time to spare.

The sun deck remained sparsely populated, although we were joined by Sidney Yankson and his charming belle, Claire. Sidney is a real tennis afficionado – the Number One Real Tennis Hongkonger by his own RTO description – and the person who was daft enough to select me for one of my earliest representative real tennis matches.

Big Match Weekend At Lord’s Part One: MCC v HAC Real Tennis Match, 21 July 2017

Anyway, after a suitably brief interval between the two matches, we enjoyed the flag unfurling and anthem ceremony for Australia v India.

India batted first and seemed to have posted a modest score. India needed to win this match in order to knock out South Africa, whereas Australia were guaranteed top of the group billing whatever happened in the match.

We left Lord’s about half way through Australia’s innings, which seemed to be tottering a bit, but caught the end of the match on TV when we got home, by which time the Aussies had untottered.

We thoroughly enjoyed our day of neutral matches.

5 July 2026: Rita Ora, Clean Bandit, & The ICC Women’s T20 World Cup Final

Not just excited…pumped!

For the world cup final, we got to Lord’s in good time and grabbed seats close to the action – i.e. some end of row seats near the front of the terrace. This seemed to be the corner of choice for several members of the real tennis community – Barry Nathan was there with his wife, Ruth. Also nearby were Robert & Carol Muir, Brian & Priscilla Sharp were also nearby, as was Graeme Marks.

The dancing girls comprised a selection panel before the Rita Ora concert. Barry seemed a bit reluctant. I suggested that they work on Sharpy…

Rita Ora caught the spirit

Did we dance? Of course we danced.

The serious business of moving and grooving

Even Graeme Marks took some illicit footage of us having a go during the Rita Ora gig:

I enjoyed the Rita Ora music, which comprised some of her best known songs:

In truth, I was more than a little disappointed that Rita didn’t perform Hot Right Now, which I believe is the paciest of her numbers. Indeed, I had been practicing for days dancing in exactly the style and rate of the artistes in the following video:

Rumour has it that the authorities thought that 176 bpm in 30°C weather might be a bit much for MCC members, given the age demographic. Health and safety gone mad.

I mean, what was the point of me having a hip replacement last year if the powers that be don’t give me the chance to dance in a Hot Right Now stylee on the forecourt of the Lord’s pavilion?

Take away the sound stage.

Hard yakka in the heat

This geezer had a method for staying cool

I hadn’t realised it, but there was also to be a cricket match, as a polite interval between the two popular music concerts; an ICC Women’s T20 World Cup Final between Australia Women and England Women.

Unfurl the flags and anthems:

We were too polite to take pictures of the cricket match itself, which rather went Australia’s way, predictably.

But when Clean Bandit came on to get us all listening and dancing again…

…Janie and I were ready to dance some more. Earlier in the day, when Rita Ora performed, Sharpy told me, rather pointedly:

your good lady knows how to dance…

…which I took to mean that he thought that I don’t know how to dance.

Well, for the Clean Bandit concert, Janie and I both got busy with the video functions of our cameras, so you can all judge for yourselves, dear readers.

Suffice it to say that we thoroughly enjoyed the event, regardless of what you think of our dancing.

A Business Trip To Manchester Including A King Cricket Report On The ICC World T20 Semi-Final and Dinner At Obsidian Restaurant With Ashley, 13 May 2010

Sometimes my King Cricket reports can work like super diary notes. This one, from May 2010, is a good example, as I write in August 2017.

It seems that I was on business in Manchester and had arranged to meet Ashley at a posh new restaurant, Obsidian, now defunct. Jay Rayner stuck the boot into the place a few weeks after our visit – here.

I recall cunningly arranging a slightly later than usual meet time with Ashley so I could see the denouement of the World T20 Semi-Final between Sri Lanka and England.

I wrote it all up on King Cricket – here.

If anything ever happens to King Cricket, the piece is scraped to here.

Everything you might want to geek about the cricket match can be found on Cricinfo – here.

I recall a very convivial evening with Ashley after the match. The restaurant seemed quite good, but I seem to remember that Ashley had a fist full of vouchers, which enabled us to try the place at modest prices. We concluded that the meal had been good value for us, but that the place would not pass the Manchester “value/how much?” test once at menu prices.

Ashley might recall more about that evening; if he does, no doubt he’ll chime in Ogblog-like.

England Women v New Zealand Women and Pakistan v Sri Lanka, ICC World Twenty20 Finals Day, Lord’s, 21 June 2009

My nonchalant box-ticking months earlier…

…”why not? Yes, by all means put my name in the ballot for pairs of debenture returns”…

…led to a very polite letter from the MCC, letting me know that, if I had really meant it, there were indeed ballot returns available for me, both for the last regular Sunday of the tournament and for this finals day.

“That would be absolutely spiffing,” I implied, not by using those exact words, but by ticking some more boxes and writing a fairly substantial Gregory Peck.

Excellent value for my minimal effort and the money.

We had similar debenture seats for finals day as we had for the previous Sunday…

Ireland v Sri Lanka and England v India, ICC World Twenty20, Lord’s, 14 June 2009

…just a little more central in the Grandstand. As the previous week, we were sitting very close to John McCririck. Actually, the previous week we had sat close to…” …you know, that eccentric bloke who does racing, adverts and stuff on the TV”. I had to Google him between time to discover his name.

We certainly wanted to see the women’s World Twenty20 final – that was a big part of the excitement for us, especially as England had qualified for the final. So we set off in good time to catch the start of the first match – this also enabled us to avoid any crush at the gates. Daisy did the picnic again, I’m pretty sure, as we were in Sandall Close that weekend. I think she went more for a bangers and nibbles picnic this time, with the previous week’s having been a more sandwich-based affair. But it might have been the other way around.

I had managed to catch a fair chunk of the England Women v Australia Women semi-final on the TV on the Friday. I thought the Aussie girls had scored plenty but England batted beautifully that day.

On finals day, it was the England bowling that shone through – taking advantage of morning conditions to bowl. Not an enormous crowd for the women’s final, sadly, but a decent number of us turned up to support. The ground started to fill up as the match progressed.

Here’s the scorecard from the women’s final.

It was a great feeling to witness live the England Women win a World Final at Lord’s.

Daisy wears one for the girls (some months later) – thanks to Kim for the picture

For the men’s final, what had been the empty seat next to mine was taken by a young Asian gentleman from Birmingham who was supporting Pakistan. He got more and more excited as the match unfolded and was in a state of great euphoria by the end.

In truth, it wasn’t a very exciting match. The Sri Lankan score always seemed below par and at no point did the Sri Lankan bowlers seem capable of containing the Pakistan batsmen.

Here is the scorecard from the men’s final.

We left Lord’s and wandered over to Harry Morgan’s to wait for a cab in comfort with a coffee. Cars were driving around St John’s Wood hooting horns, hollering Urdu chants and waving Pakistan flags. I don’t suppose the residents of NW8 had ever seen anything like it before.

Thus ended my four days at Lord’s in less than a fortnight (which started here). I must say that these short-form International cricket matches make so much more sense to me in the context of a multi-country tournament than they do when they are simply a string of bilateral matches. I had enjoyed a couple of excellent midweek days with friends and a couple of super Sundays with Daisy. Well satisfied, I was.

Ireland v Sri Lanka and England v India, ICC World Twenty20, Lord’s, 14 June 2009

Back to Lord’s for the third time in a week (or my fourth double-header in six days, if you also count the Orange Tree Theatre double-bill the night before).

The reason for my ICC World Twenty20 excess is explained in the first of my pieces about attending the tournament – here.

This time Daisy is with me and I am pretty sure that she took on the picnic duties for this visit as we would have been in “the country residence” (Sandall Close) the night before.

We got to see two really good matches, as well as enjoy a good picnic:

  • Ireland v Sri Lanka – one of those matches where you always felt that the giant-killer/underdog (Ireland) was still in the hunt, yet sensed that Sri Lanka would eventually overcome them, which they did – click here for the scorecard;
  • England v India – a very exciting match, which England somehow managed to win, despite the sense that India would eventually overcome England’s seemingly below par score – click here for the scorecard.

We watched from the dizzy heights of debenture seats in the Grandstand, my “prize” for ticking a box requesting a shot at a ballot for a pair of debenture returns. These seats were not too far away from the Warner Stand seats I’d sat in earlier that tournament – that Warner side of the Grandstand and a lot higher of course.

My favourite memory from this day was Ravi Bopara’s six, which was caught in a beer skiff by one of the pair of gentlemen sitting next to Daisy in the Grandstand, splashing (mercifully little) beer all around us.

I have just looked up the BBC on-line commentary for that six – click here – which reports that the ball went into the Grandstand (last ball of the fifth over) and then simply says for the start of the next over “Umpire de Silva calls for a new ball”. What actually happened was that, after our neighbour returned the beer-sodden ball, both umpires had a poke at the ball and then a sniff at it, before deciding that the ball was no longer of the requisite quality. Our little section of the crowd, which knew exactly what had happened, took great pleasure in all that.

That England win kept England’s hopes alive for more than 24 further hours, until a rain-affected night match against the West Indies at the Oval proved a bridge too far for England.

But that Sunday, concluding with an unexpected England win, was a very happy day at the cricket.

Pakistan v Sri Lanka and India v West Indies, ICC World Twenty20, Lord’s, 12 June 2009

Just three days after my previous visit to Lord’s for the World T20 and a couple of days before my next visit, this was the second of my four visits for that tournament. The embarrassment of riches, ticket-wise, is explained in the previous piece.

This visit, on the Friday, was with Ian Theodoreson. I first met Ian when he was at Save The Children and I was on my first assignment for Binder Hamlyn. We’ve kept in touch, on and off, ever since. In June 2009, he was about to join or had just joined the National Church Institutions from Barnardos.

Ian very kindly contributed the Foreword to Michael’s and my second Book, IT For The Not For Profit Sector. Indeed, at one time I recall Ian being quite miffed, because the only reference to himself he could find on the whole internet when “ego-googling” was a critical reference to that foreword. I cannot imagine why anyone would or even could criticise that piece – here is a link to the text of the very foreword, so you can judge for yourself.

But I digress.

This was a very enjoyable day at Lord’s. Our tickets were on the Warner Stand, near the Grandstand (as were the seats a few days before with Mark). I remember Ian and I spotting Sachin Tendulkar being entertained in one of the Grandstand boxes, very close to our seat.

The cricket was good without being exceptional, as is often the way with T20 cricket. Little did we know that we were watching a pre-match between the two tournament finalists first up:

Pakistan v Sri Lanka Scorecard – click here.

The second match was also a bit one sided, with the chasing West Indies always seeming to be ahead:

India v West Indies Scorecard – click here.

Still, it was a great opportunity for Ian and I to catch up over one of my classic Lord’s picnics and some fun cricket to watch. A very enjoyable day.

 

Netherlands v Pakistan and New Zealand v South Africa, ICC World Twenty20, Lord’s, 9 June 2009

This was the first of four days I spent at Lord’s during the ICC World Twenty20 tournament when it was held in England in 2009.

If that sounds a little excessive in the booking, it probably was but there was method to my madness.

The county members’ application form made it clear that the last Sunday of the rounds (when England were due to play) and the following Sunday, Finals Day, were completely sold out. My only hope for those days was to tick a box asking to go into a ballot for debenture returns for whichever days I wanted.

Frankly, I thought my chances of getting debenture returns were close to zero, but I ticked the box and said I’d be interested in either or both of those Sundays. Expecting nothing to come of that returns business,  I also booked a couple of the less fashionable match days at Lord’s, so I’d at least get to see some of the world cup tournament.

Needless to say, I got a pair of superb debenture tickets for each of the fashionable Sundays as well as Warner Stand pairs for the two midweek dates I also booked.

I asked Mark Yeandle to join me for the first of the visits, an offer which he eagerly accepted.

Hippity, who was in the middle of his writing surge that summer (mercifully never to be repeated in quantity) wrote this one up for the King Cricket website – click here.

Just in case anything ever happens to King Cricket, I have scraped the piece to Ogblog – only click the link below if the link above doesn’t work:

Pakistan v Netherlands World Twenty20 match report

I’ve not a lot to add to Hippity’s straightforward narrative and definitive reporting, except to provide links to the scorecards for the two matches:

It possibly goes without saying, but the second match was a cracker of a low scoring thriller, which made up for the damp squib that was the first match.

Repetitive – moi? Moi?? Moi???

Avid Ogblog readers might detect some similarity between Hippity’s story for this match and his MTWD report just a few week’s earlier. Recycling for different audiences and/or honest reportage of extremely similar experiences – read into it what you will. The little green monster is semi-retired now and anyway you cannot plagiarise yourself, you can merely repeat yourself.