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.
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.