Hello and welcome to Stumped, your intercontinental hit of news, features, and debate from the
quirky world of cricket. I'm Eleanor Oldroyd in London, where we woke up to another frosty
morning. But the good news is, it's March. The northern hemisphere spring is on the horizon.
And with England finishing their Test series against New Zealand, what is out there is
a summer of Test cricket. So that's my little bit of positivity on a cold London morning.
Oh, Elly. 'You're fantastic. Gee, I think you're swell,' didn't someone say a few years ago?
My little friend just wandered in while I was talking here and I'm going to have a brief
self-indulgence to tell you that Rusty, who's an adolescent puppy at 14 months, has been
a bit naughty. I got a brand new passport the other day in readiness for the excitement
of going away, and within two days he'd managed to eat a good portion of it! I took this rather
dogeared passport into the office and the chap said, 'No. It looks alright on the main
pages, but you'll have to get another one.' I honestly thought that happened just in the
movies or in the books: Dog eats passport! I hope you get your passport soon, Jim. Hello,
this Charu Sharma for All India Radio in Bangalore once again. Just another couple of days before
I disappear into the Himalayas for a trek. Nothing desperate, it's with all school mates
of mine so everybody's a little old-ish on the trek. And nothing at all as difficult
as trying to bat for long on the pitches that India are offering for the India v Australia series.
Charu, Jim. It's great to see you both, thank you for being with me on Stumped.
First on the programme today, Australia have done it again. They have won the women's T20
World Cup for the sixth time. They were pushed harder than ever before with a narrow win
against India in the semi-final and they saw off a brave South Africa in the final in front
of a record attendance for a women's match in South Africa. The hosts first appearance
in a World Cup final, men's or women's, certainly seems to have captured the nation's attention.
But in the end, Jim, they came up against an Australia side who are potentially the
most dominant team in all of world sport. Well, they're so...the strength and any side
had players like Australia's been playing is to have that versatility and depth. So,
they bat down to about nine. There've got lots of options with the ball and they field
pretty well alongside that. And despite, as I keep mentioning, the fickleness of T20 cricket,
there's always a game that you can lose, and they very nearly lost to India had it not
been for that run out where Kaur got her bat stuck, they probably would have lost. So,
Australia's record is unbelievable, really. Six of the last seven T20 World Cups, something
like 13 white ball wins in major competition. Interesting thing around that is that they
do not get the recognition globally that I think they deserve. I mean, if you look at
something like the Laureus Awards and the nominations not only for teams but for players,
the women's team in Australia do not feature at all. Whereas, historically, if you go back
to the days when Australia were winning a lot of Test matches and Brett Lee, for instance,
was one player on the rise. He was nominated. The Australian cricket team was nominated,
but the women's cricket's not considered obviously at this point, to be as strong as the men's game.
Rusty is agreeing with you every word there, Jim isn't he? He is backing you up
one hundred percent. At the same time, Charu, as Jim says it was close, wasn't it in that
semi-final against India? Just a bit of poor fielding let India down, perhaps, but do you
feel like the landscape is changing for women's cricket in India as well, particularly with the WPL coming up?
Without question. Just like all of you have been mentioning the landscape
should be changing for South Africa as well, which is a very sporting nation. But women
in India, there are many other secondary problems which they have to somehow get past and then
take onto a sporting life. But just back to that match, yes, you are right. I do think
India were winning. They were in a winning position. Alyssa Healy did mention that I
don't think luck has anything to do with it, because Harmanpreet [Kaur] kept talking about
luck. It was a question of lazy running at that point of time. What I would like to suggest
that as we all know quite famously, the bat did get stuck in the soil just inches away
from the line and almost her entire body was over. So it wasn't quite lazy running. I think
she is smart enough and experienced enough to know that the second was on and she took
it. If the bat hadn't got stuck, she was in such great form at that point in time that
India would have won against Australia. Mind you, if Australia has lost in the last dozen,
half dozen years, it has been to India. Well, you never know. Things could have been very
different and the Indians could have actually won their first ever ICC trophy, which is
something that's obviously missing and hurting. But despite that, I think the Indian girls
have gotten over their disappointment and there was so much more as we all know to look forward to now.
Well, next on Stumped, we're going to talk about one of the greatest
ever finishes to a Test match. England began day five of the second Test against New Zealand
in Wellington needing 210 runs to seal the series. Joe Root's 95 put them in the driving
seat, but when Ben Foakes lost his wicket for 35, it was left to England's numbers 10
and 11, Jack Leach and Jimmy Anderson, to try and get the last seven runs. A single
from Leach, a four from Anderson took England to within two of victory. But then Anderson
edged a Neil Wagner delivery behind, it was taken by Tom Blundell, and New Zealand won
by one run. Such a narrow margin of victory has only happened once before in the history
of Test cricket. That was West Indies against Australia in 1993, which I'm guessing Jim,
you may well remember yourself. But in terms of what happened at the Basin Reserve this
week, it was an amazing Test match over the five days. Well, it you want to look at something,
there's two, one run margins. There's one, two run margin that Australia was involved
in, you might remember at Edgbaston. Now all three of them were down the leg side caught
behind. Craig McDermott I think was caught off the glove. No one reviewed in those days,
couldn't do it, from Courtney Walsh with two needed to win. Of course, Michael Kasprowicz,
did he have his hand on the bat or not when he was caught down the leg side? Again, there
was no DRS. If there had have been, it could've ruined one of the famous finishes in Test
history. Poor old Jimmy Anderson sent out there at 40 years of age to try and win the
game when his batsmen failed so dismally. What I loved about that afternoon of theatre
was Neil Wagner. Neil Wagner has just recently been a bit of a villain in New Zealand
cricket because he keeps bumping people out or trying to. And he got thumped by Harry
Brook and Root, but on this occasion when the game was on the up, he was able to produce
some bouncers that got wickets. He got Stokes and Root out. He took a couple of catches
himself down there at fine leg and so he was the archetypal match winner at the crunch.
Even though at times you were thinking does he know there are three stumps down there?
He's allowed to bowl those at them and he kept banging the thing in. Anyway, it was
it was thrilling stuff. It was it was great from New Zealand's point of view with Kane
Williamson's exemplary second innings century alongside Blundell that they got back into
the game when they looked like we're going to go down by an innings after being asked
to follow on. The interesting thing about this game was that I'm sure that if it was
an Ashes match, there wouldn't have been a follow on. I'll tell you one of the main reasons
why there wouldn't have been all follow on. It's because Broad and Anderson, as good as
they are, are getting old and it showed in the second innings when they had to back up
and bowl again on a pitch that got it a little bit easier to bat on and New Zealand's batting
was very good, of course. There just wasn't quite the edge in the bowling that there might
have been if they'd had their feet up for a couple of hours while England batted again.
So I doubt if it... Despite the BazBall attitude to taking the game on and the rest of it,
I doubt if it would happen in an Ashes match. But there it is. Thank goodness it did, because
it produced one of the best finishes you'd ever want to see. But this is the great thing
about Test cricket. It can completely defy expectations and particularly when it comes
to this Charu, there was the run out of Harry Brook without facing a ball. England's new
batting superstar. But what do you make of this England style? I think the whole world,
certainly fans in England, are now very appreciative of England's new style. I must confess I'm
all for it, because England in the past and I don't mean any major disrespect here, were
a little stayed and old fashioned in their cricket and a lot of people then criticise
it. Perhaps that exemplified what Test matches are all about, but they've done a 180. This
whole BazBall thing is very exciting and of course they have won much more than they've
lost. So, at point of time you'd have to say it's working. Not just for England. Sure,
they lost by one run, but like I said the fans are probably more accepting and appreciative
of the style of cricket and especially the new fans. They could use this kind of robust
urgency in cricket, and I do think that we're not giving the England bowlers enough appreciation
here. Yes, it's all about the batsmen trying to score quickly and racing towards a win,
but ultimately, as we all have been saying for years in cricket, it's the bowlers who
win you Test matches by taking 20 wickets. So that's also a big feature for England because
the bowlers are supporting the BazBall style in terms of batting. I do think that what
happened in this Test match and the way England are playing their Test match cricket is not
only good for England. It's great for Test match cricket, because Test match cricket
as we all know, can use slightly higher level of excitement, particularly for the new fans
who must come into the game. Finally on Stumped, take a moment to think of sports stars from
Spain. Your mind might go to Rafael Nadal in tennis, Xavi and Iniesta in football or
Fernando Alonso in Formula One, and cricket is unlikely to come into your mind at all.
But this week, Spain's cricket players earned a place in the record books. They bowled the
Isle of Man out for just 10 runs - the lowest total in a men's T20 match ever. I'm delighted
to say that Spain's head coach Corey Rutgers joins us on Stumped now. Corey, hello. Just
give us a little bit of a background to this game, first of all. Why were you playing the
Isle of Man, and did you always expect to win this? Well yeah, we did expect to win
but maybe not like this and good morning, everyone as well. For us, we've got a big
project going on with Spanish cricket at the moment. We've got a lot of good facilities.
We've got turf wickets all over the country and it's got a growing club base and for us
we've got an eye on the 50-over challenge league and trying to get up the rankings.
I think in November, I got in touch with Isle of Man who are ranked 39th in the world, we're
currently ranked 36th, just with the idea of six T20i's and see how we go and play a
little bit more cricket. We're very lucky in this country that there's 11 months of
sun, so a February series sounded like a very good concept to everybody.
As the wickets were tumbling, what was going through your head?
So when they got to the final game, this got a little bit crazy to be honest. I still can't really surmise it because obviously
at this associate level, you really compact your series. So, we were playing two T20s a
day. In the morning, I'll just go a little bit before that... in the morning they got us
for 134. We did chase it down and just a normal game of T20. We chased it down in about 14 overs.
It gets into the afternoon session, we have a big group meeting, we have some
lunch and I always like the stories before the story. About an hour leading into the
game, my two premium left arm seam bowlers were exhausted. One had shin splints, one
had a knee injury and they both said 'Corey, please I need rest,' so I put my arm around
them and said, 'come on guys, push one more for Cricket Espana.' We win the toss and they
say 'OK, coach. I'm good to go.' We win the toss and bowl first. It's a nice sunny day,
a bit of a breeze across the ground and the wicket's been playing well the whole tournament.
It just happened so quickly. I think it very first ball game they gloved down the leg side
and it was a good take by the keeper; 1 for 0. The second over, one gets through the gate
with a really good in swinging, late swinging delivery and it's 2 for 4. Then it started
to get a bit weird in the third over. I think Muhammad Kamran, who's got first class experience
in Pakistan and has been in Spain 10 years now, he's quick. He's still genuinely quick.
He gets three perfect yorkers right and gets himself an international hat-trick and at
this stage when it's 5 for 5, this is where you're thinking well the game is probably
already won but I was just waiting. I was waiting for the leg byes that will go for
four, or the edges or someone... I've been in collapses myself as a player. You're always
expecting one person to click and then I think in the fourth over, we picked up two more
and at 7 for 5 that's when it really started to hit home something completely out of this
world is happening. Then to their credit, the Isle of Man stuck it through a bit. I
feel little bit bad for them because they're not a bad cricket team. This isn't like 36th
in the world versus 80th in the world. I saw the Sydney Thunder collapse and it's very
similar to that. Two very evenly matched teams and it just went all wrong. They blocked out
a few more overs, they got through the openers who both took 4 for 5 and 4 for 4 respectively,
and then we brought on our leg spinner. He picks up the tail, as we like to call him
'the janitor' and before you know we were walking off and it's 10 for 10 and I still can't fathom how it happened.
G day, Corey. Jim Maxwell here and nice to be chatting to a familiar
Aussie voice. Just a bit more about cricket in Spain - is it locals, is it expats? Who's in the team?
You've got a mixed bag. So our captain Christian Munoz-Mills is a Spaniard,
he looks after the fellas really really well. We've got a couple of South African and Australians
that hold passports, and then we've obviously got Pakistani and Indian origin players that
are in the Barcelona area that that fill up a lot of the team. I think the one nice thing
about this Spanish side is we've got everyone speaks Spanish, besides myself. I know "Hola!
Cómo estás?" so I've got to keep learning it a little bit more to catch up but a little
bit you'll find at associate level, you'll always have a little bit of here there and
everywhere to create a good squad of 20 players. So, it's growing quick, and we found a lot
of good talent in the last 14 months. So how widespread is the interest in cricket? I mean
you mentioned cricket grounds and you've actually built cricket grounds in Spain? You're not
just rolling out a mat on an open field? If you haven't had a chance to hear
about Desert Springs in Almeria, it has ODI status. It's a turf wicket out in the desert
where all the county teams come now and play all their pre-season matches. So, we have
a turf venue that's ready for ODI cricket. We're actually in talks with like Ireland
and Scotland to come and play the first ever ODIs on Spanish soil. I don't know if you've
heard about the European cricket network and the EDN. They play all their T10 in... I'm good
friends with Daniel Weston, so they play all their T10 cricket in Cartama, which is up
the road and then we also have the facilities in La Manga as well. That's where we play
our series that usually have turf. Its a little bit behind at the moment cause of the
Corona impact in Spain was quite severe, so we have to get more curators in, but Spanish
cricket at the moment is this untapped resource of facilities, sun. I think the ICC have recognised
this now, and it is really starting go upwards because we are now inviting teams all around
the world to come and play on Spanish soil and to play on turf wickets.
Well that was Corey Rutgers, the head coach of the Spanish national team and that just brings us to an
end here on Stumped. Charu, Jim, fantastic to see you as always, thank you so much for
your time and for your company. Join us again next time on Stumped. Bye for now.