Pakistan give South Africa a chance to choke

South Africa choking in a semi final is almost as good as Australia getting knocked out of the tournament early on. Not as good, obviously. I didn’t think they would blow it this time, I thought they had a good enough team and enough form to carry them through. Happily I was wrong and we saw the choke-meister generals do it one more time. Pakistan, it must be said, played superbly. Afridi played a classic innings and followed it up with a spell of leg-spin bowling that had the South Africans turning their ovens to gas mark nine. Umar Gul delivered the killer blow with some awesome death bowling. Magic stuff. Pakistan of course narrowly lost the first ICC T20 final and ten years and one day after they last played a final at Lords, they will play another. Hopefully this one will be closer.

Every ICC Final has a special ‘ICC shoots foot’ moment. This year they organised it early: the Final clashes with the British Formula 1 Grand Prix...