Look mom, it’s Super Eight!

USA

First Round Report Card: Crushed Canada to open the tournament, played as the more experienced international team against relative giants Pakistan in the Super Over in their next game. Didn’t completely fall apart against powerhouse India.

Hard to think how the USA could have done better, especially after an extreme weather event helped them avoid playing a potential banana skin match against Ireland. (blinkers to fossil fuel companies)

Mark: After getting the biggest win in their cricket history, their captain came out and said that they should never have let it come so close and go to a Super Over. Ice cold.

Explaining Team USA to new American cricket fans: Part of the inscription on the plaque to the Statue of Liberty reads: “Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free.” This team is more like, “Give me your cricketers who didn’t really succeed professionally in their home countries, and who also tend to work regular jobs in the US.”

Increase the game’s rating: A+
Saurabh Netravalkar, the left-arm bowling, ukelele-playing, tech company’s technical dreamboat has arguably been the story of the World Cup so far. New York native Aaron Jones has rocked it too. There was even some coverage in major American publications after their big win over Pakistan. Now give us more. (cracking ICC branded whip)

Australia

Report card from the first round: It’s not a real World Cup until Australia have lined up. They gave glimpses of their awake, better alter egos as they gave both Oman and Scotland a sniff, playing mostly in classic Australian mixed race style to record a crushing four wins from four.

Mark: Josh Hazlewood openly ponders whether Australia could try to give Scotland a leg up with their net run rate, thereby rigging an early exit for England – which left several spirit-of-cricket elves dying on the spot.

Explaining Team Australia to New American Cricket Fans: Like a Humvee parachuting out of a helicopter to land in the middle of a freeway and roar off into the distance, Springsteen blares out of the speakers.

Increase the game’s rating: C-
Australia has good cross-cultural relations with the United States. Think Nicole Kidman, Chris Hemsworth or Mel Gibson. (Maybe not the latter, if you can avoid it.) So it wouldn’t hurt for brand awareness. Especially when all their fading greats sign up to play MLC.

South Africa

First Round Report Card: First innings are generally not a problem for South Africa, and so it proved again. They crushed Sri Lanka, broke past the Netherlands and won tight games against Bangladesh and Nepal.

Mark: Heinrich Klaasen picked up a deflection off the back of Nepal’s Gulsan Jha’s pads (wicketkeeper Quinton de Kock’s throw at the non-striker’s end had hit the batter as he attempted a match-ending run off the last ball) and then ran him out, to avoid going into a Super Over against Nepal.

There are two ways to look at this. Either this is simply a more experienced team that is calm and clinical in a crucial match situation. Or by getting that deflection their way, South Africa have exhausted 100% of their luck for this World Cup. Eeeek.

Explaining Team South Africa to New American Cricket Fans: Bang like Kanye’s music at the start of global tours. Garbage like Kanye’s personality in the high pressure games.

Increases the rating in the game:C
They have played another African nation just once in T20Is in the last five years, and that was Zimbabwe at the last World Cup. This kind of behavior is not completely out of character for a major cricketing nation, but it is not fantastic either.

India

First Round Report Card: India’s first innings is about whether they beat Pakistan again. Despite looking like they were in trouble for parts of that match, they just let Pakistan run into the ground eventually. They casually dominated their other two games. And the Indian cricket economy has been safely delivered in the lap of the Super Eight. Phew.

Mark: Tournament after tournament, Jasprit Bumrah bowls some spectacularly unplayable deliveries. His ball to get rid of Babar Azam was a new addition to the canon.

Explaining Team India to New American Cricket Fans: They are like the USA of cricket, in the sense that they see themselves as the center of the world. Or maybe even the galaxy. What exactly is the point of a universe where India isn’t the supermassive black hole where all of existence collapses? IN-DI-A, IN-DI-A, IN-DI-A!

Increases the rating in the game: A
All the money cricket makes from India’s World Cup performances will trickle down to the rest of the cricketing world, right?

… it will definitely trickle down, right?

Boys?

West Indies

Report card from the first round: The co-hosts avoided triggering 1,000 commentary pieces bemoaning the continued decline of West Indies cricket by squeaking past PNG in their opening game, took things up a notch when they obliterated Uganda, then played rep-a-dope to end New Zealand’s run . the business end of ICC tournaments. Frighteningly smooth sailing, as they also avoided being ambushed by Afghanistan.

Mark: The last wicket partnership of 37 from 13 deliveries against New Zealand, during which Sherfane Rutherford faced all but one ball and scored all the runs. New Zealand’s nice-guys-finishing-in-the-final-four act never recovered.

Explaining the West Indies team to new American fans: West Indies cricket is the best of all teams and is one of the region’s main ways of taking a colonial pastime by the coattails and shaking it off.

Increase the game’s rating: B+
Becoming the first team to lift the ICC T20 title on home soil would be a powerful boost and certainly help prevent all those cricket-loving Caribbean kids from leaving to take up basketball in the US (will we ever control this? – Ed).

England

Report card from the first round: A confusing mix of front-footing, meek surrender, anguished self-analysis and clinical get-the-job-done-smart. Not for the first time, England had rings around it of peoples it had previously oppressed. Scotland arguably had the better of a rain-ravaged encounter, before England were left on their knees by Australia. They then stayed in that position to call for a favor in the group’s final game, having done the needful against Oman and Namibia.

Mark: Not seeing their all-conquering generation of white ball titans suffer another long, slow, embarrassing devastation of a World Cup defense (as they did in 2023). At least not yet anyway.

Explaining the England team to new American cricket fans: Imagine your snotty rich friend forcing their way onto your property to try to learn all about their favorite board game and then you decide to get really, really good at it and kick the snotty rich friend’s ass instead.

Increase the game’s rating: D+
English attempts to expand cricket’s horizons were weak even when they had a monopoly, and they certainly could not get Americans interested. Can, however, briefly save the nation’s wounds when England’s football team crashes out of the European Championship.

Afghanistan

Report from the first round: Crushed Uganda, blew past Papua New Guinea and didn’t even give New Zealand a chance in the deciding game. It increasingly feels like stroke Afghanistan in a World Cup is the real upset.

Mark: Rashid Khan and Fazalhaq Farooqi twinned with figures of 4 for 17 in the match against New Zealand. Many of those wicket balls were dream deliveries.

Explaining Team Afghanistan to New American Cricket Fans: Do you remember the war in Afghanistan? Well, it indirectly spurred a cricket revolution, when many Afghans fleeing the violence took up the game in neighboring Pakistan. Remember when the US withdrew from Afghanistan in 2021 and the Taliban almost immediately took over? Oh really…. that’s why they don’t have a women’s team.

Increases the game’s rating😀
Well, they first need to develop the game beyond a single gender in their own country. Let’s keep the bar low on this one.

Bangladesh

Report card from the first round: Made it out of a tough group by overcoming chief playground rivals Sri Lanka in a low-ranked scrap behind the bike sheds. Should have beaten South Africa too, but stumbled against Keshav Maharaj’s crafty full toss with the goal line in sight. They also showed familiar signs of fallibility against the Netherlands and Nepal.

But none of that matters as they beat Sri Lanka. Hey, did you hear, Sri Lanka didn’t even make it to the Super Eights hahahahaha

Mark: We beat Sri Lanka, didn’t you hear the first time??

Explaining Team Bangladesh to New American Cricket Fans: Loveable, if somewhat baffling, regular character, who always seems to end up on air in a horribly gory way. Kenny from South Parkbasically.

Increase the game’s rating: A-
Bangladeshis could hardly be more into their cricket, and every step forward is to be welcomed. Going all the way here would probably draw comparisons to Sri Lanka’s 1996 World Cup win, nowhere near as good, obviously.*

*This column is written by a Sri Lankan

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