Canada | Oh dear. A tournament which was hoped would revive the ailing Canadian cricket team (and possibly cricket in the Americas more generally) instead took the form of yet another nail in the coffin. Although all their batsmen fired at one point or another - in batting order, Gunasekera, Cheema, Patel, Kumar, Dhaliwal, Tariq and Siddiqui all stepped up to be counted - they were let down horribly by a truly woeful collective bowling performance. Junaid Siddiqui's tournament figures of 13.2-0-127-0 summed up a tournament where nothing but the batting went right, and there was no Plan B. While it may be true that the geographical vastness of Canada makes it difficult to identify the absolute best players available, it puzzles me how the team can be declining so rapidly, even when its players should theoretically be approaching the peak of their powers. In the future, Canada must find bowlers that do not undo the good work of their batsmen. Much will depend on a pair of young spinners, Farhan Malik and Nikhil Dutta. While the latter boasts an action that may attract unwanted attention, he undoubtedly has a brilliant cricket brain. Both boast statistics that warrant opportunities. |
Jersey | Jersey's first foray into this level of cricket was far better than their warm-up defeat against Afghanistan suggested it would be. With shock victories over both Hong Kong and Nepal, the island nation (which, as we were regularly reminded, boasts a population approximately equal to the population of the MCG) punched well above its weight and provided a shop window for several young players who may have a future in the game. CJ Bodenstein, Jonty Jenner, Ben Stevens and Nat Watkins are all under 24 years of age and all showed the sort of talent that could make them desirable limited-overs signings for cash-strapped counties, while a small core of more experienced players provided astute leadership. In the future, Jersey will be seeking to keep their current group of players together without creating a cushy clique. The value of a strong group of young players cannot be overstated, but competition for places is equally valuable in order to push those players to the peak of their powers. Certainly, Jersey will aim to maintain their new-found position above Denmark, Guernsey and Italy in local European competitions for several years. Young players like Harrison Carlyon and Solomon Warner should soon strengthen the eleven. |
Kenya | To coin a press conference cliché, Kenya will be able to take a lot of positives from this tournament. Although they failed to make the last eight, and are still not back to their old position of the Africa's third-best team, they came painstakingly close to qualifying, and would have done so if the Dutch weren't chasing every last scrap of Net Run Rate available to them. Irfan Karim, Narendra Kalyan and Rakep Patel all put in performances to suggest that they are coming of age. However, Lucas Oluoch and Nelson Odhiambo were particularly disappointing, and let the Dutch and Scottish batsmen off the hook too easily at vital times. In the future, Kenyan cricket will continue to struggle with security issues and a lack of well-maintained facilities as former international venues become overgrown and unkempt. If Cricket Kenya can look after the facilities and nurture players, then the talent will show itself. They are another cricketing country that may suffer disproportionately from the rather cavalier attitude to development shown by ICC Africa and its parent organisation as its players return to playing in competitions that will receive little to no coverage. |
Nepal | Nepal's supporters (and they loyally stuck by their team until the bitter end) suffered through an abject performance from their beloved players. What was supposed to help to lift the country out of the aftermath of a sequence of devastating earthquakes instead gave them further reasons for despair. For a country that idolises its cricketers, it will be hugely disappointing to see them limping to defeat against teams with less history, less support and less pedigree than most of the Nepalese players, who are veterans of the most recent World Twenty20 in Bangladesh. Most puzzling of all was the sight of Siddhant Lohani, batting at number seven on Twenty20 debut, showing the panache, intent and skill that the rest of his team had been lacking to a man. It begs the question as to why we did not see him until three quarters of the way through Nepal's final batting effort at this tournament. In the future, Nepal need to build a new Twenty20 team around those select two or three who impressed here, complimented with experienced campaigners and new faces. The youth of Siddhant Lohani and Sompal Kami must be guided by the experienced Paras Khadka and Shakti Gauchan, but room should be allowed for the likes of Vishwakarma and Karki, Mukhiya and Shrastha to spread their wings. |
United Arab Emirates | For so long as none of Emirates' extensive cricket sponsorship extends to their own national team, they are likely to remain amateur in every sense. They felt the retirement of Khurram Khan most keenly in his calm demeanour and simple approach to cricket. Without him, this UAE side played frenetically; batsman who were supposed to be Twenty20 specialists like Faizan Asif lacked a plan B, while those more suited to the longer formats like Swapnil Patil equally failed to adapt. Meanwhile, there was always at least one bowler who failed to find a line or length, and the usually metronomic Manjula Guruge came in for particular punishment. This was not a team which lacked talent, but it was one which simply failed to turn up. In the future, the Emiratis need new players. Of those who played in this tournament, only eight will be under 35 by the time the next Twenty20 Qualifier rolls around in 2019, of whom a maximum of three can claim to have had a good tournament this time. It is always difficult to build a settled team when so many of them are tied up by work commitments, so some new sponsorship deals to facilitate professional contracts would also be of use to the UAE. Some of the players who represented the under-19 side so well last year should also be promoted to the senior team sooner rather than later. |
United States | Even without Steven Taylor, this United States team very nearly had what it takes to progress to the next stage of the competition. With wins over Hong Kong and Papua New Guinea - both of whom were good enough to humble the Irish beforehand - the Americans' strong finish to the tournament highlights the fact that this is a talented group of cricketers, even if they are definitely not the fifteen best in the United States; not yet at least. They were probably one strong hitter - perhaps Taylor, who spent most of the tournament on the Barbados Tridents' bench - away from qualifying. In the future, the American players must hope not to become collateral damage in the downfall of USACA, which has been branded (correctly, if ironically) as "unprofessional and not trustworthy" by the ICC. Beyond that, who knows? There is obvious talent in the United States, but the players are spread so disparately and assembled so sporadically that they can rarely reach their full potential. |