January Round Up

It's been quite a while since my last post... and that's partly because the 2009 cricket season in Singapore kicked off on 10-Jan with the Twenty20 Championships (Clubs & Corporates). The weekends then whizzed away with full days being spent umpiring - 3 games a day. Weekdays were spent in making sure that all loose ends at work were tied up before I left for 2 weeks leave on 24-Jan. So here's the catch up on all the happenings in Jan.

• Rain was the real winner in the New Zealand vs West Indies ODI series, taking 2 out of the 5 games and forcing a Duckworth-Lewis result in 2 of the other 3. Officially, the hosts took the ODI series 2-1, finally providing a result after the Tests & T20s were shared. The win helped SA maintain their strong 4th position in the ICC ODI rankings.
• Sri Lanka & Zimbabwe joined hosts Bangladesh in a Tri-Nation series that went closer than what most would have expected. The hosts qualified for the finals by beating SL in their league match, and then fought tooth-and-nail before SL stumbled over the finish line with 2 wickets & 11 balls to spare. Young 21 year old Shakib Al Hasan was by far the player of the tournament scoring 153 runs @76.5, double the next highest run scorer (Jayasuriya with 76)
• Zimbabwe stayed on for a 3-ODI series against hosts Bangladesh which the hosts took rather convincingly at 2-1. With no great performances to talk about, and no real significance to the rest of the cricketing community, I shan't spend any more time on this series.
• Sri Lanka travelled to Pakistan where they beat the hosts 2-1 in the ODI section of their tour of the troubled nation. Dilshan top scored with 255 runs and Gul was the leading wicket-taker with 10 wickets. They will return for the Test series post the ODI series against India.
• India reached Sri Lanka and convincingly beat the hosts in Game 1. 4 ODIs and 1 T20 to go in this series. Game 2 is tomorrow, on 31-Jan.
  
• Zimbawe are in nearby Kenya for a 5-ODI series and lead 2-0 in the series.
  
• Australia's summer appeared to be heading upwards when they convincingly won both the T20s against South Africa. When the world #1 & world #2 shared the 1st 2 games, there were hopes abound that the series would go down to the wire, but the contenders ensured that Australia won no mental advantage ahead of the return series in South Africa by taking the ODI series 4-1 and with it, the title of ODI Team Number 1. Albie Morkel was awarded the Man of the Series for his all-round performance of 105 @52.50, 3 wickets & 2 catches. The final game on 30-Jan ended the almost-2-month-long tour dominated by South Africa who beat the hosts 2-1 in the Tests, lost 0-2 in T20s and won 4-1 in ODIs - clearly Australia has passed the baton on.
  
• England have landed in West Indies for a 70-day tour comprising 4 tests, 1 T20 and 5 ODIs; a good start winning their opening 3-day tour game by 217 runs.
• New Zealand have returned to Australia for the ODI leg of their tour, one that has started badly with a 6 wickets loss to NZ President's XI.

In IPL news, 111 foreign players will be available for the auction ahead of the 2nd edition of IPL. Key players include KP, Flintoff, Clarke, Haddin, Clark, Monty, Shakib, Duminy, Nel and Tharanga. However, poorly performing Australian captain Ponting has questioned if Aussie players should take part in the IPL at the risk of their national performance. The 1st 'transaction' of the transfer window saw Delhi Daredevils swap opening batsman Shikhar Dhawan with Mumbai Indians' bowler Ashish Nehra. The 2nd transfer saw Mumbai Indians' Uthappa swapped with Bangalore Royal Challengers' Zaheer Khan.