When cricket came home 20 years back: What made 1999 World Cup the last of its kind
Green pitches. White ball swinging and seaming. Dibbly-dobbly medium pacers. Rain, lots of rain. Reserve days.
That was the norm back in 1999 and now, two decades later, cricket’s biggest show is back to its spiritual abode in England. It’s been 20 years since it last came home. And as we are likely to find out, once the 2019 World Cup action starts on 30 May, a lot has changed in the last two decades.
When the World Cup returned to England after 16 years back then, cricket was in a transitional phase. Making sense of things is always easy in retrospect, but 20 years ago, cricket in England actually lived up to all the stereotypes. Ironic as it may seem to the modern-day cricket lover, but too much grass on the pitch was actually a thing. It was an oft-repeated complaint, mostly from batsmen those days — the pitch can’t be distinguished from the outfield.
A stranger in your own home
Twenty years later, cricket may find itself scratching its head, even unable to recognise its old home. For starters, lively grass on a damp deck has become as unknown a commodity as a free hit was those days. The white Duke ball, used only for that World Cup in 1999 and then never again, is a footnote: the Kookaburra reigns supreme. The idea of Twenty20 had probably not even entered the England and Wales Cricket Board’s (ECB) marketing managers then; today, Twenty20 is passé, "The Hundred" is the real deal, mate.
And then there were the scoring rates.
If there was one man who lit up that World Cup (well except, England who proceeded to be knocked out at their own party before even the official theme song was released), it was the combative South African all-rounder who went by the name Lance Klusener. More medium-pace then fast, bowling third-change after the duo of Allan Donald and Shaun Pollock, Klusener exploded into the cricketing world as the original finisher. With that distinctive high backlift, he stunned the world with his explosive mixture of hitting at the death, taking away games at the end. There was one blip though — that brain freeze in that semi-final, but we’ll spare him the pain. Suffice to say, there was a reason why Klusener won the Player of the Tournament award, only the second time after Martin Crowe in 1992 that a player from outside the two finalists has won that award in a World Cup.
When a strike rate of 100 was considered respectable
For those who have only grown up on the tales of Klusener’s mythical hitting, you would be forgiven for thinking that his strike rate in that tournament was a gargantuan 200 or so. Not quite. Not even close. Klusener scored 281 runs in that World Cup off 230 balls... giving him a strike rate of only 122.17 in that tournament. Which, at first glance, looks eerily similar to Ajinkya Rahane’s overall strike rate in the Indian Premier League: 121.92.