The second edition of the World Twenty20 championships started with the opening ceremony being cancelled due to persistent rains, and ended with a rather bizarre, and somewhat pointless, fireworks display on the longest day of the English summer under bright sunny skies at Lord’s. In most cases, these incidents would point to a tournament blighted by lack of planning and coherent organisation.

But here in England, those proved largely to be the exceptions in an event that ticked most boxes that success and fun are measured by.

Criticisms

There have been two major criticisms directed at the England and Wales Cricket Board (ECB) and the International Cricket Council (ICC) over the last couple of weeks. One has been the lack of any publicity around the hosting cities — London and Nottingham — and it was hard to tell there was an international sporting event on until you got into the stadiums.

The second was the pricing of tickets — between £50 and 70 for the Super Eights and upwards of £90 after that. The West Indies had, in the 2007 World Cup, paid with empty stands after pricing the fans out of the venues, were England doing the same?

While both criticisms were valid, they didn’t really have any kind of effect on the tournament itself. Thanks to the largely cosmopolitan nature of London, it really didn’t matter who were playing whom. The Asian teams were the big draws, but even the Dutch managed to fill up the grounds. For the final, there was even a bunch of fans from Botswana in the stands .

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