I wonder if Australia were a victim of that. The danger with assessing Australia now is that you run the risk of being wise after the event because almost everyone had put them in among the three best teams of the tournament. But if we had to conduct a post mortem, the first conclusion would be that players who are very good in one form need not necessarily be as effective in another. I know there is a school of thought, and one that has some strength to it, that a good player will be good in any form, but looking at some of the Australians, Ponting, Mike Hussey, even Clarke and certainly Lee, you wondered if they had made the adjustment.

No time to build

One of the things we learnt from the IPL was that great players in the traditional formats put a price on their wicket and consolidate when things go wrong when sadly, there is neither the time nor often a sound reason to consolidate. Maybe that is where a Ponting or a Hussey haven’t allowed the learning curve to set in. In the absence of Symonds, their best T20 batsman is probably David Hussey but he saw six others bat ahead of him. And I am beginning to wonder if there is some truth to the joke going around that the Aussies can play any bowlers except those that bowl under 100 kms an hour!

I suspect too that with spin emerging as the most effective form of bowling, they had too few options. Nathan Hauritz isn’t scaring anyone and Clarke and Hussey are back up spinners. But the mystery to me was Lee who had bowled wonderfully during the IPL and while the quality of batting here would be higher, you expect a leading cricketer to raise his game similarly. That didn’t happen and Lee looked a bit lost when the ball started vanishing. Interestingly the two best Australian bowlers during the IPL were Shane Warne and Dirk Nannes, one retired, the other wearing orange!

I must confess I find Pakistan’s cricket perplexing too. You would have thought that the T20 format was tailormade for their style of play and into the second week we might well discover that to be the case. But they need a strong batsman at the top of the order and they need to dust Sohail Tanvir to rediscover the gem in their midst. If a side can keep Tanvir on the bench it must be, by some distance, the best bowling side in the tournament. Pakistan isn’t! And unless Afridi rediscovers the real reason batsmen take a bat out with them, they might find their balance affected rather badly.

And unfortunately for them, Bangladesh are confirming an increasingly popular view that they are making absolutely no progress at all. There is undeniable ability in that side but they have made a habit of playing below potential to the extent that one can question whether the original assumption of potential was flawed. It is a team that is crying out for a leader like Shane Warne who can make people believe in their ability, sometimes convince them of ability where its existence may be in doubt! Happily for cricket, though sadly for Bangladesh, we are discovering that leadership is a huge component of T20 cricket.

Enough options

And so India and South Africa look the most complete teams in the tournament so far. India haven’t yet been tested, South Africa have almost lost a game so there is still some evidence to gather to justify this initial hypothesis. But both have enough bowling options and while the conservative amongst Indian supporters might think that Irfan Pathan at 7 and Harbhajan at 8 isn’t enough batting, it is. In a 20 over game you have to budget for your top seven to bat through and both India and South Africa have a fairly formidable and versatile top seven.

If India look vulnerable anywhere, it is in the quality of the seam bowling and maybe, in comparison to South Africa, with the fielding.