The cacophony of horns on the streets of Nottingham mingled in with Pakistan Zindabad went on deep into the night. it was a sea of green tops and green flags in downtown Srinagar. The Crescent and Star fluttered atop truck and cars all across Indian Occupied Kashmir, in Azad Kashmir and of course in the land of the pure. It wasn’t just Sunday, it was the entire week that the cities of Leeds, Bradford and Nottingham were in a frenzy of Pakistani Cricket. Jeeway Pakistan resounded from the cars, the restaurant and the streets. Be Afridi, very Afridi was the slogan heard all over Britain and in Pakistan. Lahore was roaring with “Gul sadda sher eh, baqi hair phair eh“. Karachi the heart of Pakistani cricket was celebrating from Clifton to Landi, from Defence to North Nazimibad.

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Good cricket fans say the best cricket on the planet on the brown mud pitches of Lords. The Pakistani fans were a pleasure to watch. The Crescent and Stat waived high in the stadium and around it.

Runners-up last time, Pakistan went one better in the midsummer sunshine at Lord’s, winning the World Twenty20 by eight wickets with eight balls to spare. Guardian

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The Pakistanis have reinvented the latest version of Cricket in their own image. When 20Twenty came around, the pundits said that it was a game for the batsmen and that 20Twenty had proclaimed the death of the bowler. The genre invented by Sarfraz Nawaz, Imran Khan, Waqar Unis has now again been updated by Umar Gul, Afridi and other teenagers. They wreaked havoc on the most sophisticated and experienced batsmen on the planet. The South Africans didn’t know what hit them, and the proud Kiwis were totally stumped. Sri Lanka came in afraid of the Afridi-Gul juggernaut, and never quiet got a grip on the game.

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ISLAMABAD (AP) — Thousands of fans have taken to the streets across Pakistan to celebrate their country’s eight-wicket victory over Sri Lanka in the Twenty20 World Cup final.

The rejoicing started as batsman Shahid Afridi steered Pakistan to the title with an unbeaten 54 off 40 balls, with his team chasing down the target of 139 runs in 18.4 overs.

Captain Kumar Sangakkara scored an unbeaten 64 off 52 balls and helped Sri Lanka recover from 70-6 to finish with 138-6 off its 20 overs.

Giant screens were put in place in the main markets of Lahore, Karachi, Islamabad and Multan where thousands of men, women and children gathered to watch the final live from Lord’s in London. Sports illustrated

Cricket thinktanks will be spending years going over Reverse Spins. How did the Pakistani teenagers create this deadly mix of Yorkers, Spins, and then of course the Reverse Spins.

Two teams blessed with sublime and inventive skills will contest the World Twenty20 final today. The arrival at Lord’s of Pakistan and Sri Lanka should also be the final vindication of a form of the game that has not quite persuaded those who regard themselves as purists of its legitimacy.

But in the past fortnight, Twenty20 cricket has come of age while retaining the idealism and freshness of youth. It has demonstrated – not least through the two wonderful sides which have reached the final – that bowlers have a significant part to play in the construction and destiny of matches and that batting is not merely a less thuggish type of slogging.

The tournament has been entertaining and diverting. T20 is not Test cricket, it cannot be, nor ever will it be. But it contains a beauty and vigour of its own. The lack of close matches has hardly been noticed. Independent

For decades the gurus will be analyzing the all round efforts of  Afridi. Everyone compared the victory to 1992 win when Imran Khan’s team lifted the World Cup by beating England in the final at the Melbourne cricket ground in Australia.The win by Younus Khan’s team gave Pakistanis back home reason to cheer as the cricket-mad nation celebrated and cherished the victory.

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Celebrations in Indian occupied Kashmir after Pakistan win

SRINAGAR, India (AFP) — Residents in Indian-ruled Kashmir Sunday fired crackers in the region’s main city after Pakistan beat Sri Lanka to win the World Twenty20 championship, witnesses said.

Srinagar — the Kashmiri summer capital — erupted in celebration after Pakistan beat Sri Lanka by eight wickets and as scores of Kashmiri youth poured on to the streets and lit firecrackers.

The youths also chanted pro-Pakistan and pro-freedom slogans as Indian paramilitary troops stayed in their bunkers, witnesses said.

Thousands of Kashmiris, including women and children, were glued to their televisions sets to watch the tense final.

“It is a great victory and one day I hope we will merge with Pakistan,” said a die-hard Pakistani cricket fan, Mohammed Yaseen.

Residents in Muslim-majority Kashmir valley traditionally support Pakistan in sports events.

Indian Kashmir is in the grip of a nearly 20-year insurgency that has so far claimed more than 47,000 lives by an official count.

Islamabad denies Indian allegations that it funds and arms the insurgency. Most militant groups want Indian-ruled Kashmir to merge with Pakistan, and a few want the region to become independent. AFP

Pakistan won and won decisively. The question being asked around the world is did the IPL hurt Cricket in general and Bharati cricket in particular.

From the looks of it, the IPL did hurt Bharat. We wrote several weeks ago, “Don’t call IPL Cricket”. That seems to the gist of it all. IPL was a show, a carnival, a dating scene, a “mela“, a Bollywood production, a bazaar, a fashion parade, an excuse to get drunk, a food cafeteria a show–but surely it did not represent Cricket. The results of the 20Twenty World Cup surely informed the world that IPL did not sharpen the skills of the players, it did the exact opposite, it reduced the  power of the batsmen and the bowlers.

The commentary on the Pakistani win was very biased. The Guardian, the Independent and the New York Times focused on Pakistani issues at home, but did not mention the issues faced by Sri Lanka or Bharat.

It was so very typical of Pakistan then that the most influential players in the game were a pair of mavericks. Afridi is an entertainer by nature, a robust player touched with magic. His bowling, fast wrist spin, has been superb throughout but it is his batting that has helped change fortunes, persuading Malik to promote him to No3 in the order and responding, first against South Africa and now Sri Lanka. His was a more measured innings than his reputation as a thunderous hitter of sixes might suggest: there was much running to do and clearly that does not agree with him. But when the time came he rammed down the accelerator, belted Muttiah Muralitharan high into the Tavern Stand and then over extra cover, and sealed things. He batted for 40 balls and hit two fours and two sixes. Guardian