Review of England v India Natwest Series Final 2002 Unbelievable

Introduction

Summer 2002 saw two of the most entertaining matches ever played in one day cricket. The first was played on Wednesday 19th June 2002, in the fourth round of the Cheltenham & Gloucester Trophy. Surrey played Glamorgan at the Oval. Surrey scored a phenomenal total of 438-5, from their 50 overs, including 268 from 160 balls from Ally Brown (currently the highest limited overs score in the world). Glamorgan hit 429 all out in reply, an amazing feat in itself.

Just over three weeks later, England met India at Lord`s, in the final of the NatWest Series. Both teams scored about a hundred runs less than the match mentioned above, but it was still an excellent day`s cricket. India won with just three balls to spare after the two youngest players, Mohammad Kaif and Yuvraj Singh, spared the blushes of their own middle order (who had all got out cheaply) with 121 runs from 18 overs. Perhaps they were helped by the umpires, who opted to change the ball in the 36th over, but whatever happened, it was still a fantastic match.

This DVD is an account of that match, featuring coverage from Sky Sports who broadcast the event on the day. The coverage starts at the pitch inspection and concludes with the post-match interviews.

Video

Like most of Sky Sports` coverage of UK-based events, the match was transmitted in widescreen on the various digital TV platforms. What a total kick in the teeth from this DVD then, as you get to watch a cropped 4:3 version instead! This totally annoyed me, as there doesn`t seem to be any justifiable reason for it! Widescreen means that we get to see more of the action, wide-angle shots of the field placings etc. etc. But we`ve lost all of that here. Grrrrr.....

The bit of the picture that you do see all looks fine, and comparable to the original broadcast on the day. There`s not much else to say about it as it`s all perfectly watchable. Shame that some of the image is missing.

Audio

A DD2.0 stereo soundtrack, again pretty similar to that which was broadcast on the day. You can hear commentators clearly, there`s plenty of atmosphere from the crowd and everything sounds just fine.

Features

A rather half hearted attempt to give you some information about the players featured in the game. For some players there are some stills from the main feature (freeze frames of Sky Sports` on-screen statistics on players). For the other players there are some just pages borrowed from http://www.cricinfo.com/.

Conclusion

The match itself was enthralling and entertaining. I`m sure we were supposed to be doing some DIY or gardening on the day, but I seemed to get sidetracked by the cricket. England looked on course for an excellent victory after rapid scoring from Trescothick, Hussain and Flintoff . And when India were reduced to 146-5, all bets were off. But then came Mohammad Kaif and Yuvraj Singh who clattered their way through 121 runs in the blink of an eye, and a tense finish was guaranteed. One of the great matches.

This DVD serves as a reasonable memento of the occasion, with over 2 hours of footage it makes for a pretty good highlights programme. There`s no extra footage here (the press release is slightly misleading on that aspect), it`s all material that was broadcast on Sky Sports. But it`s the cropped full-frame transfer really gets on my nerves because we saw so much more on the day and are being denied it here.

The other problem is the availability of this DVD. It is available exclusively through WH Smiths retail outlets and online courtesy of the CricInfo web site. It will cost you £21.99 (including postage) from CricInfo, which is an obscene amount. Maybe it will be cheaper in Smiths.

Only mega-die-hard cricket fans without widescreen TVs should consider letting themselves be ripped off in this way!