Well in the 30th over we were dangerously close to an actual game breaking out in this tournament
Well in the 30th over we were dangerously close to an actual game breaking out in this tournament
'were'
Anyway, this is all tracking perfectly for India to win 9 out of 9 in the groups before being unceremoniously dumped out by us in the semis having scraped 4th place with a 6/3 record, maybe even 5/4 with a heavy defeat to India thrown in for good measure.
There's a clear top 5 and bottom 4, with Australia as a nothingy pudding in the middle. No all top 5 matches until next Friday, so we could really use an upset or two in the interim.
It's amazing to think people have designed a tournament format in which each match means so little. It's very much in vogue though as the Swiss system seems to be what every major sport is moving towards.
ODIs are done after this World Cup you have to think.
India will win it and have nationalistic orgy and it’s all T20 all the time whilst England/India/Australia play some test matches every summer
I'm currently in the 2041 season with Derbyshire on Cricket Captain 2020, and while the sidelining of the one day game to accommodate the pom-bear blast will probably have dire IRL consequences for the production of future ODI stars, the one day trophy is by far my favourite part of the season. All the good players are off helping the EBC "reach younger urban audiences" in between sets by Rudimental and rainbow frog biscuits, and the rest of us get to have chaotic shit-offs with our aging backups and random regen wicketkeepers with sub-10 2nd xi batting averages. It's mint. @Jimmy Floyd can confirm, but I get the impression that it's not that far off the actual real life post-THEHUNDRED one day cup?
Yeah, the one day cup is in effect a 2nd XI trophy, albeit less so for the smaller counties who, like Leicestershire did this year, are missing fewer players and can aim at silverware for once. Surrey both years have had so many players away with the Hundred that they've literally run out of players for certain fixtures and had to contemplate comedy selection scenarios such as getting coaches out of retirement to make up the numbers, and playing injured bowlers as specialist number 11 batsmen.
It's a pity really as I don't think there's anything wrong with the format in a sporting sense, it's just far more quick and easy money to play in fixed T20 leagues (and don't be under any illusions, they are all fixed). The best way that the sport can develop from here is for IPL to turn into an NFL style behemoth and all other countries to do their own thing to feed into it.
We lost, I think, 11 first XI players to the Hundred this summer and had a similar number of first and second string players on the injury list. Miracle we won even a single game in the ODC. Made for dire watching (bar the seven or eight ciders) when I headed back home for a week in the summer (although Taunton obvs remains by far the best place in the UK to watch cricket because we can actually fill our ground on a semi regular basis and not just fill it with rah rah cunts like Surrey do).
The Sky studio for this game has Nick Knight (host) with guests Zak Crawley and Mo Bobat. I think the algorithm is taking over.
Gawd, this is like 1842 all over again.
That has got to be the most brain-dead runout ever.
Afghans are so hot-headed it's ridiculous. The same at all levels of cricket from what I have seen. Just completely incapable of remaining calm.
That is a pretty woeful decision, feels very unlucky for that to be upheld.
Rod Tucker has come armed to the back teeth as usual. This has disaster written all over it.
We're in trouble here. Could be very interesting.
Buttler looked so uncomfortable against the in-swing. The other side of the coin from their steamhead batting is the unreal skill they have with the ball.
As an aside, this ground is great. Love the unique feel of it, much better than the huge bowl they built over the Motera.
Buttler wasn’t even close to that.
Epic stuff from Athers there. '...but it may give Livingstone some confidence against Rashid.' THUMP howwwwwwwazeeeeee *finger*
Livingstone a waste of time. In the shit big time here - needs a proper coming of age knock from Brook.
We have selected absolutely horribly for this tournament (Livingstone should be a travelling reserve at best). The data nerds must be flummoxed by the lack of sample size in this format.
Game over.
Short of a Mark Wood rout this will be the 13th nation I've seen England lose to at cricket. A proud moment.
Breathing life into this dead format again. Truly the saviours of the world game.
Absolutely routed by Jonathan Trott and the Taliban. What a day.
Should have really knocked that off inside 40 overs. I don't care how good their spinners are, we should be good enough to take the attack to them.
Yes, Rod Tucker and some uneven bounce got us 2 down early but the middle order did naff all.
Chase 285 inside 40, against Mujeeb, Rashid and Nabi, at Delhi? I don't think so.
What we really needed was Root not to play back to a full straight one and guide us through to finishing range.
The Saffers thumped 428 here a week ago, that was not a tough target to chase and we should have been done with time to spare.
The way we're playing, there's no way we don't lose more than 1 in our remaining games, feel like that's it.
Getting to see Johnny Bairstow badly review an LBW at the Olympics
Where better to start than the home of cricket, Los Angeles.
I assume they're going to in some way convert SoFi Stadium to use as a Cricket pitch. I can't believe they have even a singular wicket in the LA area right now.
Wikipedia has most of the Major League Cricket teams planning to build grounds. All the matches from the first season appear to have been played at Grand Prairie Stadium in Dallas, which is a converted baseball ground.
Of course they have a team called Washington Freedom. Why would I expect any better?
There it is. MASSIVE.Niccolo Campriani, sports director of Olympic and Paralympic Games 2028, said the committee is "thrilled to be welcoming the world's second most popular sport".
The organisers want a six team event. Australia, India, Pakistan, South Africa, Great Britain, erm, USA. Let's go.
There's no way that USA aren't getting involved when they're hosting. How else will they liberate us all?
They are co-hosting next year's T20 World Cup, and therefore playing in it, which should be fun as US cricket team is a proper basket case. Perhaps England losing to them will be the final humiliation.
Isn't there an athlete limit nowadays? Adding a team sports is really gonna impact that.
Never fear, they appear to have binned off boxing to make way for cricket and baseball. It's almost as if I was in charge.
Maybe regency bias over the past few days but I swear there’s been a batting collapse in an awful lot of these matches
In general everyone is spanking the hard new ball as per T20 and then have forgotten how to bat in the middle overs. Except India, who have picked an actual ODI team and not a T20 mashup fudge.
India actually have played the format once or twice in the last 4 years which helps
We majored on it before our home World Cup as well. It's always a matter of priorities and for us it's the crisp cup, for some unknown reason.
It would be pretty funny if this ends up being abandoned.
Which to be fair, is not unreasonable. If play restarts, fans go back to their seats and are at risk of being clipped by the debris whistling round the stands.
Cricinfo's talking about unstable scaffolding. Good to see a proper subcontinental tournament breaking out.
Speaking of unstable, off fucks Smith leg before again. Balm for a sore heart.
I’ve got my clogs on lapping these scenes up
We'd definitely be losing from here, probably getting rolled by Roloef.
Long tail for the Saffers. This is 50/50
van der Merwe is an absolute lunatic and I love him.