Sri Lanka at it again. Chasing 186 for a 2-0 series win in South Africa.
Oh actually not it’s a no ball. Another cracking Test match though.
Sri Lanka at it again. Chasing 186 for a 2-0 series win in South Africa.
Oh actually not it’s a no ball. Another cracking Test match though.
Have the Beeb mucked up or is it really only day 2?
Yeah final session on day 2. Lankans need 197 to win.
The state of there being three all outs in less than two days.
Still, 'mon the Lanka.
Does The Universe Boss just hate moving?It must be quite annoying batting with Chris Gayle.
Shai Hope drops the ball into the off side and sets off for what should be an easy, if quick, single, and he's instantly sent back by Gayle. Gayle raises a hand in apology as Hope throws his arms up in frustration, before spinning and grounding his bat.
I don't know which universe it is he claims to boss, but it must be one with a 5mph speed limit.
That is an utter shocker. Curran couldn't believe he'd actually been given out.
Holder is a grubby cheat. Enjoy your next over rate ban mate.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/cricket/47339454
ECB think-wank truly hitting new highs/lows here. Particularly this marvellous paragraph:
We're getting people to re-appraise cricket in terms of their perceptions of what the game means to them, and ultimately addressing the complexity of cricket - presenting it in a simple way.
This score has escalated quickly. We were 13-0 or something when I checked at the start of the 3rd over.
Should piss 400 from here. God it will be shit when we get mugged at the World Cup.
We've been going at 17 an over since I posted that. We should rename the sport Buttler (T20 can be called Maxwell).
Fucking hell, last I checked we'd just been settling down to a more normal rate.
This is absolutely ludicrous
Are the ropes on the edge of the square? This is nonsense.
That seemed to go from "These cunts are only going to chase this down" to game over in about ten minutes.
I don't know if I can stomach an England-India World Cup final. But I also can't see past it, draw permitting.
The one factor which no one has really mentioned for the World Cup but which I think will be the key factor in the whole tournament is the 10.30 starts. 10.30 starts in England, no matter how flat you make the pitch, are going to see the ball go round corners and in the hands of the right bowlers you could see some outrageous 130 all outs and the like.
I think India could be very vulnerable to the sideways moving ball and Pakistan (and possibly New Zealand) could come right into the picture.
I would love to see NZ win the thing. Pakistan are a good pick for dark horse, given what you're saying there.
I would have agreed with you on India before, but I'm incredibly impressed with their pace attack at the moment. Even if they do have the occasional match where they go down cheaply, I'd back their bowlers to return the favour. Shami is great at moving the ball sideways - he came to England specifically to learn - and Bumrah could have a very high ceiling indeed. Kohli did seem to have gotten his head around swing last time he was tested as well, which is a big factor.
They seem to be trying to convince themselves to pick Bhuvneshwar ahead of Shami at the moment, but I agree. In fact, I'd even say bowling could be their stronger suit. Aside from the obvious, I'm not really scared of Dhoni and Kedar Jadhav.
I've kind of had enough of Jonny Bairstow blowing loose drives into fresh air and getting cleaned up. Roy and Hales please.
I've also just noticed Kane Williamson's 200* which takes him past 6,000 Test runs at an average of 53, with twenty hundreds. Just proves you need to play for a fashionable nation to get the credit.
When you get even slightly on top of this team they are so gutless they might as well be props on Omaha Beach.
Saying that that six might put some form of life back in this T20 match.
It's 130/5 in the 17th over of a T20. There is nothing to facepalm at.
The bowling from the Windies collapsed it seems. 160+ seems to be a good score considering I'm a casual T20 fan.
Willey and Jordan bowling like men who know Archer is going to be better than them
Prediction: CJ will get in the World Cup squad off the back of these games.
I'd quite like him and Archer to get in just to wind up the various nations whose fans criticise us for picking non-purebloods.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BrL7oE1Ko_M
Afghanistan setting off on a chase of 146 to beat Ireland for their first Test win, live on youtube.
4-0 off 8 overs.
Attritional.
I once spotted Andy McBrine in a bar at Faro Airport, which I think was the most niche celebrity spot of all time.
We used to have a thread for that sort of thing with some absolute belters.
Trashwin kicking off the annual IPL fiasco-fest with a nice dose of mankad. Warne is seething his tits off. Good times.
Probably how we'll end up losing the World Cup.
I don't get all the seethe when a mankad happens. Spirit of the whatever, blah blah blah. Stay behind the fucking line.
The best bit is the list of reactions on the BBC piece. Variations on a theme and then you get to the bottom two. Some things never change.
Mankad's are brilliant. How else are you going to stop batsman walking half way up the pitch before the ball is bowled?
I've not seen it, but I would imagine he was out of his ground by less than a foot, so the idea of it being there to stop batsmen being halfway down the pitch is laughable, they'd be getting conventionally run out all the time if that's what they did. A batsman should be able to walk in with the bowler as much as a fielder can (which also has rules implications as they can walk into the 30 yard circle to make up the numbers). The bowler should intend to actually deliver the ball, which it doesn't really sound was the case with Ashwin.
It should probably just be outlawed as a mode of dismissal, don't make the ball live until it leaves the bowler's hand or something. There's no real room for discretion or 'decency' in modern professional sport. Unfortunately, rules tend to go the other way these days (see the approach now taken when the bowler clips the bails upon delivery).
Weirdly, the law only requires the batsman to be in the crease until you would normally expect the bowler to deliver the ball. I think that's the issue in this case, as Ashwin has stopped in his delivery stride and waited for Buttler to naturally walk forward, as if the ball was being bowled.
Sam Curran
Opening and taking a hattrick
http://www.espncricinfo.com/series/8...er-league-2019
Twitter around that point was hilarious, the whole of cricket twitter slating him and his million dollar deal, and then about 30 seconds later all doing massive u-turns. They clearly don't know who they're dealing with here. Best mental strength of any cricketer that age I've ever seen.
I'm seeing my Dad this week. Can anyone give me a quick rundown of the cricket (read: Are England good? Is there any lol story I can bring up?) from say last 6 months?
England are quite bad at Tests but quite good at one dayers and we might win the World Cup.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/cricket/47946381
Is Woakes one of the ones most likely to lose out if they include Archer, by any chance?
Willey said something similar the other day. I don't know why they're being so precious, this is professional sport and Archer is good.
In fairness to Woakes, he does say that himself.
It'd be quite good to see Archer come in and do something spectacularly shit to cost us winning it.