I stood at Arundel Castle today. If I ever stand at a better ground, with more deck chair blazer drones hanging around it, I'll have done well.
Where's the pitch in relation to the castle?
I was impressed that every two bit hamlet in the New Forest seemed to have a cricket pitch. Godshill had a pretty impressive vista, even if you had to share the pitch with the local wildlife.
You can just about see the castle poking out behind some trees. So I guess it's about 100 yards up the hill behind said trees.
MS Dhoni golfing with Trump is so perfect.
There is literally nothing I want more in this world than, on 19 November this year, for Pakistan to win the World Cup in the Narendra Modi Stadium.
Other than us retaining it (obv) thats the ideal scenario.
It would be incredible.
Pakistan have a great looking ODI side on paper tbf - leaving aside whatever mad shit they are undoubtedly going to cook up during the tournament.
7/1 for them is tasty as hell. Sri Lanka also far too long. England and New Zealand too short.
This pitch looks absolutely horrific.
Flintoff has re-emerged after having his face destroyed in an accident. Looks like he's had a lot of plastic surgery.
https://twitter.com/bbctms/status/17...863114443?s=19
https://twitter.com/FactzFrenzy/stat...333481243?s=19
Can’t imagine how bad it must have been at the time to still be having work done and it looking that fresh now.
Carnage at The Oval.
The true scenes are at Hove…
Just looked up that scorecard. Wow.
Of note, I see that Chris Wright is somehow still going. I thought Essex chopped him into obscurity about a decade ago.
He’s a cracking bowler still. Sadly part of another exodus from Leicester this summer, off to Sussex I think.
That game and the Warks/Northants heading for great finishes.
I like Sussex's top 3 all being called Tom. Wonder what the most consecutive same [first] names there's been in a team.
A great score from England but that's one hell of a collapse at the back end.
Apart from a couple of biffs off Ravindra (who seems a bit useless), Root looks like he's never held a bat before. Proper scratchy. 500 runs at the World Cup guaranteed.
And as I say that, he picks up Root and Brook to two very ordinary shots.
Roy axed from the WC, Brook in. DRAMA.
Presumably he's just not fit? Seems a bit harsh, or at least a random way to go about it otherwise.
Malan's nailed down a spot opening anyway, so perhaps that came into the thinking as well.
It’s not harsh, he’s been rubbish for ages. They’ve landed on the right squad, but just went through the drama for no good reason.
Yeah, but don't name him in the squad originally then.
Completely agree. Causing themselves unnecessary problems.
I think they were absolutely determined to stick with the 2019 players, which is somewhat understandable as so little ODI cricket has been played since then.
Tim Murtagh is retiring after this last Middlesex game this week. Congratulations to him for lasting about a decade beyond when I believed he packed in. I remember him being in the Surrey squad on Cricket Captain 2000.
I was looking at his early games on cricket archive to try and find some generation-spanning gems, his earliest 2s games were in 1998. Can't be many last century cricketers left going.
Roy has thrown his toys out of the pram and binned off the Ireland series. No chance he goes to the World Cup as a reserve now. Good riddance I say.
Kohler-Cadmore, finally out of the doghouse, in as replacement.
Roy has always been a sour cunt.
I thought Kohler-Cadmore was in the rape squad.
Vince and Dawson are doing God's work here (God has relocated to Surrey in light of the Yorkshire racism scandal).
Coupe du monde starts tomorrow at 9.30 in the morning. England v New Zealand in the Narendra Modi Stadium (hopefully India one day get to play Sri Lanka at Boris Johnson Lord's). Stokes is injured. Hype levels are moderate to poor.
I'm convinced the entire thing is going to be borderline fixed, but we'll see. The schedule is very suspicious, with India having Holland (remember, NOT the Netherlands) in their last game just in case they need a run rate hike.
Hype is zero. I'm not sure why, we are defending champions after all, but there's just no interest from me.
I think it's partly the atrocious tournament format and partly the fact that the Indians have hollowed out the sport to a ludicrous extent.
Anyone but India baby
46 days until the final.
And England somehow go 10 days without a match at one point. All sounds a bit rubbish. Hopefully we [or ideally Pakistan] shit on India's parade.
It does miss West Indies and Ireland as well, despite both being tragically bad. I will have to adopt Chris Silverwood's Sri Lanka as my underdog interest.
Doesn't every cricket World Cup have an awful format? At least there have even at least three times I've had to "the fucking state of that"-ed it.
If England get to the knockouts and I'm still not feeling it I'll just stick that ICC 4 minute video of the 2019 final on a loop until I am.
If India lose the first one (albeit to Aus, but you can't have everything) it should jazz things up a bit.
I've got it on the radio at work and it sounds like (as expected) the stadium is laughably empty. Hopefully I'll get more into this the deeper we go into the competition because I'm not feeling it right now.
It's hard to tell with people being scattered everywhere in such a big stadium, but to say there's 5k in there would be generous.
Canny stuff from New Zealand looking to target us with an array of shite part-time spinners. Top-order wickets for all three.
I swear every Ravindra wicket I've seen (admittedly not that many) is a long hop.
Feels like we're on route to being absolutely smashed by some horrendous mega partnership between Conway and someone here.
Brain dead from Livingstone.
Don’t see our bowling with Livingstone as the 6th bowler being enough to win a lot of games if we don’t meet our (unbelievably high) potential with the bat. Kiwis chase these for me.