Warm up matches start from today. Main matches start from 6th June.
Warm up matches will be televised on Star cricket and Skysport . So that’s good thing. First warm up match is a day-night game, starts from 12 p.m. GMT between Pak and SL.
warm up fixtures’ link.
Main fixtures’ link.
Group A: WI, SA, PAK, IND
Group B: AUS, ENG, NZ, SL
Which is the stronger group? Who do you think is the strongest team? Which is the match you are most looking forward to seeing? Lets start the discussion…
They’re going to try a D/N game tonight at Edgbaston? I suspect Messrs Duckworth and Lewis will be pressed into action.
Group A looks stronger than Group B to me and I suspect that the strongest team may well be SA (though they’ve made some curious selection decisions - no Philander who would excel in English conditions, and a bunch of less well known one day specialists, as opposed to more well known players from the long form of the game) or India. That game should be good.
England stand some chance because we’re at home and used to the conditions but we won’t win it. I suspect minds may well be on The Ashes for some players. As a result, the game I really want to see is Aus-Eng. The phony war will start there.
Ya. Hoping tht weather doesn’t spoil this match or any match
SA is strong side, the ‘C’ word has historically followed them in multinational tournaments. So we will see how it goes.
Ind lost 3-0 last to Eng in Eng. So, not the main team out there imo. In Swing bowling, I guess only Bhuvnesh Kumar will do well, may be Irfan as well. Its good that Yuvraj, Gambhir and Sehwag have been dropped. I look forward to seeing Kartik and Dhawan.
Eng to me look the favorites. Finn, Anderson and Broad will be handy, obviously. KP is not fit (I think). In batting, Cook holds the key I think, just like Dhoni for India.
Pak - very good bowling. Batting looks susceptible in these conditions.
Group B is slightly stronger. Not by much.
Match I look forward to seeing the most is Ind V Pak, like any other fan from these 2 countries. Always extra pressure, extra intensity, great rivalry.
I messed up in Group names. Group ‘A’ is Group ‘B’ and vice verse.
India have just beaten Sri Lanka in the 2nd warm-up match. It was a high scoring game with Sri Lanka setting India a target of 334 after losing just 3 wickets in their 50 overs. Kohli was the highest scorer with an incredible knock of 144 and Karthik finished not out on 106 to give India a fairly convincing victory.
I’m always amazed when the team batting first manages to lose the match despite finishing with plenty of wickets in hand. Why not go for it a bit more in the last 10 or so overs of your innings?
New batsmen take a few balls to strike at their best. So, its not always the best thing to use most of your wickets in an innings.
But I think in most matches where only a few wickets are lost in the entire innings, it is just a matter of co-incidence, not a planned thing.
In other matches, Pakistani bowler give an easy win to them. Junaid Khan looks very good. Last time he got better of Kohli in the ODI series, so this time, he will be a challenge for him. Even Asad Ali and Riaz looked good. They didn’t play Ajmal and Mohd Irfan.
Australia beat WI easily thanks to Watson’s ton and Starc’s bowling.
Guptill smashed 189 Vs England to help Nz win ODI series. When he wasn’t picked in IPL auctions I thought he was IPL’s loss.
Today’s warmup matches are SL Vs WI and Aus vs India. Both Start at 9:30 GMT. These are the last warmups before the actual matches.
I’ll put my guesses in now, before tonight’s first match:
Group A:
Despite losing to Australia in the first match, England will go through with wins over Sri Lanka and New Zealand. New Zealand will have a heart-breaking loss to Australia due to any or all of the Duckworth-Lewis method, freak injuries, and dodgy umpiring decisions. The final group game will decide who qualifies, with Sri Lanka beating Australia in a thriller. Qualifers - England, Sri Lanka
Group B
Somehow Group B will manage to be even closer than Group A, with a rained out match playing a huge role in the final outcome. South Africa go through with the winner of the final Pakistan/India match in second place.
Semifinals
England breeze through against an exhausted sub-continental side who are backing up from the most watched sporting event of the year.
South Africa bowl Sri Lanka out for a modest total and then implode during the run chase.
Final:
In a re-match of their pool game Sri Lanka smoke a stunned English side as Malinga takes 6 wickets.
I’ll just point out - to back my post earlier in this thread, that in the warm up matches, India have cleared 300 easily twice in a row. The batsmen at least look in damn good nick.
Also, England, mostly, suck at this ODI lark. If one of Trott, Bell or Cook doesn’t bat for 40 overs out of the 50, they usually don’t look like putting a total together. Unbelievable stuff in the final 5 overs of the 3rd ODI v NZ to set a competitive target - without that hitting (that came out of nowhere - Morgan and Buttler weren’t exactly exhibiting form), they’d have lost again.
If India can keep batting like this, they are going to be very tough to beat.
Exciting finish coming up. WI need 6 runs with 2 wickets in hand versus Pakistan.
WI win by 2wickets with about 10 overs to spare , so they will get good net runrate.
Ha, so far my guesses have been well wide of the mark. Nice to see New Zealand get a 1 wicket win over Sri Lanka. And always good to see the West Indies being competitve again.
I must say the tournament format is much better than the World Cup - straight into close games and all done in a couple of weeks.
I thought the game would be one-sided after checking SL’s score. But thanks to Malinga, it was turned into a thriller in the end.
Today is Pak Vs SA. If Pak lose they are virtually out as their NRR is very low.
Few things noted till now:
–>Pakistan have the best bowling lineup.
–>SA have been hit hard by Steyn’s absence and now Morkel is also ruled out, so they are quite depleted side.
–>India have the best batting. Making 300+ in all 3 matches(warmup and main match).
And Pakistan become the first team to crash out, keeping SA down to a very gettable 235 and then failing to ever look like getting it.
No-one but India has put together a really convincing batting performance (though NZ did post 360 in the second game of their series against England). So many teams with solid bowling and vulnerable batting - it’s starting to look like a low-scoring competition where the main key is not losing wickets early.
India are through. They look mighty ominous. Their batting appears able to get any total that you can set them, they have to be the favourites.
Meanwhile David Warner was dropped from Australia’s team today for an “unprovoked attack” on Joe Root in a bar on Sunday night (unprovoked according to the ECB who didn’t name Root as involved but it is being reported that it was him).
Even from TV, Warner looks like bit of an asshole to me attitude-wise. A bit like Harbhajan or Gambhir from India, but at least those 2 are OK off the field. If the unprovoked attack was on someone like Tim Bresnan, he would have got a fitting reply.
I said I was looking forward to seeing Kartik n Dhawan, n I am not disappointed from what I’ve seen till now:)
So now Ind Vs Pak is a dead game, but we wanna win it still. WI vs SA is a virtual quarter final. From Group A, Nz bowling looks strong with Southee, Vettori , Mccallum, McClenaghan and Mills. England also will come through easily I think. The pitches haven’t been as expected, they have been dry and not very conducive for swing bowling. Spin won’t be complaining at all though.
From the reports, the Warner/Root thing sounds like a storm in a tea-cup - Root was wearing a silly false beard, Warner pulled it off, there may have been some push-and-shoving, Warner bought the drinks afterwards.
Meanwhile the weather had the last word today, which will please NZ more than Aus, especially after they had stuttered to 51-2 off 15.
If England win tomorrow, they’re in, SL are out and the Aussies are left cheering for England in their last game. If they lose, then Eng/NZ and Aus/SL are both virtual quarter-finals.
India still look to be batting in a different tournament than anyone else - 330/4 and then 230/2 off 40 when only one other team has reached 300 and the par score has been around 230-240.
New Zealand’s target was only 243 so I think the game was pretty close until the rain came. I’m not sure what the situation would have been if another 5-10 overs could have been played - no doubt D-L would have set some bizarre target.
I agree that India are the red hot favourites, but I still think the game against Pakistan will drain them.
NZ were around 15 behind the D/L target when the rain came - not impossible to make up in 35 overs but a bit steep in 5 or 10. The pitch wasn’t easy to play shots on and the Australian seam bowling is decent.
Commentators were talking about a target of 112 for a 20-over game or 184 for 33.
Well if that’s the case New Zealand got out of jail thanks to the weather.
Yet again D-L throws up some weird targets. Australia got 243 in 50 overs, but the target would have been 112 in 20? 46% of the runs in 40% of the overs? Or 183 in 33 overs - 76% of the runs in 66% of the overs? How is that fair?
question is: with how many wickets down?
112 in 20 overs for 4 wkts looks OK target, with 2 wkts down looks unfair.
183 in 33 overs with 7 wkts down look ok.
Sri Lanka just beat England by 7 wickets. Pool A is now wide open. This tournament continues to impress me.