I am yet to see SL’s innings’ highlights. It looks like Sanga played one of his best innings yesterday to win it for Lanka. Now group A is wide open as you say. Only Nz is the team which can lose its last match but could still qualify.
They should have had a reserve day for the rain affected matches .
Sanga was bloody awesome yesterday. I think England were a little short, maybe should have cleared 300, but I think Sanga would have chased anything down. He was excellent.
This is the best one day tournament. Very few, if any, dead rubbers, all the best teams and done pretty quickly. Of course, the only solution to this has to be for this to be the last one. Thanks ICC.
yeah, it is an ideal tournament. Any team can beat any other team on its day. Highly competitive, action packed and compact. It shouldn’t have been scrapped.
Duckworth/Lewis strikes again as West Indies tied South Africa by one run. The current system seems to favour the side batting first IMHO.
WI fans will be heart broken. they were ahead on DL with 30 balls to go. With 6 wickets down, Par score was 186 and 187 to win.
Then Pollard played a horrible shot, got out and par score jumped by 4 runs in 1 ball due to the wicket lost. meanwhile it was drizzling off n on, tht changed into heavier shower and they had to go Off. It was over scheduled time n the rule says that once you go off after scheduled close time, you cant come back. So the match was tied and WI out and SA through. I wanted SA to win but wanted the game to complete.
today is India vs pak. Heavy showers predicted for today as well
Latest news - Pakistan struggle to 70/3 of 19 against India and then comes the rain. Boo.
Well, if the rain’s turned up for this round at least the batting has too. Sangakkara just dominated the England bowling - Anderson & Swann got some respect but everyone else was just making up the numbers. I think England would have been happy with 293 (despite the traditional clatter of wickets when they tried to accelerate), but the way SL batted it wouldn’t have mattered if it had been 315. Unrecognisable from the side that was all-out 138 against NZ.
Then SA-WI, rain, D/L, big hitting spectacular, more rain and the cruellest ending possible for WI, who were out of it at 115/4 and powered their way back in. Have to say SA probably deserved a break after their record with rain rules and ties. Pollard will get a lot of stick but that’s the way he bats - they needed 40 off 5 and Pollard, Bravo and Sammy were never going to get them by taking singles and waiting for the bad ball.
England collapse spectacularly to 169 all out against NZ - but the match was reduced to 24 overs and 169 turns out to be juust enough to win after NZ lose early wickets. The third umpire will not be popular in New Zealand after key man Williamson was give out off what might easily have been called a no-ball when it looked like NZ might pull it back.
Worst possible result for Aus, who needed England to lose or NZ to lose by a lot.
Williamson wasn’t looking like batting under the pressure of chasing which was good. watching the ball n playing proper shots. England looked comfortable apart from that over from Bresnan where Williamson launched. n like you suggest, that near no-ball dismissal was the crucial moment of the match.
looking at points table , it looks unlikely that Australia will qualify, I think they will win and also take SL out with them.
I just can’t see Australia winning, they can’t seem to score more than 250 and their bowlers don’t look likely to skittle Sri Lanka for less than that. Even if Australia do manage it the Net Run Rate tie break looks insurmountable*
Of course it’ll rain now. What’s the weather forecast like?
*As an aside why is NRR put ahead of the head-to-head result as a tiebreak? Surely if both teams have equal wins the team that won the match they played together should go through rather than the one with the better NRR (not that that applies in this case). Especially when the NRR is so arbitrary.
NRR somewhat makes sense. if losing team gets all out, they assume that they made the same number of runs in 50 overs. because otherwise, the losing team might get better run rate than the winners. Take this case for ex. : team ‘A’ makes x runs in 50 overs, team ‘B’ gets all out for x/2 in 20 overs.
The method that you suggest(instead of NRR) is a good method. Probably better method for most people. Although if more 2 teams are tied at same points, NRR is the only way to go I suppose. But for a 2 way tie, they could very well have used your method
Due to the NRR stuff, Oz have to get the 254 set to them by SL in 29.1 overs. Good luck with that. Just a little under 9 an over.
I guess Oz might as well get all out for 150 and try and slog it all over the place, rather than simply trying to win the match in 50 overs. Fireworks expected in the 2nd innings.
The Aussies are going for it, but making a mess of it with a couple of poor errors (though the Sri Lankan bowling isn’t giving them any help, of course). 84-5 off 14, so they’re behind on both wickets and scoring rate.
The problem with that is that the head-to-head result is equally arbitrary. If two teams are on an equal number of wins, and one has beaten the other, that simply means the winning team in that match has lost to a worse team somewhere along the way. For example, imagine a group consisting of England, Australia, New Zealand, Sri Lanka, and Zimbabwe. Let’s say Australia top the group by beating everyone, England thrash New Zealand and Zimbabwe but lose to Sri Lanka in a very close game, and Sri Lanka also narrowly beat New Zealand but get stuffed by Zimbabwe. NZ beat Zimbabwe in the remaining game. That would put England and Sri Lanka level on two wins each (Aus 4, NZ 1, Zim 1). Would it be fair that Sri Lanka take the runners up spot by virtue of beating England (and let’s say they were the beneficiary of one or two controversial umpiring decisions in that game), when they have managed to lose to a team who failed to beat anybody else? You would have to say that England’s palying record is better than Sri Lanka’s in that example, and they should go through (and they would if NRR were used).
Furthermore, you are effectively counting a particular win “twice” after the fact. Let’s further imagine that Eng vs SL was the very first group game in that example. Neither side would know at the time it was played that this game was effectively a play-off for the runners up spot, but that is what it becomes after the fact.
Finally, as has been pointed out, it’s fairly common to have a three-way tie in which each team has beaten one of the others, so then you end up having to use NRR anyway.
Now, I agree NRR is far from perfect and can also lead to strange results, but I think it’s better than using the head-to-head record for the above reasons. What they should really do is play the final two pool games simultaneously (as they do in the football World Cup) so teams are not certain of what is required going into their game. The present situation is a little unfair to NZ - had Eng vs NZ been playing at the same time as Aus vs SL, Australia would not have known that they had to really go for it all guns blazing, they would have just played for the win. The fact they are going all out for victory in the current circumstances reduces their overall chances of winning the game, which means NZ are more likely to be knocked out.
109-5 after 17, now, so Australia still have a slight chance!
Australia 127-6 after 19.1 needing to double their score in the next 10.
SL need to get them out for 168 to top the group.
NZ will not be enjoying this…
Regarding NRR - In this particular format (4 in group, top 2 qualify), it’s actually quite hard to come up with a situation where head-to-head results would help decide qualification. Most cases where there’s a tie for 2nd place involve either a 3-way tie or the teams involved having tied/NR-ed.
Aus 192/8, needing just over 3 an over for the next 20 overs. They still have a good chance of winning, actually, SL didn’t get nearly enough runs. I’m reminded of the WI/Eng final of a few years ago, when England got the WI down to 8 wickets down and then just couldn’t take the last few wickets.
If I had any money, though, I’d put it on SL.
Well Aussie came close but couldn’t quite win it so Sri Lanka go through.
Our semi finals then are England v South Africa & Sri Lanka v India. Despite the order being reveresed I’m going to stick to my initial guesses and say we’re going to have an England v Sri Lanka final.
I went to sleep when Marsh got out but it seems Australia’s batting started after that. All teams esp. SL, NZ would have had some tense final moments, Aus also since they were close to winning the match even though were going to go out.
excellent post. In your example, If England Vs SL was the first game, and if England had won one game going into their last game, then their last game would also become a dead rubber, because they would be out irrespective of the margin that they won in the last game.
the present situation was a little unfair to NZ as you say.
I’ll go the other way - SL rely too much on Sangakkara and Jayawardene and England has the sort of team that wins low-scoring games and loses high-scoring ones.
Against SA on a good pitch, England start well against Steyn but play out too many cheap overs from Duminy & Petersen. The acceleration never comes and the final total is 20-30 runs light. Some hope from the bowlers as neither Amla nor De Villiers posts a big score, but although wickets fall, England can’t keep the runs down. SA win by 3 wickets with 5 overs left.
Against SL on a slow pitch, India have to start cautiously, but they bat deep enough to post a good score despite the conditions. SL start well in the chase but fall away once the Indian bowlers get into the middle order and India win by 40.
Final - SA vs India. These rematches usually seem to go to the team that lost in the first round..
It’s a good start from England. Once the ball swings they are a different team.
Well, bloody hell. England are actually going to win this game. Great work from the bowlers in the morning - as noted by TD above, when it swings we look handy.
I still think we’re going to get prison shamed by India in the final though. Their batting line up looks well nigh unstoppable at the minute.