Heavens no, I am Australian. I just don’t think the Australian team is good enough. I have watched cricket for for 50 years and you do sense when a team gets lucky. Australia may win bu they don’t have the depth or class of the teams of the 90’s or early 2000’s. Then again very few do.
This is going to be a target that the quality Aussie bowlers will be able to defend tenaciously. It is not going to be an easy run chase, and I’m not comfortable with England having to do it. It’s precisely the sort of target that we’ve binned in this World Cup already.
I’m off to bed (11 pm) but I expet in the morning England will have won comfortably. Goodnight folks.
England will chase 224. Precisely the sort of target that could give us the jitters. I doubt this is going to be easy.
Since Jan 2016 to the start of WC2019:
ENG have played 68 ODIs (excluding no results) winning 51 (75%)
Batted first 32, won 22 (65%)
Batted second 32, won 29 (85%)
Runs from 50 overs (= RPO achieved *50)
Batted first 316
Batted second 313
Cricinfo Statsguru
And against distinctly more average bowling attacks than the Australian unit, too. Hopefully they have learnt from experience.
I guess I’ll be the one to jinx it - you have to say this is a wonderful start. 44/0 off 9 overs.
Bairstow being treated for an injury. It would be just typical if this is the start of the downward spiral. These two have given us a great start.
He’d better be alright. If we manage to chase this down and get to the final, I want James Vince nowhere near the side.
Vaughan just said on the radio he’d back Ali over Vince to open, and I have to say I agree with him.
Can we begin to relax now? 100 to win.
124/0 after 17,and England bossing this chase, as they say these days. It can all go wrong, but this is England’s to lose from here!
Bairstow taking the review with him, when plumb, has just totally done Jason Roy, victim of a terrible umpiring decision.
They still shouldn’t bin it from here - but it’s been done before.
England now need a run an over with 8 wickets in hand. This is the point I think I can relax.
So for an American who’s been casually following cricket recently, can someone explain what happened today, in particular with Australia’s bowlers?
Starc, Lyon and Cummins are all supposedly very good, I thought… did they all just have a bad day? Was it the conditions? The English batters? All of the above?
All the below, in my opinion - doubtless others will weigh in.
The main problem for the Aussie bowlers was primarily what happened in the other half of the game. England’s bowlers were good and limited Australia to a low score. The consequence then was that the Australian bowlers’ margin for error became very tight. They basically needed to produce exactly what England managed. England managed to get Australia 3 down very quickly and forced an innings rebuild from the Australian batsmen. Once England got through the first 10 overs without conceding a wicket, England had licence to take risks, after having got their eye in and then it becomes harder and harder to pull it back. You can’t play a limiting game, you have to take the wickets to bowl England out, so the field remains attacking but every risk that comes off becomes 4 as fielders aren’t in place on the fence and that takes the game further and further away every time; this accounts for Root and Morgan going at quicker than a run a ball. Meanwhile, Roy in particular played an innings that you don’t see very often - they ran into a buzzsaw there.
Yeah, Australia’s bowlers have bad figures here but really it was the failure to put up a target that allowed them to defend and limit the runs that was the main problem, I think.
I’ve been offline all day, bad planning on my part scheduling a offsite meeting for semi-final day.
Still, just caught up with the highlights and it seems like England carried on the form of the two previous games. Archer continues to impress is a find and Roy fully fit makes a hell of a difference. They’ve remembered what they need to do in all three areas and look more like the team we thought they were.
Big favourites against the Kiwi’s on Sunday but in a one-off game nothing is certain.
Thanks for the excellent explanation, Cumbrian! You raised up a nuance of cricket that I hadn’t thought about and am only just beginning to grasp - how bowling and positioning strategy must vary based on the match situation, such as in this case having to limit England’s score as they chased a low total.
I’ve watched the extended highlights and I think for all the free-flowing batting of England I have to conclude that it was the England bowlers that played the biggest part. They were all disciplined and all frugal. None went for more than 5.5 and four of them took wickets. The three early wickets looked like good bowling rather than poor Aussie technique and even though the fifth wicket partnership put up a fight the middle-over bowlers never let them off the hook and the fielding was solid again. That combines to create a huge amount of pressure that Australia, who weren’t terrible, couldn’t replicate and even if they had it looked like the England batsmen were confident and comfortable in their approach.
Glad to see Carey wasn’t badly hurt. A cheeky lifter under the grill is a rare beast and he did very well to brush it off…proper old-school.
Not only that, he caught his helmet in case it fell on to the stumps!
The Bairstow review was an odd one, I can only assume he was convinced he had hit it. I guess he apologised to Roy afterwards! Also strange to use it given he was injured. Hopefully he will be fit for Sunday.
It looks like the final will be on free to air UK TV, which is great news.
As expected an easy England win and they playes well. Australia had a better tournament than they expected but failed to deliver when it mattered- Cumbrian summed it up very well. Australia had too many passengers in the side through out the series which highlights our lack of depth.
I think England will be very short in the final but I hope the Kiwis do well.
I won’t badger you guys again- good luck to whoever you support and if I am still above ground for the next series we can talk then.
Cumbrian’s description is totally correct … for the way the match turned out.
Tweak two balls at some early point in the innings and a whole different scenario might play out. All grades of cricket are replete with instances for batting catastrophes when chasing low targets. 0-150, but then all out 170 or 2 down for zip, but then declare at 3-400.
The credo in CWC2015 was win the toss, bat, score 300, win.
But in the round fixture, on a benign deck in conditions picture postcard made for batting, the two best sides in the competition were dismissed for an aggregate 300 off 50 overs. Go figure.
Australia all out 151 (32.2) New Zealand 9-152 (23.1)
Brendon McCullum takes a blistering 50 off 24 to open the innings and the crowd is claiming, with some justification, suzerainty over the Tasman Sea and the blood of all first born Australian male children.
Then Starc finds his rhythm and all bets are off.
Batsman are always vulnerable early in the innings. So get one wicket and it is easier to get the second. Get the second and suddenly a battering feather bed becomes an unplayable minefield.
In 73,137 ODI innings there have been 7,411 ducks (10%) and 28% of batsmen dismissed have scored 4 or less.
In Sydney grade cricket a few years ago now Norths won the pennant.
They played the semi and grand final on their home deck. As far as the umpire, whom I worked with, was concerned there was barely a blade of grass different in the pitch used for both games. In the semi Norths chased down 300 plus at a canter with wickets in hand. In the final they defended 95. The Norths main spin bowler took 0–150 of 20 in the semi. He took 6 for 25 in the final, almost all caught on the boundary.
In Sydney Shires a couple of seasons ago the finals were played on under prepared, rain-affected green tops. Our club’s 1sts rolled the opposition for 28 and got ‘em without losing a wicket. 2nds were dismissed for 26 and defended it. That was a bloody big night back at the clubhouse!
The margin for error is unfathomable.
Team Bangladesh