After two rounds, Australia look like the Sick Man of the Big Teams. Pakistan hasn’t played a good team yet, so hard to say anything about them.
Long way to go in the tournament yet. Looking forward to having four teams with four wins battling for that final semifinal spot on NRR. A billion fans breaking out their calculators!
They were the sick old man going in.
Applying the same tactics and essentially same personal as at the previous tournaments.
Apart from the non-inclusion in the squad of an international finger spinner in Indian conditions, the team was generally thought (in the current mindset) as being as good as we could have sent. And they are a generation off the pace.
ODIs (while we still have them) are now feature length T20s.
ODIs, as a format, have been dying a bit, especially in the sub-continent and accelerated by T20s. The last couple of world cups have stemmed the receding tide a bit - a bad world cup would really hurt the format.
And this has been a bad world cup so far, none of the games have been particularly close. The SL/Pak games was the closest, and that was realistically wrapped up 20 overs before the end
The marquee matchup might turn out to be a bust as well.
We may not get to 200. I woke up at 4:30 for this?
C’est magnifique mais etc etc
Keep waiting for the match that feels like a contest, keep not getting it.
So SA, NZ and Ind in the top 4, plus who?
I didn’t get home from a night out until 2:30am, and set my alarm for 4:15. I was able to watch the first 2 hours of Pakistan’s innings, but decided to sleep for another couple of hours, so that I could be awake for the India innings. Pakistan only had 2 wickets when I slept, and Babar and Rizwan seemed pretty well set, so I was absolutely shocked that India were well into their innings when I woke up. Must’ve been quite the spectacle.
Speaking of spectacles, my Wednesday evening consisted of spending a couple of hours at a NYC rooftop bar with none other than the Universe Boss himself. There were other cricketers there, as they are promoting a new US cricket league (presumably to compete with Major League Cricket), but Gayle was by far the biggest fish. Since I was probably the only one in the place who knew anything at all about cricket, he and I got along well and, since we were pretty lubricated, he shared a lot with me. What an unexpectedly cool thing to experience. By the way, I was the only male in my group, so it helped that these aging cricketers had interest in some of the women in my group.
Nice experience!
I’m consumed with envy!
Promising start by Afghanistan but now being throttled by Rashid and Wood.
ETA: Rashid gets the breakthrough. Seems like my commenting here is a jinx.
England seem to be struggling a little, at 43/2 in the 8th, but they’re ahead of the rate and AFG probably didn’t get enough.
I hope.
Punters have it at 70/30 right now (67/2)
What about at 68/3?
Afghanistan 52-48
The BBCs win predictor has England 52% to win, the Cricinfo one has AFG 80% to win.
England are in trouble here, but the score isn’t high, and they can afford to go along and ‘get in’. Brook and Buttler in, Jos could win this by himself on his day.
Cricinfo predictor does not take into account the ex-ante strength of the teams. It basically assumes that’s a #5 has a certain run potential, whether it’s Netherlands’ #5 or India’s.
What an utter shambles
What a great day!
Well.
Another one sided match. I know development is important, but you have to ask if it’s even fair to let these weaker teams into the World Cup.
Now to see if Fiji can make this a Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day.