India by the looks of it unless England score lots of runs very quickly. I could be all over now for all I know as I haven’t looked at the BBC site. Cricket’s not really my bag.
I did go to see Ireland V West Indies years ago in Dublin. Take a wild guess who won by quite a large amount. Was fun to see a great team play one day though.
India win, England embarrased.
Ah, well that didn’t quite go according to plan.
Fwiw, I’m rather with the growing crowd who say these ‘day-night’ might provide a wonderful spectacle but the games simply favour one side or the other too clearly for it to be a simple matter of the ‘rub-of-the-green’, ‘luck-of-the-draw’ type thing. It can’t be right that winning the toss is the most important – and defining event – in a game. Any game. It should, obviously, be a genuine contest in which both sides have a chance. Sure the toss should be one consideration but not the only damn one. Pakistan didn’t against England because they lost the toss, England didn’t against India for the same reason … What’s the stats from Newlands in day / night games ? 83% of teams batting first win … It’s plain wrong and makes a mockery of a genuine contest. IMHO.
Speaking of IMHO, for those interested, there’s a thread there on the World Cup. Who’d of thunk it - a five page thread on cricket here, and it’s not even Super Sixes.
And I agree London_Calling on the day/ night issue. I didn’t see England “bat”, but I saw Anderson and Caddick getting absolutely zilch sideways. Where the conditions for swing differ that much, the match is a farce.
Another “me too” on the day/night matches. The conditions are so different once the dew starts to come in at dusk that it can’t possibly be a fair match. All the matches should be day games.
It was pointed out by Ian Chappell in this mornings wrap-up comentary that New Zealand are in with a good chance of finishing second in their pool. This would mean they get 2 Super Six games under lights and a semi final. A bit of luck with the coin and they could be on the fast track through. Their “dibblies” are a highly competitive attack in those conditions. Put it on the spot at medium/slow medium pace, make the batsman use footwork and let conditions move the ball about. Out and out pace gets blunted by the heavier, wet ball and spinners struggle to grip. Plus scoring is harder so the bats take greater risks.
Well, chasing a target successfully under lights is hardly impossible (Exhibit A: Sri Lanka beating Australia in the 1995/96 World Cup final), but it is difficult, for the reasons mentioned above. I know that Australian domestic cricket has tried a scheme to rectify the situation–for a while they tried splitting day/night matches into “quarters,” where each team faced 25 overs during the day and 25 under the lights. It was pretty confusing both for the players and the spectators, and I don’t think it’s used anymore. The allure of day/nighters remains, though (although I don’t see why they would be scheduled on the weekends, as the point surely is to get more spectators to the ground). Maybe something like an “unbalanced game,” as is sometimes played in youth cricket, where the team batting first gets 45 overs and the chasing team gets 50, is needed, but it would be a pretty radical break from tradition.