T20 World Cup: Live Matches Discussion

First topic message reminder :

Hi all,

I've set up our very own 606v2 T20 World Cup SuperBru tipping competition for anyone who is interested.

http://www.superbru.com/worldt20/player_home.asp

First game is Sri Lanka v Zimbabwe on Tuesday, September 18 at 19:30 (local time) in Hambantota.

The full list of fixtures is here:

http://www.espncricinfo.com/world-twenty20-2012/content/series/531597.html?template=fixtures

The pool code for 606v2: playsacs

Everyone is welcome.
Enjoy the matches and best of luck to your team.

Who do you think will win?

Morgan gone, again not giving himself enough time to settle.

Probably game over.

Well well well!!!. What do we have here !? Harbhajan into the attack and he gets the big wicket of Eoin Morgan!. Bowled, Middle stump knocked back!!!.

JOHNNY JOHNNY Bairstow

Strange appeal for out. Considering he never moved

And very nearly another one next ball. And a good ball from Harbhajan. He is bowling more than the usual fast and flat rubbish!!.

Bemusing from England. They'll need to bounce back from this.

Bring back Ravi Bopara

Well that last over really did the lose the match. Doesn't look at all good for progressing I'm this one if they can control it in the field or bat.

Now its the leggy Chawla into the attack.

Well, Chawla gets into the act now, Bairstow bowled!!.

Bairstow looked pretty clueless during that stay. Two dot balls from a full toss and a long-hop, then a horrific swipe accross the line.

India have bowled ok (Harbajhan varied his pace nicely) but not 40-4 standard.

England, call up someone from the TV box!!!!.

India looking good with the ball? England really must be poor.

If you can't handle this then forget beating the best attacks.

msp83 wrote:England, call up someone from the TV box!!!!.

What the hell does that mean?

England are truly pathetic against spin.

I use the term spin loosely as Singh is a has been and Chawla is pretty much club standard.

It's all fallen apart now for England, victory is looking far away. We just seemed to be trying to smash every ball to the boundary and that is not the way to go. No surrender though, Kieswetter is still there.

Not any more though.

Buttler hitting Harbhajan for 4, Would like to see how Bhaji reacts. Fast and flat at the pads? will have to wait for another over, but Chawla gets another, Kieswetter gone.

WOW, this looks like a test match on the 5th day, every 2nd ball generates an appeal!.

I thought SA where a little concern against spin, England are making my lot look like the best of them all.

Agreed Duty (apart from the Kieswetter thing obviously now).

Bairstow I think will struggle in India.

Nobody's ventured outside their crease yet.

No gameplan, no clue. All the more bemusing after the Afghanistan performance. A lot to put right if they are to have any chance of making the semis.

The only positive is Kieswetter who found some good form, and I thought kept well (the one difficult missed stumping not withstanding). The massive negative is all the guys who looked in good form in the previous game have erm... well there you are.

India, well, tough to assess. Ashwin is surely still the number 1 spinner so where does this leave them. I suspect that Zaheer and Pathan are to be the only 2 seamers picked, and the rest of the overs bowled by spin. With the batting Sharma played well, and Gambhir will play an increasingly important role as the tournament progresses. They will surely also come up against batsmen who bat better than England have today, but this is laying down a bit of a marker.

Oh this just is pathetic from England, another 1 for Harbhajan, 54-6.

Buttler just isn't international standard. These stupid scoop shots are awful.

At least Bresnan had the decency to prove a point about his inclusion by batting badly too
Now England can go back to a properly balanced side. They will of course need to play better too. This games been a disater, but then so was the first one against SA. Such is this format, when it starts to go wrong it can look very bad very quickly. England do have a fragile batting line up

Gerry SA wrote:England are truly pathetic against spin.

I use the term spin loosely as Singh is a has been and Chawla is pretty much club standard.

Truly pathetic full stop for the past 12 months in truth. Total change needed. I said a bad few years were in store last year when the lack of batting ability started to show, sucks to be right on it really.

This pitch isn't a minefield to find yourselves 60-7!. Ashwin would feel he really missed out here!.

england are lameo!!

well played india!

The lowest T-20I score is within England's reach. Absolutely awful. 60-8!. wicket number 4 for Harbhajan Singh.

Wow Singh gets 4 wickets.

Am I daydreaming or did I really witness that?

And another 1!!!!. Kevin Pietersen isn't even playing so that the rest should underperform like this. So much for stupid harmony!!.

Let's not reopen the debate about England can't play spin. We're playing stupid shots and being punished, it's doesn't matter whether we're playing against spin, seam or swing. Hopefully, this defeat will focus us for the challenges ahead in the super Eights. And England will still go through as the 'top' team in this group due to the seeding system - a system I don't agree with at all. The worse thing is all the Indian trolls taking to Twitter.

What is Dhoni doing? should have been Yuvraj for this over, the match would have been over.

100 run victory for India then. Sadly these things happen in T20 Cricket, I'm confident we'll bounce back on Thursday against either Windies/Ireland and then on Saturday against the Kiwis. This loss could be the kick up the behind that England need.

trebellbobaggins wrote:

msp83 wrote:England, call up someone from the TV box!!!!.

What the hell does that mean?

KP

Corporalhumblebucket wrote:Dernbach rarely puts in a consistent run of good performances. He is capable of bowling well in this form but my general sense is that his bowling performances will typically come out at around: good 25%, OK 25%, fairly poor 25%, very poor 25%. Not sure that is good enough....

Second highest scorer, tho, batting at No 11...

Well that was all a bit embarassing.

The pitch didn't actually do much, the odd ball turned but nothing drastic. No gameplan beyond blocking a few and then going for a swipe.

Thought Buttler looked briefly ok, but Bairstow worryingly poor.

The other disappointing thing was losing those two early wickets to swipes accross the line.

And the fielding, which was at times very very good, and at times unbelievably poor.

The worse thing is I didn't see anything special from India. Harbajhan bowled nicely, he even tossed a few up. Chawla looked how he's always looked to me.

Harbhajan thanks Essex for helping in his revival. He says he has cut down on his run-up as he used to run fast and didn't hit the right areas. Certainly looked better than what he did a year ago, although I won't read far too much into it as yet. He was pretty poor in the warm up game against Pakistan, and today he played against a side that was panicking against spin. But welcome back Bhaji, he has to remember the hard lessons though.

msp83 wrote:Harbhajan thanks Essex for helping in his revival.

Really? He was godawful when I saw him play for them. Bowled nicely today though. Probably benefitted from the fact England weren't expecting him to play so would have centered their preparations on countering Ashwin more as well (and little to no footage watched of him, so players struggled to pick his doosra). Although goodness knows what those plans were. Play out a few dot balls and then sweep is the nearest guess.

Pleasantly surprised to see Harbhajan performing today, of course England have been awful, but he did bowl a lot better than he has done in the last couple of years. But like in the case of Rohit Sharma, the question is for how long though?

Mike Selig wrote:

msp83 wrote:Harbhajan thanks Essex for helping in his revival.

Really? He was godawful when I saw him play for them.....

I also seem to recall CF being pleased when Harbhajan left Essex towards end of this season, having done not very much....

Perhaps the time away from international pressure and scrutiny, and the number of overs he managed there would have helped Harbhajan. Anyways Ashwin remains the first choice spinner for me in all formats.

Corporalhumblebucket wrote:

Mike Selig wrote:

msp83 wrote:Harbhajan thanks Essex for helping in his revival.

Really? He was godawful when I saw him play for them.....

I also seem to recall CF being pleased when Harbhajan left Essex towards end of this season, having done not very much....

Yes, Essex may have helped Harbhajan but he did precious little for them.

Oooh is this the time when we bring up the "does allowing all these foreigners over to play in England harm the England side? the counties should be ashamed of themselves for employing (insert name) so he can get acclimatised to English conditions/figure out english batsmen/get used to English foot/whatever" debate?

Please, anything to distract from...!

Its just been only one spell against batting that was listless. So the judgement will have to wait.
Harbhajan hasn't done anything much for India, Punjab, Mumbai Indians or Essex over the last year and half or so. This has been the one telling performance from him in that period.

I doidnt realise that this game was almost pointless. But i suppose thats the only way to look at it!

Englands odds for the cup have just gone up because of this beating- so maybe its worth a little wager

That performance with the bat was inept, embarrassing and painful to watch.

On the positive side hopefully we got it out the way in a match which, whichever way you spin it, meant precisely nothing. Kieswetter looked OK but not much to say about the rest. Morgan is perhaps the most disappointing - he's got out in that precise manner to off-spinners on a number of previous occasions, and so you'd think he wouldn't be playing it so early in his innings. I'd suggest that he's a good hitter of spin, but that it is a complete myth that he's a good all round player of spin. Bairstow v spin is a worry - he was average for the Lions last winter and in the ODIs in India. I'm not too worried about Buttler - the boy can play, and at least put up a better effort today than a few of the others. Perhaps Hales has a weakness against full-pitched bowling from seamers too.

I'd give the bowling a 7/10. Swann went well, but I can understand England's decision to play Bresnan (I'd have stuck with Patel, but given India's past issues with Bresnan and the previous pitches at Colombo, I see see the logic). I do suspect that Bresnan won't be used again unless of an injury though. Dernbach wasn't quite at his best, but he remains a valuable asset at the end of an innings. Under normal circumstances I'd expect us to chase that sort of score down v India, so it wasn't a disaster.

Our Super Eight fixtures will be against West Indies or Ireland, New Zealand and Sri Lanka. I think that is a good draw. We play well against WI and our batsmen will appreciate the type of bowling that they bowl, and have even had success v Narine in the recent past. The bowlers should also stop the likes of Smith, Pollard and Bravo making a major impact. NZ aren't the best bowling team either, leaving SL as the only team that are likely to threaten us with spin.

Oh, and I meant to say, don't anyone start saying we'd have done better today with KP. The fact is that he isn't there, and we lost by a big margin. He could easily have failed himself.

KP may or may not have made an impact, but England is a better side with him in there!.

And his absent presence is going to make more of an impact in the media, like it or not, and performances like this will only add to the fire.
But there are reports that KP may be getting a 12 month contract by the end of the month, so hopefully the saga will be over in some time.

Only saw a few snippets of play today so just a few quick general comments.

Against Afghanistan, we got all three disciplines right. Our highly effective bowling and fielding in that match was helped by an earlier tremendous batting display which gave us more confidence and heaped the pressure on our opponents.

Today the batting was dreadful. As msp suggested, it was panicky. However, just as in the Afghanistan match, what went before it shouldn't be ignored. The bowling and fielding today certainly wasn't awful but it was inconsistent. That in turn cost us runs and meant we were chasing more than we should have been. If our target had been, say, fifteen runs less, I wonder if we might have resisted better the panic that overtook us.

Essentially, we need to be on the money from the start. We cannot expect a strength in one discipline to overcome a failing in another. Too often, one failing will lead to another.

As for Harbhajan, he bowled well and effectively today. Possibly, his cricketing obituary has been written too soon by some (including me). However, I still think it's fair to say that he's been pretty poor for a while and that one swallow doesn't make a summer.

Although I'm not surprised, I'm not convinced of the need for Pietersen's name to crop up so regularly in related posts. Whether we agree with it or not, we all pretty much know why Pietersen isn't playing in this tournament. No one would suggest it's to do with the Indian spinners. Let's concentrate on who is involved.

Hoping Ireland can brighten a sad day tomorrow.

msp83 wrote:KP may or may not have made an impact, but England is a better side with him in there!.

Absolutely. We'd also be a better side if WG Grace, Wally Hammond, Ian Botham, Jim Laker and Bob Willis were playing. They aren't and we have to live with that!