2015 World Cup

First topic message reminder :

March

Semi-finals

24 Semi-final 1, South Africa v New Zealand, Auckland (01:00 GMT)

26 Semi-final 2, India v Australia, Sydney (03:30 GMT)

Final

29 Final, Melbourne (05:30 BST)

Elton Chigumbura is indeed batting, but with his injury and all, how long will he last?

guildfordbat wrote:Very good batting in the closing overs from Root, Taylor and Buttler to post over 300.

Definitely a challenging total for Sri Lanka but not an impossible target given some of the batting giants they have in their line up. If we don't get 10 wickets, we'll be in trouble ....

Just watched a recording of Sri Lanka's innings. My doubt when I turned in as to whether we had enough on the board sadly proving to be more than the case. Any hopes of us taking 10 wickets shown to be an insane dream.

Wonderful batting by the Surrey boys (Dilshan from last season and especially Sanga coming this one ). Mind you, I would narrowly have given the man of the match to centurion Thirimanne - seeing his side to 300+ having been there from the start just edges by a feather for me Sanga's intelligent, gear changing ton.

Little to say about England in the field. Samey bowling, generally lacking penetration, hindered by poor fielding. We'll never know what difference the early miss behind off Thirimanne would have made but we simply can't expect any chance of a win with such errors. Too similar to the reprieve we gave Finch in the first over of this WC who also went on to a 100. That was bad but to repeat it ....

Pakistan narrowly defeat Zimbabwe. Only saw the very end of this game. Didn't think the idea of the number 10 playing out the 47th over from Afridi for a maiden was too clever. Could understand it a bit as Zimbabwe were between a rock and a hard place by then due to the failings of earlier batters. However, not the approach I'd have gone for.

This result probably suits Ireland - would guess they didn't want Zimbabwe drawing level on points with them them today.

Mind you, a real dog fight between Ireland, Zimbabwe, Pakistan and West Indies from this group for the last two QF places.

KP_fan wrote:Well Pak's 3 lefzt arm seamers exterting pressure.
I feel they just have scored 15 runs too many for Zim to knock down

Well they loose by 20 runs.....I came close

The beauty of this format ( or ugliness)....Pak and Eng will limp through without having won a meritorious game into the QFs

and then displace NZ and Ind and bang they are in semis.....last 4 and all will be forgotten and forgiven.

kingraf wrote:Well, Pak look a little flat. Taylor playing well, but like I said, this type of
target is in his wheel house.
Well, I'm off, girlfriends little sister's birthday party in an hour. A whole
afternoon of sweet foods and Toy Story. With no sarcasm, I have to
admit that this is close to my dream day.

Have fun. I couldn't think of anything worse. Well actually tell a lie- Its a darn sight better than watching England play Cricket.

the new chief of Eng comes in.....Graves and opens a window for KP
Asks him to ply county cricket to be considered.

That vastly diffrent from 'we have drawn a line under KP' position.
gotta do something with Eng show so far.

guildfordbat wrote:

guildfordbat wrote:Very good batting in the closing overs from Root, Taylor and Buttler to post over 300.

Definitely a challenging total for Sri Lanka but not an impossible target given some of the batting giants they have in their line up. If we don't get 10 wickets, we'll be in trouble ....

Just watched a recording of Sri Lanka's innings. My doubt when I turned in as to whether we had enough on the board sadly proving to be more than the case. Any hopes of us taking 10 wickets shown to be an insane dream.

Wonderful batting by the Surrey boys (Dilshan from last season and especially Sanga coming this one ). Mind you, I would narrowly have given the man of the match to centurion Thirimanne - seeing his side to 300+ having been there from the start just edges by a feather for me Sanga's intelligent, gear changing ton.

Little to say about England in the field. Samey bowling, generally lacking penetration, hindered by poor fielding. We'll never know what difference the early miss behind off Thirimanne would have made but we simply can't expect any chance of a win with such errors. Too similar to the reprieve we gave Finch in the first over of this WC who also went on to a 100. That was bad but to repeat it ....  

The problem is 300 is the target, that's just simply not enough these days in odi cricket and especially in the tournament and on that belter of a pitch yesterday. Yes the bowlers were bloody awful (Anderson and Broad with the new ball look about as threatening as my mum) but we're just so so far behind the times it's unreal.

We have bell, ballance and root in the top four all there to essentially play the same type of innings. Needs to change

Oh and Buttler is far too good a player to be pigeon holed at 7 to play the cameo role. Need to get him in around 35/40 overs and let him face 40/50 balls so he can do real damage. Even if that means doing this woefully outrageous idea of changing the batting order according to the situation

Yeah totally agree olly.

Only root should be playing out of the test styled batters. At least he does up the rate when in as well and is very good at rotating the strike rather than getting bogged down with dots.. and butters needs to come in at 5 or 6.

Great, more months of KP debate coming up.Superb.

Re. the England bowling attack, I fully agree it is a bit samey at the moment, but is there anyone who could realistically come in? Post WC I mean. I don't really think Rashid's leggies are good enough and I can't think we have a left arm seamer (Gurney is not the answer) or a SLA to bring in really. Maybe Topley in a few years, but not yet. Please no Tymal Mills.

Re: bowling.

I don't know enough about the talent england have, but we need to find the fastest bowlers we have and just go with that.. Work on them with high level coaches . It really is what seems to make the difference at ODI level.

I think Anderson, as well as Ballance, needs to be dropped.

Broad, at least, did manage to garner some aggression and intensity from his bowling against Sri Lanka.

Anderson looked exhausted, low on confidence, and was bowling far too short to trouble Sri Lanka. Insipid.

The trouble is when we send these fast bowlers to Loughborough, they get slower! Not so much Finn there, as he had to sort his action but many others. A story George Dobell tells (Cricinfo writer) is that at Luffbra they have a wall with the fastest deliveries recorded there on. The fastest is Stuart Meaker, on his very first visit there; why is he, or anyone else, not getting faster?!

horror show, diabolical, embarassing...

too angry to post much more

Ok, enough's enough. Time to make serious changes if England aren't to carry on like this. Enough of these moderate wicketkeeper batsmen (Moores, Downton) attempting to reach levels they never got near as players and time to bring in some winners as managers: Vaughan and Collingwood.

And time to rebuild the one day team. Ali, Taylor, Root, Buttler, Woakes to stay, Roy and Hales to come in. Other places - notably most of the bowlers - up for grabs for thoase who are playing well, not those who have been good Test players.

JDizzle wrote:The trouble is when we send these fast bowlers to Loughborough, they get slower! Not so much Finn there, as he had to sort his action but many others. A story George Dobell tells (Cricinfo writer) is that at Luffbra they have a wall with the fastest deliveries recorded there on. The fastest is Stuart Meaker, on his very first visit there; why is he, or anyone else, not getting faster?!

This is the problem, we try to remake these bowlers into something they're not, and Saker is possibly the worst bowling coach in world cricket. Have we had a young bowler come through into the team under his stewardship

Look, easy to blame the bowlers, but the pitch was flat. We conceded 300 against India, and it would have been more had India been a team which knows how to bat in the final ten when setting. And the Cake Tin is a smaller ground. 310 was never gonna be enough unless you got it swinging early on. The real problem is the fact that I'm convinced you have no idea how to plan around 50 overs, and what that entails.

More worryingly, the ECB seems nondescript about the challenges facing them and would rather right up new plans to make ODI's 40-per side (never mind the fact that, as I've said before you simply can't successfully make an extrapolated form of T20.) Cricket fans want to see an innings crafted, casuals want some irresponsible fun. You can't create a happy medium!

New ECB Chairman makes statement about Pietersen, why god only knows not upto you who's selected Colin

Of course this means we get standard ECB guff statement about only wanting "positive influences" in the side.

No we want batsmen who will score runs, bowlers who will take wickets and fielders who catch the ball. I couldn't give a monkeys if they're complete douchebags to each other off the field

It's time we didn't talk about Kevin. Time to move on (again) and in tests, we have.

Stella wrote:It's time we didn't talk about Kevin. Time to move on (again) and in tests, we have.

Agreed. The ODI team needs to build for the next World Cup, he would be 39 by then and wasn't playing that well when he retired/was forced out anyway.

Back on the subject of this World Cup, it might be a good thing in the long term if we crash out in the group stages as surely that would instigate the root and branch review that is needed. There is a danger that if we make the semi finals, the shocking demolitions vs Aus, NZ and SL will be forgotten about

So in order to prepare for this World Cup, we rearranged the schedule and had back to back Ashes which seen us humiliated in Australia with our best Test player, albeit King-size idiot, thrown under a bus. We tore up an excellent Test side and played a load of ODis for 6 months without much real success, with mixed game plans and team selection which ended up with the captain being sacked late in the day - a captain that wouldn't get into any decent ODi side in the world never mind captain one.

We then leave some of our more innovative short game players at home with another on the sidelines and make an absolute mess of the WC making a mockery of ICCs decision to remove associates from the next WC due to 'competitiveness' in the meantime.

I don't want Kevin back. And I don't think he wants to come back. I think he is happy with his life as it is. Stay playing T20 around the world KP, and earning stacks of money. After all you did for England, I can't begrudge you that.

My dream is that with Graves coming in, the Yorkshire connection prevails and Moores is sacked (lovely bloke, not an international coach) and Downton is shown the door with him and Graves can persuade Dizzy Gillespie to come in and do the job.

Really not looking forward to our (Ireland's) game against South Africa. Although we can match the lower ranked full members, team's like south africa are beyond us (like they are to the lower-ranked full members!). Think we'll get a pasting from them, as our seam bowling attack is so weak and can't keep depending our batting to get us out of trouble, particularly against an attack like south africa's. Really hope Craig Young plays, as its a travesty he isn't in the team.

Anyway the big games for us are Zimbabwe and Pakistan, and anything from India and South Africa would be a bonus.

Zimbabwe is the big one for us.
Pakistan could be there for the taking.

Agree anything from the other 2 is a bonus.

Agree, think we take a beating off South Africa.

Ireland are in trouble... and that's putting it mildly

Unfortunately this is the game for an associate where you need an x factor type player, especially in the bowling unit and without Rankin Ireland lack that.

I watched the last dozen overs of South Africa's innings from about the time of Raf's mild warning and then a few highlights on Sky.

Pretty much carnage as you would expect. Tons for Amla and du Plessis with Rossouw and Miller then upping the rate even further and taking the final score to 411/4. At least de Villiers missed out.

Decent efforts by Ireland's three slow bowlers but - again - the lack of pace of their seamers proving very costly. Mooney started so well (1/9 off 5) but conceded 43 in just two single overs when he returned later on. A shame for Mooney that Sorenson was so expensive from the off and was such a poor opening partner. If Ireland had been holding their own in the opening overs, there would have been a case for Mooney staying on and bowling his full spell on the reel.

Dropped or missed early catches also adding massively to Ireland's problems. They should have learned the dangers of that from England.

I suspected this sort of score was always on the cards once Ireland lost the toss. Had hoped they would win that and bat first, making 230ish. Admittedly, that wouldn't normally be enough but you never know ... anyway, not to be.

I can't see their batsmen getting close to this target against the pace of Steyn et al plus the trickery of Tahir. And with that Stirling edges behind! 17/1 off 3 ... oh dear!

We've still got a game against UAE to go... Might cross 400 three times if we bat first!

Destined to be like Netherlands this side, sexy cricket, breathtaking superstar... no silverware.

21-3, Tahir hasn't even bowled yet. Could be the biggest defeat in world cup history.

48-5 now.

Just turned this on.
Thought SA would score 400 odd.


51-5. Will do very well to get 150.

westisbest wrote:Just turned this on.
Thought SA would score 400 odd.


51-5. Will do very well to get 150.

Westy - looks very difficult at the moment but it would be extremely good in the circumstances if Ireland could bat out the overs.

This is why Ireland should not be getting test status, and why the associate teams are being looked at with regards to playing in further world cups.

SA has set the bar for minnow bashing.....400 it is.
WI did 300 and Ire chased it down.
WI did 372 against Zim.....and the latter got to nearly 300.

the way to counter SA.....put 300 on board and get them to Chase.....that' when they are likely to falter.

At least the Irish batsmen are showing a bit of fight now - up to about 100-5 now.

The Associates are over-matched against the very good sides like Aus and SA, but can give everyone else a game.

Perhaps lucky for Ireland that they got rid of ABdV when they did - his 24 came off 9 balls, so he was clearly in the mood again. OK, the last 2 batsmen scored at 2 runs a ball, but de Villiers could have added another 40 or 50 to the score.

little annoyed with this period of play. AB holding out auditions for the fifth bowler, has brought Ireland back into looking like they'll get a respectable total. More annoying, though, we've come no closer to finding one.

Stella wrote:This is why Ireland should not be getting test status, and why the associate teams are being looked at with regards to playing in further world cups.

yes thats precisely THE point.
its not how exciting minnow v. minnow game is such as ire and uae game.
even club games can be exciting.

Its how Ire and Uae have been crushed by regular sides.

They need encouragement but not on the world cup stage but thru A teams visitng them and being granted 5 to 10 bilateral odis with regular sides

Ireland all out and lose by 201 runs. A very comfortable win for an extremely strong South Africa side but not the total humiliation for Ireland as looked likely when they were 48/5 in the 11th over.

In the end, Ireland recovered pretty well to use up 45 overs and get past 200. At least not as damaging for the run rate as it could have been. A deserved half century for Balbirnie following on from his good and sensible innings against UAE which largely went under the radar (although I did notice Gary Wilson praised it).

Realistically, Ireland were always going to lose this game and so shouldn't be too shocked or damaged by it. Their real remaining challenges are the games against Zimbabwe and Pakistan with the one against India as an unlikely possible bonus.

Ireland have got a lot going for them - heart, nous, sensible batsmen, decent spinners, generally good fielders and tremendous support but ... I continue to worry about the lack of pace of their seamers.

One thing that was smart about what AB did was to get everyone who can turn an arm to bowl a few overs just to see what comes out on the other side.

The ten overs by the part timers may have gone for 63 runs, but at least we will have learnt something, and that is our part timers can't bowl

I wouldn't say this defeat is any worse than losing in 12 overs after being bowled out for about a hundred, or losing by 9 wickets defending 300. So if Ireland get the boot based on this defaet, then there is an argument that England don't really belong either

Stella wrote:This is why Ireland should not be getting test status, and why the associate teams are being looked at with regards to playing in further world cups.

Ah good, so England will be losing their test status based on how they played vs New-Zealand. And West Indies likewise for their non-showing (which was even worse than Ireland's) against the same South African side. Neither side will be allowed at the next WC either.

Everybody should have test status, and everybody should have to and have a chance of qualifying for all WCs.

You know, how it works in other sports?

Oh well...

Stella wrote:This is why Ireland should not be getting test status, and why the associate teams are being looked at with regards to playing in further world cups.

So on this basis we should enjoy this being England's last time with test status

That comment deserves a #headsgone

The Irish players and Scottish players come from England's county system which is built to produce internationals over money..

That's where the problem lies. The ICC just want the other nations to move forward with there own first class systems.

In regards to englands problems. A key issue is the amount of tests we play and the lack of 20/20 we play..

Having test status isn't about quality or lack of. It's about systems and structure.

Olly wrote:

Stella wrote:This is why Ireland should not be getting test status, and why the associate teams are being looked at with regards to playing in further world cups.

So on this basis we should enjoy this being England's last time with test status

That comment deserves a #headsgone

Calm down olly. Firstly, I believe the associate teams should be in world cups. Secondly, you and others seem to think an associate having a good game against another associate is a good enough reason as to why they shoul be allowed in and it isn't. It's because of beatings like the one today. You and the others should know better, really.

Like I say, I would have them in.

Please read Mr Selig.

Mike Selig wrote:

Stella wrote:This is why Ireland should not be getting test status, and why the associate teams are being looked at with regards to playing in further world cups.

Ah good, so England will be losing their test status based on how they played vs New-Zealand. And West Indies likewise for their non-showing (which was even worse than Ireland's) against the same South African side. Neither side will be allowed at the next WC either.

Everybody should have test status, and everybody should have to and have a chance of qualifying for all WCs.

You know, how it works in other sports?

Oh well...

Everybody should have test status??? How is life on your planet.

Hashim Amla's ODI record is ridiculous...

Another day another minnow game.
Afg v. Aus this time and same result as yesterday.
Warner missed a BIG double hundred by a few......Maxwell could have gotten a 100 had he another 3 or 4 deliveries.

After a month of playing each other top 8 teams will go through to quarter finals anyway with their performances counting for nothing and a it's a shoot out lottery then.

Ireland can still qualify, Zimbabwe and Pakistan are both winnable games to give them enough points to be very unlucky not to anyway. Admittedly Pakistan would be favouriets for that game but they do have a sniff of creating mayhem, its just bad luck for them that Windies managed to pick up a decent result the other day.

All in though its pretty clear theres a gulf between the better test playing nations, the poorer ones, and then again down to the associates. Maybe the current rules and tactics combined with the absence of effective spinners has made defensive close harder to come by. But the gulf in ability and confidence has been evident between the the big boys and the minnows like England.

By the end of the pool stages it is in danger of feeling very tedious, which is a shame as there have been a few very exciting games...often between the associates.

Another CLOSE minnow v. Minnow game.
BD and Zim inspite of their full status are closer to Ire, afganistan, Scot etc....and should be relegated to some kind of 6 nation B group that ICC should form.

Felt sorry for Coetzer and Scotland after having posted a quite sizeable total of 318 but that was also a gutsy reply from Bangladesh.
Some huge hits from Mushfiqur and Rahman.