The Cricket Thread

States really ought to beat Pakistan from here.

Now SA having a good go at losing to the Netherlands.

England are going to be chasing 300 the way this is going.

Clearly I'm the only person with any passing interest in this tournament but I'm not going to let that stop me.

This seems a bit off: www.espncricinfo.com/story/t20-world-cup-marsh-could-face-ban-if-australia-manipulate-scotland-result-to-knock-england-out-1438274 - Hazlewood seems to be implying they'd throw the last game against Scotland (or at least win less convincingly than they could) to knock England out. Don't see much chance of a punishment as it's surely unproveable.

I've watched a bit of it, but I find myself somewhat un-arsed by it.
Clearly I'm just a disgrace who doesn't love my country enough and needs 'reforming'...

I’d be keeping up with it properly if the twats hadn’t sold the local TV rights to fucking Bezos.

Also watching it but the fact that start times vary and matches per day also varies means that it’s hard to get into a ‘watching rhythm’ in the way that’s possible in a football tournament.

The format also needs a revamp. The fact that the weather in that first match could pretty much kill England off (yes I know they were also crap against Australia) means that something’s wrong somewhere. In the 50 over competition bad weather isn’t such a factor because they play many more games but when you only play 4 matches it could be crucial.

The drop in pitches in the States seem pretty shite too.

I've watched a bit, the afternoon games are great as background to working.

The USA v Pakistan game has been the highlight so far.

Suffers from the same problem as rugby - they want to expand the game by including developing countries but they still want to have as many proper games between the actual competitors as possible. One giant 20 team league, with 190 games isn't really practical.

One minnow in the super 8s is good for the competition - if the USA, Afghanistan and Scotland all get there (knocking out Pakistan, NZ and England), I think it's safe to assume the format will change next time. I completely missed Afghanistan smashing New Zealand.

Netherlands v Bangladesh actually quite entertaining so far.

At least England have taken away the possibility of a run rate knockout - as soon as Salt started 6, 6, out it was pretty clear England weren't going to hang around.

I don't think Australia would deliberately lose to Scotland but if they were in a chase where a win in 15 overs would put England through, the incentive to not push too hard but still win comfortably would be tempting.

Never in doubt really.
I see NZ have been knocked out already and it looks like the US are actually going to get out of their group assuming it continues to rain in Florida...

Interestingly, the cricket hasn't been as engaged here as usual. Even before NZ started losing.

Looks like england are getting rained out of the T20. Seems vaguely farcical that an, apparently, serious international competition sees a potential winner knocked out because it rained twice out of their four games.

Good news - the game is on.
Bad news - so far England are Kenting it.

At least they can get knocked out honestly now.