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Cricket 33: ODIs Still Aren’t Proper Cricket Edition


Paxter

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Sooo...England v Australia (five ODIs), WI v Sri Lanka (three-tests!), Scotland v Pakistan (even more ODIs) and *drum roll* Afghanistan's debut test against mighty India!

This could be the crappiest month of international cricket we have ever seen. Luckily there is a World Cup to watch and a Socceroos side to cheer (vainly) for.

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Sutherland resigning as CA's CEO after nearly two decades in the job. He gets a mixed review from me, mainly on the basis of the culture of the men's team, the handling of the pay dispute and the continued decline of the first-class game. But he did oversee some good progress in the areas of women's cricket and domestic limited-overs cricket (mainly the BBL). 

West Indies v Sri Lanka has so far been uninspiring at best.

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On 6/5/2018 at 5:45 AM, Paxter said:

Sooo...England v Australia (five ODIs), WI v Sri Lanka (three-tests!), Scotland v Pakistan (even more ODIs) and *drum roll* Afghanistan's debut test against mighty India!

You missed out today's Scotland v England ODI which has got off to an interesting start with Scotland comfortably passing 350 lead helped by a century from Calum MacLeod. On a small ground I think England would feel themselves capable of chasing down such a total but they've left themselves a lot of work to do - apparently it would be their highest-ever ODI chase if it was successful.

Regardless of what the result ends up being I think this shows that the ICC's decision to cut the World Cup to 10 teams continues to be ridiculous.

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Good effort from Scotland. Yeah, it’s a small ground but they’ve navigated Rashid, who’s a good ODI bowler, pretty well and you’d think the leg spinner would cash in with the batsmen trying to put up a score like that.

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Yeah I checked Cricinfo and noticed that 370 had been scored. But I had to look twice when I saw that Scotland had posted it!

I do have a bit of egg on my face now as WI v Sri Lanka also turned into a fairly intriguing match.

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2 hours ago, Eusebio da Silva ljkeane said:

And Scotland get their first ever win against England.

:wideeyed:

It did look at one point as if England were going to comfortably chase it down, but the danger for them was always if they started to lose wickets there's not much opportunity to consolidate when the required run rate is so high. England very nearly stumbled over the line at the end but after a superb start by the openers the middle order left the tail-enders with too much to do.

I think it's fair to say that it's the greatest result in the history of Scottish cricket. Not only is it a victory over England, it's also a victory over the number 1 ranked team. It's not as if it's a particularly weakened England team either, while they're not quite at full strength (Stokes and Buttler being the most obvious omissions) it's still not a lineup than any side would take lightly.

I suppose a victory over England is some compensation for the failure to qualify for the World Cup, although it's frustrating that the Scotland players aren't going to get much opportunity to build on this, they've got a couple of T20 Internationals against Pakistan next week (which I think could be very high scoring contests judging by today) but after that I don't think there's much scheduled against the top sides.

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An exciting day for Afghanistan, but they will probably have a tougher entry to test match cricket than Ireland. Even without Kohli, India's batting is ridiculously strong with the likes of Pandya, Jadeja and Ashwin batting in spots 7-9.

Rashid Khan went for 13 in his first over...

Side-note: I'm pleased for Karthik that he has fought his way back into the test team. India really need to land a new test 'keeper, they have struggled in that area since MS' retirement. 

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2 hours ago, Pierre Le Harceleur said:

What did I miss?

Someone was handing out sandpaper-themed placards printed with “4” or “6” to England fans. Cue outrage from some Australian pundits and sections of the media. 

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I knew about the sandpaper placards. The ECB confiscated all the ones they could find and the crowd barely gave the Aussies any stick, as far as I could tell. That's some high-grade whinging about nothing. They should wait until Tuesday when they go to Trent Bridge. I'm pretty sure they'll give the Aussies something to complain about.

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5 hours ago, Eusebio da Silva ljkeane said:

There’s just too much sport on today so I’m struggling to watch much of the cricket but England seem to be ticking along well so far.

It was a fairly comfortable win for England in the end, although it did look for a while as if Shaun Marsh had dragged Australia back into the game. It was a good collective batting performance from England with Bairstow getting things off to a spectacular start while Roy hit a well-constructed century and Buttler brought the innings to a good conclusion. However, I'm not really sure why Sam Billings is in the team

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Totally agree RE: Sam Billings.

England looks far superior to Australia in this format, even with Stokes and Morgan missing from the side. Australia is missing its regular pace attack, but honestly, I doubt it would make much of a difference if they were available. Langer is undertaking some strange experiments (Short as ODI opener alongside Head? Finch in the middle order?)

Unrelatedly, spare a thought for cricket's fallen stars. I was reading this piece on the weekend and it really ticked me off. I know Ryder has long since fallen off the radar of international cricket, but surely he deserves a domestic contract after averaging 71 in seven First Class games last season and over 40 in nine 50-over games? The guy is no angel and is not the fittest bloke playing the game, but he is also one of only a very select few NZ test batsmen to average over 40. NZers please explain this to me!

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