Cricket 45: World Cup Fever

[Consigliere]

Good stuff from Australia's bowlers in restricting India to what is probably a below par score. Hopefully we get a close game.

[Jeor]

Insane second innings following on from the soporific first innings.

Warner and Marsh both out playing super aggressive shots, after having scored 28 off the first two overs. 

Smith now at the crease (with Head). Smith and Labuschagne are probably needed now as cooler heads to just tick things over with singles. Chasing 241 should still be advantage Australia despite losing two early wickets.

[Jeor]

Oh boy, Smith doesn't review an LBW that would have seen him survive with it being outside the line. He'll be kicking himself for that (and possibly Travis Head, who seemed to indicate to him it was plumb and shouldn't be reviewed).

Australia making tough work of this and India in the ascendancy. It's funny that after the major run feasts of the tournament, one of the semis (Australia South Africa) and the final seem to have gone back to "regular" scores and tight low chases.

[Consigliere]

Number 6 is looking like an almost certainty for Australia now. Kinda funny how India steamrolled everyone all tournament only for their batting lineup to falter in the final. Australia once again peaked at just the right time - great tournament side and mentality for 20+ years.

[TheLastWolf]

Chokers 

[ljkeane]

Looks like it’s going to be a crushing victory for Australia. I didn’t see that coming.

India’s problem for a while in ICC tournaments has been getting too conservative with the bat and underperforming their talent. I thought they’d moved on from that in this tournament but Kohli and Rahul dropping anchor in those middle overs (and then failing to survive to kick on at the end) really killed them. 

A bit of a weird one for me as these were probably the two sides in the tournament I really didn’t want to win. Australia winning as fairly big underdogs is the slightly more entertaining outcome I suppose.

Edited November 19, 2023 by ljkeane

[Consigliere]

Now that the tournament is over, can I just say that the format was wank. Less group stage games and more knockout games with jeopardy adds excitement to the tournament. We need to get back to a format of 2 or 4 groups (less group stage games) with 8 teams advancing to the QF stage (extra knockout round).

Edited November 19, 2023 by Consigliere

[Jeor]

4 hours ago, Consigliere said:

Now that the tournament is over, can I just say that the format was wank. Less group stage games and more knockout games with jeopardy adds excitement to the tournament. We need to get back to a format of 2 or 4 groups (less group stage games) with 8 teams advancing to the QF stage (extra knockout round).

The long round-robin stage was a bit of a bore, I have to agree. If we're going with 10 teams I'd prefer just two groups of 5, top three teams qualify with a quarterfinal bye for the group winners.

I did think India were susceptible to this outcome despite streamrolling through everything else. Australia is a good side in high-pressure circumstances and they peaked at the right time. Kohli/Rahul chewed up too much time and were clearly worried about the lack of batting depth, playing too defensively. Contrast this to Australia who were in worse shape at 3/47, but Head kicked on. Arguably Australia didn't have much more batting depth (Starc and Cummins at 8 and 9 are okay but not brilliant) but I guess they had the comfort of knowing the total wasn't that big to chase. India basically needed close to 300 and the lack of scoreboard pressure didn't give them many options.

[Paxter]

Complete domination by Australia in that final. Which cements their overall dominance in this comp: they have now won five of the last seven World Cups (99, 03, 07, 15, 23). And they came close in 1996.

One of the things Australian teams do very well is rise to the occasion in finals. Think Ponting in 03, Gilchrist in 07, Head in the most recent win. Unfortunately, the Indian stars seem to go missing in these big matches. 

[ljkeane]

Good first day for South Africa against India. I’m not sure how they’re batting lineup is going to hold up in these conditions though.

This India test kit looks a little dubious to me though. It looks like a football shirt.

[Paxter]

I have been waiting for years for mean reversion to finally catch up with Steve Smith. No doubt he is an all-time test great, but I was always sceptical that there is much daylight between him and other great test batters. 

And in the last few years, it has finally happened. His average has been pushing gently lower since sandpaper gate, and is now within touching distance of (a still incredible) 58. It will be interesting to see if he can maintain that average in the high 50s for the remainder of his career. That would keep him in the company of the likes of Sobers and Sangakkara in the batting average charts.

[ljkeane]

Big win for South Africa. Their four man pace attack has ripped through India in the second innings for 131 (and Kohli got 76 of those at nearly a run a ball). Shame it’s just a 2 match series.

[williamjm]

3 hours ago, ljkeane said:

Big win for South Africa. Their four man pace attack has ripped through India in the second innings for 131 (and Kohli got 76 of those at nearly a run a ball). Shame it’s just a 2 match series.

It sounds like a huge victory for them. I think they're going to miss Dean Elgar when he retires after the next match since he out-scored the entire Indian team here. It looks like some of the younger players also got some runs, which is definitely something South Africa need to back up their excellent bowling attack.

[IheartIheartTesla]

Is SA the new Pakistan? They just got bundled out for 55 in the second Test (first inninings)

[ljkeane]

South Africa’s batting has been pretty rubbish for a while and it’s probably going to get worse with Elgar retiring. The more surprising turn of events was probably them getting a decent score in the first test.

[williamjm]

7 hours ago, IheartIheartTesla said:

Is SA the new Pakistan? They just got bundled out for 55 in the second Test (first inninings)

Then followed by India losing their last 6 wickets for no runs. Is it a really difficult pitch to bat on? Even at the fast-forward pace of modern Test cricket 23 wickets on the first day is excessive.

[IheartIheartTesla]

I dont watch the matches here in the US, pretty much rely on OBO descriptions and match reports, which is somewhat wanting when it comes to getting a feel for the conditions on the ground. Surely if it ends up being a 2/3 day match there will be some sort of match report similar to the one that happened in India.

[ljkeane]

1 hour ago, IheartIheartTesla said:

I dont watch the matches here in the US, pretty much rely on OBO descriptions and match reports, which is somewhat wanting when it comes to getting a feel for the conditions on the ground. Surely if it ends up being a 2/3 day match there will be some sort of match report similar to the one that happened in India.

I only watched the highlights so maybe you don’t get the full picture but the pitch looked fine. It just looks like a pretty standard South African pitch with some bounce in it. South Africa won the toss and chose to bat. 

It was mainly down to some good bowling and a lot of fairly poor batting for me.

[Consigliere]

1.5 day Test. Pretty disappointing stuff mainly down to a horrendous batting performance from South Africa. I don't think the pitch is anything like a batting graveyard. There was some good bowling but mainly it was down to exceedingly terrible batting from South Africa in both innings and the tail end of India's first innings. India are having no trouble at all in their second innings and are rollicking along at nearly 7 rpo - that's not the sign of a bad pitch.

[IheartIheartTesla]

Yeah, they just clinched the match. Meanwhile, the Aus-Pak Test seems to be following a more traditional path, but weather remains a concern, I guess.