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Cricket... the game, not the insect

 
 
 
Cricket is back (well, I had no access to the County Test matches) and it is England v New Zeeland as Stokes tries to help transition England from its malaise to success. And boy, did they get off to a great start.

New Zeeland were down 2-2, 15-4, at lunch 39-6. They manage to "recover" for about 100 more over the next 4 wickets, finishing with 132... first innings, first day. Taken down in less than 35 overs. Yipes! Maybe they are adjusting to how the ball bounces in the northern hemisphere. ;)

And you think, well, this is great! England can have a rough go for it, finish with a paltry 175 and still be up over 40 runs. But yeah, this is England, a team that is incapable of batting. A team who's moral victory in the Ashes involved them NOT trying to score. Unlike New Zeeland, England do jump out to 59-1 then 92-3. Looking good, but you can't spell the word England without the word collapse.

...

Okay, maybe you can. Regardless. 96-4, 98-5, 100-6, 100-7, currently in the collapse. That's right, you always bet on black in Cricket... or any other color England is playing against. Their last four wickets, the most balls faced, 15. They both could finish this Test up tomorrow after New Zeeland declares after scoring 125. Playing out like a T20, just without any of the fun.
 
The bad news, a large second inning chase of 277 to win the first test match. The good news, you have 2.5 days to reach it. Will our heroes screw it up again? Will Root get stumped with only 15 runs making victory impossible? Stayed tuned, same England Cricket Station, same England Cricket Time!

Oh... the answers were no, no, and wow, England won. New Zealand provided offense at the end of Day Two and looked to be expanding, but England made short of order of the batters on Day Three, and held New Zealand to a 276 run lead, which isn't the easiest gap for a Test chase, but when you have 2.5 days to do, time isn't the issue, your teams ability to play is. Stoke managed a half century and then Joe Root was Joe freakin' Root, a guy showing the talent of a Steve Smith just without the lack of morals. Root made with a century leading England to a win in a Test match. The team was befuddled and didn't know how to react. Just through sheer inertia, they walked off the pitch dejected. Then team captain Ben Stokes remembered what winning actually was, and then they celebrated.

The good news is that England won, the bad news is, without Joe Root, they are nothing. Ben Stokes is very good, but Root is the anchor and the engines and pretty much the entire boat. They need to develop more consistency batting with the other players. On the bowling side, even with Jofra Archer being perpetually injured because it isn't natural to bowl as fast as he does, they've got it. So if they can work on the batting in Test matches, England can resume not embarrassing themselves on the pitch.

Test 2 starts Friday.
 
Back in the 80s before Internal I listens to global short wave news.

I remember the BBC reporting Cricket scores form India. I thought the least the BBC could di was report MLB scores.



en.wikipedia.org

Fire in Babylon - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org en.wikipedia.org

The documentary describes the ascension of West Indies cricket from being a team largely composed of highly talented, entertaining, "Calypso Cricketers" to a determined unit that dominated world cricket for nearly twenty years.

It begins with an introduction to the West Indies Cricket Team. Using interviews with West Indian cricketing greats, and other people closely associated with West Indies cricket; the idea of culturally and politically different Caribbean nations playing under the common banner of the West Indies is described.

The history of cricket in the West Indies is briefly described, such as the appointment of Sir Frank Worrell as the first black man to captain the West Indies Cricket Team, and the emergence of such cricketing greats as Everton Weekes, Learie Constantine, and Sir Garfield Sobers. However talented these individual cricketers were, they were unable to fetch results, resulting in the West Indies being perceived as "Calypso Cricketers"; people who were entertaining, but would ultimately lose.
Click to expand...

They physically trained like pro athletes and kicked butt.
 
West Indies and Pakistan had a pretty competitive first ODI. West Indies started a little slow, but then had a marvelous partnership that helped drive the team to over 300. But Pakistan was able to keep within reach of the target and then a blasting of several boundaries in the last few overs gave them the win by "5 wickets", but in this case, it was closer than it sounds.

For the West Indies it was an important showing as they are transitioning with a few retirements. Their T20 World Cup showing wasn't that good.
 
Well, that whole bowlers' game transitioned for the second test. New Zealand opened up the floodgate and scored over 500. Then Crawley was out very early and there was a collective sigh of resignation from the home crowd. But then... England didn't collapse. In fact, they kept things alive for quite a while. So much so, they were still at bat in the first innings after the third day, which really makes a New Zealand victory much less likely. In the end, his eminence and Groot managed around 300 runs amongst themselves before being finished an hour or so before lunch on Day Four. New Zealand now need to score a lot of runs quickly to have a prayer of having enough time to bowl out the Brits. Which likely isn't going to happen.

New Zealand around about 150 up, 3 wickets gone with only a few hours remaining. The Kiwis got a bit lucky, the ball was squirming around more on the pitch than a 3 year old that needs to pee. Declaring will be tricky today/tomorrow.


Meanwhile in Pakistan, the West Indies and Pakistan played to midnight. Pakistan played as Pakistan does and the West Indies had plenty of time left to win the game, but not enough wickets. Pakistan swept their series. West Indies did well for where they stand, but need to improve.
 
New Zealand made it to Day 5 in the morning... and again right around my breakfast, messing up my short Cricket spell. England need 299 today to win (or roughly 75 boundaries). The announcers are hopeful. We'll see. By lunch, Lees hot bat got them 36, as Crawley apparently had somewhere else to be again. They need to play 60 more overs and average about one boundary an over.

We know this setup is designed for Ben Stokes, but how many times can that happen? So Groot, his eminence (who is at bat with Lees), and Stoke are the potential protagonists for this rather substantial ODI like chase.
 
Day Five - England batters Stokes and Bairstow are mistaking this Test Match for T20 cricket. And I mean the last five overs in T20 cricket.
 
And umm...

...

WOW!

I figured this was destined for a draw. But what do I know? Bairstow slugs away (and to a lesser, but not insignificant standard, so does Stoke) and England steamroller the Kiwi bowlers after tea, and win with plenty of time remaining.

England gave up 553 in New Zealand's first innings... and won the Test Match!
 
England took a trip to the Netherlands for some ODI action.

Netherlands took out two English batsmen for 1 and 0. :) The others got centuries. :(

Well, not Livingstone, but he got 32 in a single over. :eek: T20 batsmen be like... 'dude, slow it down'.

England have the second highest ODI score in history (admittedly not that long). Could beat their own record. 3+ overs left.

Jos Buttler is also looking at setting fastest ODI 150 and Livingstone is second fastest to 50 in an ODI.
 
498-4. A minor lull in the second to last over kept them from the 500 mark. If Salt and Malan weren't striking at pathetic rates of 131% and 114%, England would have broke 500. :D

Livingstone 66 off 22 balls. That works out to a strike rate of WTF. Buttler got 150 in 65 balls which notches his place in second on that fastest list to just one behind the record.

Well, the good news for the Netherlands is there is absolutely no pressure for their ODI Innings.
 
At currently 181, Netherlands currently need to roughly get a boundary with every remaining ball in the 13 plus overs to win.

England had 26 6's. 36 4's. That is 300 runs exactly. The Dutch's best bowler economy wise was over 8.
 
ODI style, Sri Lanka is about to go up 3-1 in the series with Australia. Asalanka has been in absolute control. Sri Lanka in the third test has a difficult chase, but managed to beat the Aussies 291.
 
England are cruising to a potential sweep of the World champs. A win, would be three consecutive 250 run chases, a first ever, I believe. Leach noted that Stokes et al are playing a 'let's try to win games' tactic. What is interesting is that the first innings of the Third test, New Zealand owned England, except two batters, who scored 259 amongst themselves. 21-4, 55-6, and then the partnership of Bairstow and Overton. And with the 40+ from Broad, England had the lead!

This team was destroyed by Australia and faired poorly against a rebuilding West Indies, and now they are playing so well. New Zealand are far from being inferior... the 2nd test was the best test two-team test match ever I've seen (admittedly, short history).

So now, Bairstow and Root go for the win and sweep in Day Five.
 
England sweep!

Incredible as the first innings of the first test match went 132 to 141. The second 553 to 539. The fact they even finished the second test was incredible! Bairstow's form was shoddy in the first three innings, something like a combined 24 from 35. Then he entered the cheat code. The only reason he didn't hit another century is he ran out of balls this time. Incredible stuff.

One off against India next to finish a 5 test series.
 
So, England had India for makeup 5th test of an earlier series. India were up healthfully after the first innings. India had a mediocre second inning which provided England a long long shot at winning. The opening pair did very well, getting to 100 before getting out. And then Ollie Pope got ducked on his first ball. Bairstow and Root are at bat and get through to the end of Day 4, with a decent haul remaining, 270ish I think. I'm thinking that they would need to last to lunch for England to at least have a honest batting try at a draw, that was yesterday before lunch in the US. I turn on the tv in the morning today, expecting to see them just prior to lunch and see how England is fairing.

...

And it is over!? And not because England collapsed. England chased 378 in about a day's time. 119 runs in 90 minutes today to seal the deal, winning by 7 wickets. England are firing on all cylinders. There is a break now until mid August when they face South Africa at home. It'll be interesting to see how their opponents transition against the tactic of bat the heck out of the ball. It'll also be interesting to see how this transitions on pitches outside Great Britain.
 
New Zealand is ODI'ing it with Ireland these days. Ireland posted a pretty sharp 300 despite opening up very slowly. New Zealand needed 299 of the 300 to win it. New Zealand needed 24 from 12 to win, as Bracewell was single handedly keeping the Kiwis alive (the Kiwis were 167-6 when Bracewell came on). The Kiwis managed only 4 points in the second to last over... and the final ball in the over got Ireland their 9th wicket with bowler Adair desperately holding the Kiwis back. And then Bracewell pounded the living crap out of the balls bowled by Young in the final over effectively making watching the game a complete and utter waste of time.

Luckily I had it on while I was doing other stuff.
 
United States is fighting to get a berth into the ICC T20 World Cup... which is umm... happening right away again. The US is in the final part of the qualification and a match today with Zimbabwe sets who will be first in their group and who will be second. Zimbabwe didn't have much of a challenge and dispatched the US. The playoffs are next. The US faces 3-0 Netherlands (from the other group) and Zimbabwe face Papua New Guinea (1-2 in the other group). The winners of those two games are the last two qualifiers for the ICC World Cup, where they'll join UAW and Ireland and be fodder... jobbin' out to the good countries. I mean Ireland isn't trash, but there seems to be a cliff between the top countries and the good countries.

A win for the US would make it their first World Cup appearance... else, they'd need to wait to 2024, when they co-host the World Cup with the West Indies and get an auto-bid. Which also means I have a bare minimum shot of seeing actual cricket stateside, bilby's complaints on T20 aside. I'm not even certain where they'd hold it in the US. Not that it'd take too long to build a proper cricket pitch. A quick search indicates Houston has some pitches... might need to have the family visit my wife's aunt.
 
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Ridiculous that Aust. scores > 360 in the 1st innings and still loses by an innings and 39 runs.

I think Sri Lanka needs to have their cricketers run their country.
 
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