T20 World Cup, June 1-29

[bigfluffylemon]

This continues to see saw with the weather.

Afghanistan with the upper hand now. Bangladesh can't qualify. But they can still win while Das there. He's effectively batting for Australia now.

[bigfluffylemon]

Still so close.

[mikesiva]

Afghanistan beat Bangladesh by eight runs on DLS.

Afghanistan 115-5

Gurbaz 43

Rishad 3-26

Bangladesh 105 all out

Das 54*

Rashid 4-23
Naveen 4-26

Afghanistan reach the semi finals!

Gurbaz and Ibrahim are arguably the most prolific opening partnership in this tournament.

[Durhamfootman]

full credit to Afghanistan, but who will be the more delighted, them or SA?

[bigfluffylemon]

Don't bet against the SA hoodoo in WC knockouts

[alfie]

Incredible drama in that match : twisting one way and the other ball by ball in DLS terms with the rain regularly interrupting... Afghans held their nerve and nicked it at the end. Since they beat Australia fair and square they deserve their spot.

Only thing I didn't like was Gulbadin faking an injury to waste time as the rain arrived on one occasion , after Trott had apparently signalled his troops to slow the game down. Especially as he made a swift recovery to bowl two vital overs and take 1 for 5. Gamesmanship , eh ?

Semis set fair enough I think. India and SA undefeated , and England and Afghanistan earning their spots by beating their direct competitors in the super group stage. No one can really feel aggrieved by ill fortune from the weather...except maybe Scotland

[sussexpob]

I guess I will be in the minority, but I did not find this match at all entertaining. Not for the first time in this tournament the pitch was extremely sub-par standard for a match at village cricket level, let alone the business end of the marquee ICC tournament. Its a bit like trying to argue if the Paris Olympics produces a running track that resembles an extreme assault course and the 100m winner clocks a time of 19 seconds, yet only wins by 0.001 seconds, its some how brilliant. But I want to see elite level sportsman winning and contesting somewhere near their peak level.... this pitch rewarded people for luck and very little technical skill.

In the first over of the match alone, a similar length ball firstly got to around the upper chest height with the BD keeper taking the ball infront of his head. Another ball at the end of the over bounced twice on the way to him and his misfielded it, even giving the look to his side like "what am I supposed to do"? Nothing. Flip a coin and see what happens ... I think it was either the 9th or 10th BD wicket at the end too, ball just bounced and rolled along the floor.

As a captain in the game, I'd probably took my team off after a few balls. Not going to risk someone taking one in the helmet off a crack...

And then we have the ultra weird DL calculation. The rain delay was 7 minutes long, is cricket the only sport that would use some dubious mathematical formula designed for what may as well be a different sport several decades ago to interfere with a match of this magnitude? 7 minutes lads, bowl the 20th damn over and leave the maths in the bin. BD ended in a situation where they in essence had to maintain a rate higher than what was actually set to win the match, because losing wickets meant if it rained they'd have lost, even if their RR was on par or slightly over Afghanistan's.

I dont care if you have lost 9 wickets with 10 overs left, an over in T20Is does not have a value of 1 run. To lose a whole over on D/L with only 1 run taken off is frankly ludicrous. The lowest total ever scored by a team qualifying for a world cup is 39, so even taking the absolute worst performance ever its worth at least 2 runs in the history of the game as an absolute minimum.

Average SR of the last par is 80. Average of 7 per wicket..... so yes, even assuming you have 9 down with your worst two batters at the crease, the par is never 1 run in an over.

How can one justify that? BD were ahead of the rate set, but lost a whole over for being so?? It makes zero sense whatsoever. DL method seems to hyper overvalue the impact of wickets on an innings, which is understandable in games like this. Using a historical par score for each wicket as a basis for judging what a team has the capacity to score when they are playing on a pitch 50-60 runs short of historical par ..... gets you idiotic maths like last night.

[sussexpob]

To explain the DL point another way.....

You have two F1 racers burning round the track in Qualifying, when it suddenly rains heavily. One man gets his lap just finished and clocks the best time, the other is reaching the 2/3rd sector point with a negative delta time of 0.2 seconds to that point, which youd expect to hold out over the distance normally. Someone aquaplanes into the barrier and the stewards red flag the session before the second driver can complete his lap.... they decide to use the DL method to settle who is pole.

The 2/3 sector average is 1.00.00 throughout the history of the event and the average completed lap 1.30.00, but the current pole sitter did it in a monsoon at 1.20.00 barely able to keep the car straight, before finishing the lap in 1.50.00 dead. The second driver did the first two sectors in 1.19.80.

The way DL works, it would assume the second driver was 19.8 seconds off par, or 1.33 times slower. The remaining resources (ie the corners left on the circuit) would be combined with the performance on the lap compared to the par time, to leave an expected last sector time of 39,9 - for a total time of 1.59.70....

Or in other words, despite the second driver being quicker over the majority of the track, the formula would predict him to be a full 9 seconds plus slower over the end.

Only an idiot would use such a calculation

[meninblue]

A huge confidence boost for Team India against Australia who have beat us in important World Cup matches before.

[bigfluffylemon]

Yeah, I agree with the D/L point, thought Bangladesh were pretty hard done by there. 2 runs for an over was daft.

[alfie]

Could argue DLS isn't really a fit for 20 over games ; but they have to have something I suppose to deal with weather . At the same time it is a pity the rules are so rigid that an over needs to be "lost" in this circumstance : how much difference would it make to say OK we have time and light let's finish it properly ? So yes it was unfortunate for Bangladesh. But they didn't lose because of DLS : the tail just can't bat so once Das was off strike they were dead in the water.

Shame about the pitch/conditions. Fair to say , this WC has had some wild variations from venue to venue...which has made it even more of a raffle than usual. Still overall I'd rather some low scores and tight games than 200 plus bash-fests every match. It is t20 : cheap thrills for the masses and not to be compared with proper cricket ...

OK that was a slight exaggeration But you know what I mean. Anyway Afghanistan in the semis makes a change - they're well placed to profit from the SA WC Choke now.

[alfie]

More seriously SA (who'd have been hugely unlucky to be eliminated had they lost to West Indies after winning six games straight !) and India ought to be massive favourites for the semis. SA do seem to have their nerves under better control this time ; and India are so well served with a variety of bowling styles they should be able to handle whatever kind of surface is dished up. Only caveat being their batting , while full of talent , is capable of getting itself in a bit of a mess if a couple of early wickets go down .

But given England have barely taken a wicket in the first ten overs except for Oman that may not be a problem for them on Thursday. Not writing England off as they do seem to be improving game on game but will need one or two bats to play a blinder I think.

Hope some of the grim weather predictions are wide of the mark. No reserve day for a semi is just plain daft.

[GarlicJam]

I read online that if the Afg/SA match is washed out, SA advance, and if the Ind/Eng one is, India go through.

Is this true? If so, it is absolute rubbish.

[alfie]

I read online that if the Afg/SA match is washed out, SA advance, and if the Ind/Eng one is, India go through.

Is this true? If so, it is absolute rubbish.

Well they do have a reserve day for the SA/Afghan match - but not for India/England , which is odd to say the least. In the event of no result the group winners go to the final , which is fair enough as a last resort ; but you'd think they'd have a spare day for both semis to hopefully minimize the chance of that necessity.

[bigfluffylemon]

One of Afghanistan or SA will play their first ever world cup final. In either format.

I know we joke about it, but it's hard to believe how bad South Africa's record in knockout cricket yet. They've never made a world t20 or world cup final, and have only won one knockout match in either tournament (QF in 2015). They did win the Champions Trophy in 98, but since then haven't won a knockout in that tournament either.