Its Summer! - the Fever Cricket Thread. (Part 2)

Dude's a comedian from an PI background and a cricket fan, not a sports journo so yeah different take and that 

So we have an England vs New Zealand final...

This is what happens when you remove "Gamesmanship" from sport. 

I hope you are all happy now!

I'm a lot happier we are playing England instead of Australia.

Despite the fact England are a much better team, they are at home and under immense pressure not to bottle it.

Against Australia at Lord's we would have had absolutely no chance.

Can we have Steve Waugh "wow wow, what is he good for" (12th Man) spend another 30 minutes talking about himself. It seemed to motivate NZ against India.

I am going to sleep so well tonight

Good night CD

I slept so fudgeing well. What did I miss?

Shattered, so close but so far.

Most days i would think 241 for 8 would beat 241 all out

Yeah you would think so, wouldn't you. Deciding the outcome on boundaries hit seems kind of arbitrary. 

They' should've just had another super over. Bit like sudden death penalty shoot out. keep going until there is a clear winner.

Yeah but most days 50 overs would be enough time for a team to score 242 runs

This has to be the most piss poor way of deciding a game since the Fudgewit-Lewis system.

It's like losing the Coastlands Cup on the number of corners conceded :'(

Should be another Super Over until it's decided, even if you end up with the fifth seamers bowling at 9 and 10

Duckworth Lewis is relatively good.  Certainly no one has been able to come up with a better system.

Yeah, I had similar thought this morning - the whole Super Over silliness was akin to going to a penalty shootout, having scores tied after the series of first five, and then deciding to give the trophy who had the most shots on goal/corners/possession, take your arbitrary pick.

Because this was just bizarre - you don't have to go through the drama of a Super Over if you're going to use a tie-breaker like this. Just apply the tie-breaker, whatever it is, at the end of the 50. But if you're going to go to the effort, then at least do it properly, even if it means that 2 or 3 overs have to be bowled.

I mean, I appreciate that no-one expected a situation like this to happen in a World Cup final but still. I guess at least the Black Caps will be a part of many a pub quiz in the coming years as the only team to not lose a Cricket World Cup final and still not take the trophy.

I don't think using wickets lost is a great tie breaking method to be honest.

Teams have 10 wickets and 11 batsmen for a reason, they are there to be completely utilized if required. 

You look at the last two balls of England's innings. We managed run outs on both. They could afford these run outs because they had wickets in hand, and resources that could still be used.

Any metric used to determine a winner in the event of a tie is going to have its flaws, and be somewhat arbitrary. Unfortunately we ended up on the wrong side of it today.

Completely agree with you on the calls to do it on wickets in hand - it is just as arbitrary as boundaries, for the exact reasons you mentioned.  England 'earnt' the right to concede those runouts from how they had performed during the rest of the innings.

Robbed, the 6 should have been a five.

An obscure rule BUT given the amount of time they took deliberating it, you would think they would have got it right. It's a world cup final, surely they must have more than a few trainspotters around to advise them on strange goings-on

Good win that

Very good, what a hiding!

Raced home from work to watch the end but no, finished early!

Phoenix win and NZ test win in the space of days. What a time to be alive!

A little bit of history on the line for the Hamilton test.

If New Zealand can manage a win, it will be the 100th Test match victory!

Test Cricket result summary by Country

Christmas bloody morning! How exciting.

I don't want to hope because I feel like I'll just be let down. But its hard not to envisage us being seriously competitive here.

What are peoples realistic expectations? I'd accept a 3-0 loss as long as we were competitive, but would just hate for us to be embarassed.

If it was the Australian team from 12 months ago, 'd say we'd be the favourites. Now, just don't want us to get embarrassed.

I am hoping we can manage a 1-1 tie.  Expecting Melbourne to be a dead flat low pillow (like two years ago) with no result after last weeks debacle.

I think Australia will win the series convincingly.

I can see us getting destroyed in Perth, considering: no warm up matches, pink ball (which the Australians are more used to), extreme heat and the time zone difference (days which go to 2am NZT) which we wouldn't of adjusted to yet.

I think the second and third test we will be competitive.

I think you're right. With Warner and Smith back in the team, and Labuschagne hitting form, I think it'll be a tall order bowling them out twice for low enough scores to win. And if the pitches do end up being spicy and low-scoring, I think that our batting line-up will be more fragile than theirs.

We'll need Williamson and Taylor to repeat the series with the bat they had last time around for us to have some sort of shot here.

Anyone going to the Boxing Day test?

Think low scoring shootouts are probably our best chance. 

Not sure I agree that our batting line up is as fragile. Outside Smith and Warner, not a huge amount to be frightened of (watch Travis Head score three centuries now). Feel like Labuschagne could be vulnerable while the rest of them are on their second or third go in the team. Feel like the drop off from Taylor/Williamson to the rest of our line up isn't as big as the drop from Smith/Warner to theirs. But maybe them being at home changes that balance.

I hope I'm wrong. But when you look at the batting outside of Williamson and Taylor, you have Raval who is basically a walking wicket right now, Latham and Watling who have both tended to struggle against quick bowling on bouncy pitches, de Grandhomme who also has a weakness against short bowling, and Nicholls who is potentially a bit of a wild card, but he's never played tests in Australia and isn't in the best of form right now (although it would be unfair to say he's in poor form). I don't think it's a coincidence that the test series losses that this team has had over the last few years (other than India, who are clearly the best test team in the world right now) came against Australia and South Africa, teams with quick bowlers who tend to bowl short of a length and get a bit of bounce.

Bowling has been all over the show so far... Missing Boult. 

How good is Wagner? We are so lucky to have him!

First hour was a bit like that but the discipline we showed after lunch was unbelievable. We did miss Trent's cutting edge but stayed in the fight really well.

We've likely lost Ferguson for this test. Could well be in test saving mode already.

think Ferguson was clearly not physically ready for this test, maybe not enough 4 day cricket - or the hard deck was too rough on him - shame - I would have like to have seen him do well. Either way the aussies wont be happy with the way they finished day 1. Long way off from us being dominated by their batting, Smith looked all out of sorts, only Manus L looked to dominate us and now he's batting with a middle order that hasn't had to do anything for ages.

Pretty good first day after being asked to field in the heat.  Lesser teams would have conceded much closer to 300 or more.