The Cricket Thread

Delighted with the victory! Great innings from Balbirnie and Sterling and cool heads at the end when England faltered. Willey's mistakes that cost 8 runs was the turning point. Was slipping away before that

 

You deserved it, I thought England’s bowling was awful tonight, and Stirling was a man possessed. Good for Irish cricket to get some qualifying points towards the World Cup too.

 

How does the qualifying work anyway? Bar the emergence of Curtis Campher it had been a very underwhelming series but tonight really gave good hope for the future, let's hope we can build on it

 

Test match tomorrow...proper cricket feste.

 

13 teams fighting to win the one group "Super League". But in reality, winning the Super League isn't the main goal. It's to finish as one of the top seven sides (when excluding India, who automatically qualify for the World Cup as hosts). Those seven sides go straight into the World Cup (with India), with the other five going into the actual World Cup qualifying competition in 2022 (along with smaller nations) to fight for the last two places.

Each of the 13 teams play 4 home series and 4 away series, between 2020 and 2022. All series consist of 3 matches. 10 points per win. 5 points per tie or no-result.

Obviously it means that each side has a different compilation of fixtures, so it's not a fair test in that respect. England's 8 series, for example, are home to Ireland, Australia (in theory next month), Sri Lanka (June 2021) and Pakistan (July 2021), and away to India (in theory in two months), South Africa (March 2021), Holland (May 2021), and Bangladesh (Oct 2021). None against NZ, WI, Zimbabwe, or Afghanistan.

Sides will play other ODI series during this time, of various lengths, but they won't have any impact on the Super League.

 

Pakistan 176-5

 

England bowling much better this morning, and the ball is moving around a bit.

 

259-5

 

Jofra on a hat trick!

 

But no.

Still, 291-8

 

Great knock by Shan Masood. Funny moment when the umpire took so long thinking about Broad’s appeal that Broad gave up and looked round to see the batsman reviewing. The look on Stuart’s face was priceless!

 

Bet we get about 200, giving them a lead. Remember England like to lose a test before they wake up.

 

I don’t think Joe Root would have wanted to be walking out to the middle after only 4 balls!

 

Especially with bowling like this!

Edit - also what a ridiculous review

 

Terrible review by Sibley, I don’t think Joe agreed with him by the body language.

We could be following on tonight at this rate!

 

Real shame that this is a 3 match series, rather than 5. Pakistan are such a good side.

 

Hugely underrated side. Their bowling attack is world class and I don't get how Babar Azam isn't included with Kohli and Smith in the elite test match batsmen bracket.

 

Pakistan are like a box of Chocolates , you never know what you’re going to get ...

 

\england are under the cosh and struggling

 

Stat alert: Naseem Shah was 3 months old when Jimmy Anderson made his test debut. Now they're playing in the same test!