Yes, but I figured that their relatively week innings at bat spelled doom for them. Somehow they pulled it off.
Cynical me has thought that England has been over praised through out the tournament so I am delighted to see this.
Catching up to what I missed this morning while I was sleeping:
Afghanistan held India to 224 runs in 50 overs. Now we’ll see if they can beat them after the innings break.
Meanwhile, West Indies got a Kiwi out on the first ball of the game. 2 outs in that first over, and 10 runs given away! What a crazy start to the game just reading the descriptions of it. Things seem to have settled down though. 32/2 after 11 overs. West Indies have had 3 maiden overs already, which are pretty rare in cricket these days. This could be another low scoring thriller in the works.
New Zealand recovered nicely after that first over. I think they’ve got this one.
Afghanistan were cruising along, but lost a key wicket in the last over. It’s 67/2 right now, they need to keep the wickets and just keep a slow trickle of runs coming.
Uh-oh. Two wickets fell back to back for Afghanistan. Now their quest is looking really shaky. They’re on the precipice. Someone needs to come out and stabilize them and get some runs, or it’s over. 107/4 right now.
Afghanistan need 40 runs off the remaining 30 balls. Run rate of 8. Definitely makeable, but they only have 4 wickets in hand. I wonder how good their deeper batsmen are.
Brathwaite had no right to take the game that deep. Amazing knock.
Surely Southee will get a chance against Pakistan in place of Henry. That death bowling was woeful.
For teams like Pakistan, Bangladesh and Sri Lanka to have a shot at the semi-finals, England would have to go down today to Australia. In the Aussie innings, they managed 285/7. Against any other team, England have this, but against Australia, I’d like to think the Aussies will make this pretty hard for England to reach.
At the beginning it looked like Australia will make 350 so to get them down to 285 is good. I think England will do this, first 10 overs is vital.
Oh crap…
Need Root to be on top form
Root’s gone, in trouble now
5 wickets down now.
143/5, half way there after 31.3 overs. 143 runs to go. England is definitely on pace to win if they can keep the wickets.
Fat chance, can’t see us making the last 4 with India and New Zealand left
The extent to which England rely on Jason Roy’s opening bat has been exposed badly in the past 2 games. Ben Stokes’ application and grit is about the only positive to be taken from them.
Well, the match we’ve been talking about is finally here. Pak vs NZ. NZ chose to bat first, since Pakistan is terrible at chasing, and even though Pakistan got Guptill out early, Williamson is now out there. I feel like he will be the key man of the match. Important for Pakistan to get him out before he does too much damage, important for New Zealand that he sticks around and does as much damage as possible.
Edit: Munroe out early as well. But Williamson is still out there.
Edit2: Taylor out now as well. 38/3. But Williamson is still out there.
Edit3: Latham out now. 46/4.
Well, after Williamson was out, NZ actually accelerated in their scoring since then, because of de Grandhomme.