Finch brought himself on to bowl just to sort out the overs for the other bowlers and accidentally took a wicket.
Pakistan being a parody of themselves in this innings.
12:06 : I don’t know whether Pakistan are looking at the bigger picture. Hassan needs to restrain himself. He has done a lot of damage in the last few overs he just has to be sensible. - Ramiz Raja
12:07 : [H]ere is that mistake, a short ball from Kane Richardson that is too close to [Hassan’s] body but he can’t resist, trying to pull it away and sending it high off the top edge. - Hassan c Khawaja b Richardson 32
Timing!
Pakistan are currently Pakistanning themsevles back into the game with some astonishing power from Wahab Riaz, before no doubt Pakistanning themselves back out of the game with something ludicrous like a run out where only one batsman runs or perhaps #11 Shaheen Afridi cutting a beauty through off for four and then overbalancing and falling back onto his own stumps.
*Edit - just clicked moss_icon’s link and saw someone else suggest a silly run out would be peak Pakistan at this point.
There’s the run out. A pretty decent one in the end from Maxwell, but I’m glad Pakistan squeezed it in, all the same.
Pakistan started poorly, recovered, wobbled and threw the game away… recovered from that to a point where it felt like they had a genuine chance and then immediately lost their final three wickets for two runs.
How very Pakistan of them.
Is anyone saying (yet) that this World Cup is fast becoming a disaster due to rain? It can hardly be fair for teams to advance basically because they won the lottery on getting a match against the right team on a day that didn’t rain. To say nothing of the impact on ticket and broadcast revenue. Or is this sort of thing normal for Cricket World Cups?
This weather isn’t really normal for June in the UK, despite the regular British griping. :) Some places have had twice their average June monthly rainfall in a week. Definitely sucks for the cricket: we should be getting sunny spells, a few showers, occasional days of rain.
The organisers knew the risks coming in though: surely the tournament could have been arranged with reserve days. Might not have saved every match with this weather, but would have been better.
I do remember a recent international tournament arranged in the subcontinent for monsoon season, so this is hardly an unprecedented level of poor planning, sadly.
Good news is we should be able to have play, albeit with breaks for showers, for at least the next few days.
Yes, I was surprised to learn there was no accommodation for rescheduling rained-out matches at all. And someone must be taking a huge hit on broadcast revenues, etc.
Last Summer we didn’t have any rain from the last week in May to the first week in September. Anyway, I think the forecast is picking up for next week, thankfully.
Considering that this tournament is taking longer than the last one and has less teams I bet having rain out days is a problem the organisers didn’t want to deal with.
Liam Plunkett, rarely flashy, but always doing something important. Fair play to the lad. England all over em right now.
Front line strike bowler Joe Root doing the damage
England with a great bowling performance, set 213 to win. West Indies will need something incredible to win this.
It’s a good job the bowlers came through because England may only have nine batsmen to chase that total.
Chris Woakes, England’s number 3 batsman there.
Today Australia’s 334 seems to me like it will be enough to beat Sri Lanka. But I’m surprised to see that Sri Lanka’s opening batsmen are still in there. 106 runs after 13 overs. Obviously if it keeps going at this rate, Sri Lanka wins. But Australia has some great bowlers. I don’t think Sri Lanka will get there.
It would shake things up nicely if they did though. Come on Sri Lankan opening batsmen! Stay in there for a long time, make this game really exciting.
Well, they do have a shot here.
It’s a shame that Karunaratne didn’t get his Century. Out at 97. Ouch.
And now, all the wickets are falling. ALL OF THEM.