Donut cricket
Well I was totally barking up the wrong tree in my last post, and it never feels better than it does to be wrong in your pessimism. New Zealand defeated Sri Lanka by a good 38 runs and showed that they still know how to play the game better than most.
It was a classic victory in the Black Caps mould – a great top-order partnership, a wagging tail, tight bowling and good fielding. It even fitted in a couple of other NZ signatures with a batting collapse and a saving innings by Vettori, creating a donut shaped innings with a 12-over, 6-wicket, 3-RPO hole in the middle.
I am forced to reconsider my negative assessment in my previous post.
This was incidentally the 18th time we have scored over 300 runs setting a total and we have successfully defended every time we have scored this high. That is an awesome record that no other country can match.
To make it to the semis, we have to beat England (or tie or share a no-result). We’re currently level on points with Sri Lanka but so far behind on net run rate that we can’t overtake them except on points. We have had little trouble with England in ODIs recently, but they are the form team of the competition.
And we should so play Jesse Ryder. He’s awesome when he’s injured.
Lawrence Arabia (a cricket fan!):
September 29th, 2009 at 11:58 am
And we should so play Jesse Ryder. He’s awesome when he’s injured.
Totally agree, especially since the batting looks thin. Imagine Gareth Hopkins playing a blinder tomorrow to take us to the semis..now that would really throw our pessimism out of the window!
September 29th, 2009 at 1:06 pm
I went and got the LA album – there’s some neat tunes on there, made even better as he’s a Cricket fan – he did the awesome Harry tribute on Deadball.