Alphabet Man Posted April 22, 2007 Share Posted April 22, 2007 After however many days, weeks, months its been, the World Cup is finally up to Semi-Final stage.Oh and the interest levels are amazing, the profile of Cricket has grown massively with the new format of taking ages and playing a game a day, and waiting a week between games, in front of crowds that are lower than what you'd get to a pub-teams' basketball match on thursday nights.Okay I'm talking crap.Semi Final 1:Sri Lanka (2) v New Zealand (3) on TuesdaySemi Final 2:Australia (1) v South Africa (4) on WednesdayFinal is on Saturday.Dare I say it, I've been saying it since day one of this tournament, Australia will clearly win. C'mon we just beat NZ by 215runs, smashed Sth Africa and Sri Lanka were too scared to play there best team against us. We have smashed everyone. Not just the minnows in Scotland, Netherlands, Ireland and Bangladesh but Test teams in England, Windies and the three teams i mentioned before.Australia v New Zealand final would be good. I can see it happening.Brian Lara retired last night. He is a great of the game. But not exactly a team player. All in it for himself. But a great player, scored 400 one innings, the all-time highest Test score. twitter.com/thebrainofMatt Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Alphabet Man Posted April 28, 2007 Author Share Posted April 28, 2007 Three time world champions Australia are going for a hatrick of titles later tonight against 1996 champions Sri Lanka, who coincidently beat Australia that day. twitter.com/thebrainofMatt Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
NYBadshah1 Posted April 28, 2007 Share Posted April 28, 2007 That ending was pathetic. ICC doesn't know how to run a damn sport. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
DEAD! Posted April 29, 2007 Share Posted April 29, 2007 That ending was pathetic. ICC doesn't know how to run a damn sport.They don't know how to run the biggest tournament in their sport. The biggest farce of the concept is the Super 8 round. Totally unnecessary. I saw, I came, I left. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
BB61 Posted April 29, 2007 Share Posted April 29, 2007 That ending was pathetic. ICC doesn't know how to run a damn sport.They don't know how to run the biggest tournament in their sport. The biggest farce of the concept is the Super 8 round. Totally unnecessary.I listened to most of the match this afternoon on Cricket World Radio, which was basically two guys sitting in a studio (if that) in England giving their unofficial commentary on it. The sentiment of myself and those who were writing in was that it may be better served if they go to a knock-out second phase similar to Soccer and Rugby instead of the Super 8.While I don't have too much of an issue with the Super 8 aside from the fact that like one of the commentators said, you've come to the final and you've seen this match before in the previous phase, this year was spaced out too much. It took them a month to play the Super 8, when it should've taken two weeks.I also think that given the gravity of the match, they should've just played 50 overs a side and then play anything left over on Sunday instead of resorting to a shortened game and that stupid Duckworth/Lewis method. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Alphabet Man Posted April 29, 2007 Author Share Posted April 29, 2007 When the Sri Lankan player were offered bad light, they shook hand with the umpires. That is why the Australians thought it was over. That is when it should have been over. They conceeded the match.But I'm glad that Sri Lanka came out and batted for 3 overs even though they couldn't pick up the ball. That's why we has Symonds and Clarke bowling, spin bowlers have shorter run up and can get through the overs quickly. And bloody umpire Darr calls a wide when the players don't want to be out there. Because there is no bad light rule in one-day cricket meant that they had to come back tomorrow. Thank god they didn't.How good was Gilchrist, , 149, pretty good.Yeh the tournament was drawn out a fair bit. I don't think they'd do the same thing next time, although it is in the sub continent (India, Pakistan, Sri Lanka and Bangladesh) so the money might be a major attraction to keeping the format.We deserved it. 29 World Cup matches unbeaten, since early stages of the 1999 tournament.An interesting stat: Australia bowled out every team they played except the shortened games against Bangladesh (20overs) and Sri Lanka (36). And only 8 players were needed to bat, (the seven plus Brad Hodge who is bloody unlucky to not be in the first XI - he hit 90 and 120 in his two hits). That and Hussey hardly batted. We won it from the top of the order with Hayden, Gilchrist and Ponting getting good starts and keeping wickets in hand.Glenn McGrath, a worthy man-of-the-tournament in his last match of cricket. That ending was pathetic. ICC doesn't know how to run a damn sport.They don't know how to run the biggest tournament in their sport. The biggest farce of the concept is the Super 8 round. Totally unnecessary.I listened to most of the match this afternoon on Cricket World Radio, which was basically two guys sitting in a studio (if that) in England giving their unofficial commentary on it. The sentiment of myself and those who were writing in was that it may be better served if they go to a knock-out second phase similar to Soccer and Rugby instead of the Super 8.While I don't have too much of an issue with the Super 8 aside from the fact that like one of the commentators said, you've come to the final and you've seen this match before in the previous phase, this year was spaced out too much. It took them a month to play the Super 8, when it should've taken two weeks.I also think that given the gravity of the match, they should've just played 50 overs a side and then play anything left over on Sunday instead of resorting to a shortened game and that stupid Duckworth/Lewis method.But it's the final, I would argue it'd take away the significance of it. Although if they did shorten it to a reasonable time frame, it would have had perfect weather.Those last overs were like hell for the batsmen. The stump cam showed how dark it was and how it was impossible almost to pick up the ball in flight. If it weren't for Australia in yellow, the crowd wouldnt have seen much. twitter.com/thebrainofMatt Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jr79 Posted April 30, 2007 Share Posted April 30, 2007 I also think that given the gravity of the match, they should've just played 50 overs a side and then play anything left over on Sunday instead of resorting to a shortened game and that stupid Duckworth/Lewis method.No diss'ing the Duckworth/Lewis method. It's actually quite brilliant at setting fair targets in rain-shortened games even if it takes 3 calculators, slide rule and map of the northern skies to figure it out. If you want stupid see any of the weird and wonderful methods used previously. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
DEAD! Posted April 30, 2007 Share Posted April 30, 2007 I also think that given the gravity of the match, they should've just played 50 overs a side and then play anything left over on Sunday instead of resorting to a shortened game and that stupid Duckworth/Lewis method.No diss'ing the Duckworth/Lewis method. It's actually quite brilliant at setting fair targets in rain-shortened games even if it takes 3 calculators, slide rule and map of the northern skies to figure it out. If you want stupid see any of the weird and wonderful methods used previously.Forget the slide rule, the Vernier caliper is much more useful... well to me anyways... I saw, I came, I left. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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