Good evening once again fellow travellers! I hope you avoided the rain today, it’s certainly been a moist one in glorious Yorkshire.
Today has been a triple header over in West Indies and USA so let’s get straight into it!
The Guyana National Stadium hosted Afghanistan Vs Uganda in the early game today. Uganda won the toss and opted to field first.
This is Uganda’s first appearance in any ICC World Cup and although the Cranes earned the spot in the competition by way of the Africa Qualifier, they are very much the underdogs in the group. Afghanistan have spent much of the last two decades as the underdogs, as far as I’m concerned though, these days the men from the Northwest Frontier should be considered amongst the chasing pack in this World Cup.
Uganda’s lack of experience at this level perhaps was revealed by opting to field first. If a was advising Uganda’s Skipper Brian Masaba I would have suggested batting first, trying to score some runs and putting Afghanistan under some score board pressure. What Uganda didn’t want was for AFG to get a big first innings score and take the game away from them.…….any guesses what happened?
Afghanistan made a blistering start, opening batsmen Rahmanullah Gurbaz and Ibrahim Zadran scored 76 and 70 respectively achieving 66 runs in their power play and 100 in their first 10 overs. Gurbaz is a great batter to watch, his ability to pick lengths, probably due to being a wicketkeeper, makes for crisp striking from ball one. With able assistance from their mid order Afghanistan posted a more than respectable 183 for 5. Uganda did have some success with the ball, Captain Brian Mabasa looked particularly sharp picking up 2 wickets, including Zadran.
The Cranes I’m sad to say, didn’t stand tall during their batting innings, in fact, they were nowhere to be seen. With a combination of rapid bowling from player of the match Fazalhaq Farooqi and inexperience from Uganda’s batters, this was all rapped up in 16 overs with Uganda being bowled out for 58.
Unfortunately for Uganda we have seen our first real drubbing of the competition with Afghanistan taking the points. I will say for the Cricket Cranes though, every team starts somewhere and every team have found themselves as underdogs at one point or another. The game, famously, is long. I’m looking forward to seeing Uganda play it again.
It’s raining, but theres not a cloud in the sky, it must be tears from English eyes………..
Match 2 today is England Vs Scotland and there certainly are clouds in the sky! Scotland somehow have taken their home conditions with them to Barbados.
Scotland won the toss and opted to bat first. As I’ve said before I think that’s the smart move for the smaller team in the match, no disrespect to our northern cousins. After a 1 hour rain delay the national Anthems were sung with God save the King and Flower of Scotland reverbing below unsettled skies.
Scotland, not a team to be taken lightly came out swinging in their power play, with Munsey and Jones hitting 48 between them. Unfortunately, those unsettled skies opened up again and as I type the game is currently delayed with Scotland on 52 for no wicket after 6.2 overs.
2 hours later the Barbadian rain has finally blown over and they’re back on! The match has been shortened to 10 overs per side. Scotland managed 90 in their last 3.4 which, due to the dark magic of Duckworth–Lewis–Stern leaves England needing 109 in our 10 overs. It’s raining again.
Well official and rather inevitable news from Barbados, match abandoned. The ground staff gave it a bloody good go but the weather was relentless.
Scotland will be disappointed with an abandonment, they batted really nicely for their 90, all the pressure was on England to get over the line. Longterm for England it makes things harder. England will have been banking on 2 points from this game. A no result means they will likely need to win the rest of their group games to qualify, meaning, no buffer for the Australia game.
If I didn’t know better I’d think Scotland did it on purpose!
The last match of day 3 was between Netherlands and Nepal. This game is being hosted by The Grand Priory Stadium, Texas but looking at the crowd you’d think it was being played in Kathmandu! Nepal cricket fans are, well, fanatics and the terraces are a sea of Nepalese blue!
Netherlands won the toss and put the Nepalese Rhinos into bat. I think that was a solid plan from the orange army, Nepal are red hot keen cricketers but they are probably a level or 2 below the Dutch and just as Netherlands were expecting, their bowling attack went through the Rhinos top order like a dose of salts. Nepal’s top 3 batters all got out cheaply playing expansive shots. Rohit Paudel entertained the crowd with a spirited 35. That and a cameo or 2 from his colleagues, Nepal made it to a fun filled if a little low 106 all out.
The men in orange, with their proud history of rolling over teams such as England and South Africa, will fancy this chase. With all the time in the world to get the runs, they didn’t have to take any chances either. Nepal started bowling beautifully though, defending their small total with their lives! Getting the early wicket of Micheal Levitt and cramping Netherlands run scoring, needless to say, the crowd believed!
Alas for the Nepalese contingent on the terraces, a good 54 from Max O’Dowd plus some other contributions got the plucky Dutch to 109/4. It took them 18 overs though, not quite the convincing performance they would have been hoping for. As for Nepal, I bloody love them!
Another day full of action and not an insignificant amount of rain done.
Tomorrow we go again and it’s a headline day! At 3.30pm India will be kicking off their campaign against Ireland at the Nassau County International Cricket Stadium in New York. India get a massive following wherever they go and everyone in New York thinks they’re Irish so the atmosphere should be electric.
Until then, thanks for reading.
All the best,
Nick
All The Cricket 
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