Good evening sports fans, I hope all’s well! As I’m sure you noticed I didn’t manage to get a blog out yesterday, I was busy at my day job running a beer event at Mallinsons Brewing Company, we did have a very special beer available though!
With 4 games yesterday and 3 today, there’s too much action to put in one blog and I don’t want to get behind on my day by day system, so I’m just going to concentrate on a few headline fixtures.
We’re going to have a look at New Zealand Vs Afghanistan first. Orthodox cricket thinking would put perennial finalist New Zealand on top in this fixture and I can understand why. NZ are the far more established team and are always there or there abouts. That said, I have been recently advancing the theory that Afghanistan are a team that should be taken seriously and T20 is the Afghans format.
New Zealand won the toss and put Afghanistan into bat. Afghan teams of old have had a habit of losing their shape and totally falling apart after losing a couple of wickets, I fear the black caps haven’t been doing their homework, this isn’t a Afghan team of old. Rahmanullah Gurbaz came out and scored another exciting 80 from 56 balls. With able assistance from Zadran and Omarzai Afghanistan posted 159 for 6.
New Zealand will have felt that was an attainable score in the Guyana sunshine. Finn Allen stepped up dressed all in black, like Jonny Cash with a cricket bat. Allen might well have been batting with a 6 string for all the good it did him; he was out first ball. Things didn’t get any better from there, Fazalhaq Farooqi and Rashid Khan sliced through the black caps batters like a sharp knife through a Sauvignon blanc grape vine. With 8 wickets between them Farooqi and Khan had the mighty black caps all out for just 75 runs leaving a lot of questions being asked in Wellington.
Rahmanullah Gurbaz and Fazalhaq Farooqi are for my money the two best players in the world at this moment and Rashid Khan remains near the very top of world cricket. The men from the northwest frontier keep marching on.
One bonus of working all day yesterday is that I was saved from putting myself through the great pain and shame of watching Australia take England to pieces. The All The Cricket team were periodically checking the scores and it made for sobering reading, bare in mind I was working at a beer festival.
Australia got a score of 201, which, in what has so far been a low scoring World Cup was a substantial ask for England. Things started fairly positively with a 37 and 42 from Phil Salt and Jos Butler, however they weren’t able to replicate AUS innings of steady batting down the order. Once Salt and Buttler were dismissed the rest of England’s batters couldn’t get going and Australia’s attack were too strong for us, from our 20 overs we managed only 165. This disappointing result leaves England, the defending T20 champions, unable to determine their own fate. Jos Buttler’s men need to win their last 2 games and frankly if they don’t they don’t deserve to qualify (no disrespect intended to Namibia and Oman). They also need Scotland not to gain anymore points, I’m not sure how likely our Hibernian brethren are to do us any favours. Oh to be an English cricket fan.
It’s not “just cricket”, it never is, but today’s big game really isn’t “just cricket”. Just concluded in New York, India Vs Pakistan. For political reasons that I will leave to better commentators than me to explain, India and Pakistan don’t play each other in regular series like every other cricketing nation. The only time these two Goliath’s of world cricket meet is at tournaments. For a cricket fan like me India and Pakistan going at it is always a headline fixture because it happens so infrequently. This game seemed to have special reverence though because of the circumstances. As we know the USA are co-hosts of this World Cup, the USA cricket authorities have built a huge cricket stadium in New York State just outside Manhattan and it was all done, really, for this match. Both nation’s diaspora are huge in New York and both team’s fans are free to travel, the atmosphere at the Nassau County International Cricket Stadium was electric with mixed Indian and Pakistan fans and that almost never happens!
The match itself was a low scoring thriller with Pakistan feeling to have the grip hand on the game. Winning the toss and putting India in, the falcons took steady wickets and restricted India to a very, very gettable 120. Rishabh Pant being the only Indian batter to get a true score of 42.
Needing only a run a ball Pakistan looked confident of achieving a famous victory over their closest rivals on the second biggest stage of them all, New York. (Glorious Headingley is the biggest stage of them all!). Unfortunately for the Falcons and Falcon fans world wide, of which I class myself, India with their embarrassment of riches did what India do. Jasprit Bumrah bowled beautifully, picking up 3 wickets. With the discipline, fitness and attack that India are famous for they squeezed Pakistan and defended their low total like their careers depended on it and in a match like this, that wouldn’t be far from the truth.
India picked up the points and it’s far too early in the competition for Rohit Sharma’s men to drop a game, they’ll wait until it really matters to do that.
As for Pakistan, they find themselves in a very similar situation as my other main team England, in need of points and results to go their way………maybe I’m the problem?
As I said earlier there has been loads of exciting cricket over the last couple of days, if I haven’t spoken on your favourite team, please forgive me. All things being equal my All The Cricket dailies should be back on track now and I look forward to bringing you the action.
Until then, thanks for reading.
All the best,
Nick
All The Cricket 
Leave a comment