England Qualify!

Good evening fellow travellers, how are your nerves? Are you as relieved as me? Australia, for the first time the their history, did England a solid and beat Scotland. The thistles took them all the way though!

Australia won the toss and put Scotland into bat in St Lucia, no doubt expecting to deal with the Scots the same way they dealt with Namibia.

On the night it didn’t work out like that. George Munsey, Brandon McMullen and Richie Berrington all scored well and helped The Thistles to a very competitive 180……..English hearts were breaking.

Australia won’t have been overly concerned about chasing that down, they don’t have an ounce of humility after all. Again though, things didn’t go quite to plan. David Warner was out for just 1, Mitchel Marsh just 8 and the Big Show, Glenn Maxwell for just 11. English hearts were now calling for defibrillators!

The Ausssies are world Test and ODI champions for a reason though. Travis Head and Marcus Stoinis were able to steady the ship with a 68 and 59 respectively to get Australia to 186 with just 2 balls remaining! After Josh Hazlewoods comments about throwing the game, if AUS had of lost the match by such fine margins, their would have been hell on!

Australia were already through to the super 8’s so they didn’t have too much on this one. Scotland on the other hand had a real chance of qualification and they came within a couple of fielding errors, a miss timed shot or 2 and just 6 runs of doing it. Scotland have looked great this World Cup and I genuinely hope they get some game time against the big nations from the back of it.

England are through, England are through……….England are through!

Theres 2 more days of the first round and 2nd qualifying spot in group D is still undecided. Still in the race are Bangladesh and Netherlands with BNG having the points advantage as things stand.

I will, as ever, bring you all the action when it happens.

Until then, all the best.

Nick