Super 8’s here we come!

All the group games have now been played and the tournament moves through to round 2, the super 8’s. This stage is a another league system with 2 groups of 4. The team’s finishing 1 and 2 in each group will then progress to the semi finals. Before that, let’s have one last look at, what has been a genuinely exciting opening round of this World Cup.

This is the first time in as long as I can remember that New Zealand haven’t progressed to at least the semifinals in a World Cup. Their opening match was against Afghanistan who spanked them by 86 runs and decimated the Black Caps NRR. NZ also lost their second game against Windies, after that, due to other victories around them, their World Cup was over.

The games still had to be played though and they did pick up a good win against Uganda and again against Papau New Guinea yesterday, once it had stopped raining.

For PNG, yesterday’s heavy defeat against NZ made it 4 losses out of 4 from the men from the South Sea’s. Despite the results card, they had their moments. PNG took Uganda and more impressively Windies right to the line. I’m sure we’ll see them back in the world stage again.

No need to dwell to much on this one, other then to say New Zealand Supremo Trent Boult announced before the game that this would be the last time he would represent NZ in a World Cup. He stopped short of announcing his international retirement completely. if it was the last time he pulls on a black cap, it was a pleasure. All The Cricket wish Trent all the luck in the franchise tournaments to come.

The very last game of the group stage was between co-host West Indies and Afghanistan. Both teams had already qualified with 3 wins each, so this game would decide the leader of the group and an unbeaten streak to this point. Momentum really matters in tournament cricket so both teams will have wanted to finish this stage with a win and roar into the supers!

Being played at the Daren Sammy Cricket Stadium on St Lucia, Afghanistan won the toss and Elected to field. For my money this is the Afghans first mistake of the competition, I would never let Windies bat first if I could help it, especially not at home.

My predictions haven’t always been accurate over the course of this blog but I got this one right. Windies bludgeon the ball all over the Daren Sammy and scored 218 runs, a mammoth score by the standards of this World Cup. My namesake and bronze star Yorkshireman Nicky Pooran topped scored, getting run out just a brace short of a ton on 98.

The men from the Northwest Frontier had a big ask ahead of them, needing everything to fire at once just like it had earlier in the tournament. Unfortunately for fans of the Afghans, it didn’t happen today. Gurbaz, unusually for him, miss read a ball from Hosien and was caught out for a duck. Zadran did slightly better, getting to 38 and there were 1 or 2 other small contributions. Chasing such a large target it was a step too far for the Afghans today, getting bowled out for 114, they had to go for it.

There are 2 schools of thought when it comes to a loss like that. I’ve already mentioned momentum, which I believe is a real factor. The other is that it’s very unusual for a team to go a whole competition without losing a game and if you are going to lose one, better a dead rubber at the end of the group stage than say, the semifinal. This could be a blessing in disguise for Afghanistan.

The group stage in this World Cup has been really interesting due to the addition of the extra associate teams, as we thought it would be. Some, like the Bald Eagles, have flown. USA qualifying is brilliant and T here have been other note worthy performances. Bangladesh, although a test nation, bettered most pundits expectations to get through. Afghanistan, until their glitch this morning, have looked great. Canada were contenders right till the end. Scotland had a great run and only just missed out to England. Uganda, despite coming from nowhere picked up their first World Cup victory and Nepal didn’t win anything but they’re bloody brilliant!

Elsewhere though, there are some questions to be answered. South Africa won all of their games but none of them convincingly, they will need to find better form in the supers. Pakistan had a shocking tournament by their standards, make no mistake about it, they should have got out of their group. Ireland finished bottom of their group, below Canada and USA, the men from the Emerald Isle will have expected better from themselves. Namibia and Netherlands will have both expected to be more competitive and Sri Lanka, as I said yesterday, should have done much better considering the group they were in.

That brings us to England. The important thing is that we’ve qualified, doing it the hard way as ever. England’s first game against Scotland was rained off after the first Innings. We’ll never know what could have happened in that game but it’s fair to say England were under the cloche, a win wasn’t guaranteed. What we do know for sure is that we were well beaten by Australia and then we laid down heavy victories over Oman and Namibia.

I mean no disrespect to the 2 latter teams (everyone knows I love Namibia) but England, on a bad day ought to be beating those nations. Australia, on their day can beat us convincingly but it’s not Barmy bias to say that on our day, England can beat AUS convincingly. The truth is, the games we’ve played so far haven’t told us much about the form England are in. The supers 8’s, I’m sure will prove good proofing water.

With that, I’ll sign off for today. The first game in the Supers is USA Vs South Africa tomorrow afternoon. I’ll be back tomorrow!

Until then, all the best.

Nick