A second Kane Williamson would have been handy

1. I suppose you could argue that getting through the last ball of a limited overs game with New Zealand still shy of the target is, in its own way, a dismissal.

   After all, Kane Williamson had to walk off defeated at that juncture.

   Two weeks in a row we’ve had some very exciting early morning cricket to watch. I almost warm to the 50 over game in such circumstances.

   In any case, I’m sure I read somewhere that the 50 over game is England’s absolute top priority between now and 14 July 2019.

   1. After all, ODIs are the pinnacle of cricket – though they were also only a margin of 5 runs away from being an obsolete format that falls between two stools.

2. Fuck this shit. Every time a Big Three team defeats a team THAT WON’T PLAY ANOTHER MATCH TOGETHER FOR SEVEN MONTHS AFTER THIS SERIES ENDS BECAUSE THEIR BOARD NEEDS TO GIVE ITS PLAYERS EVERY OPPORTUNITY TO EARN MONEY ELSEWHERE it’s a cause to be very, very angry.

   Also, I’m not pleased with the middle order and Santner’s fluke dismissal did not help. Go ahead and gloat England fans, I hate you and your big money system and big money clout. I hope you fall in a snow bank.

   1. OK then, seeing as you’re being (seemingly non-ironically) rude even though nobody seemed to be gloating on here: ha ha, the England cricket team has beaten the New Zealand cricket team twice since the last time it lost to them. So there!

      1. There’s a curious pattern I’ve noticed within New Zealand cricket:

         The players are lovely. Self-effacing, witty, generally looking to play the game in a good spirit. They’re my second-favourite team, and would be my favourite if I were neutral.

         But the fans have a chip on their shoulder that could be seen from orbit.

      2. I retract the gloat. Sorry. I just haven’t cried over a Blackcaps loss in a while. Probably stems from meeting Kane, and finding him a delightful young man, and therefore being more sad and more angry over this loss than usual. I heard he didn’t shake hands afterwards, and that huge as he’s not exactly the V-Rat or Smudge.

   2. Pretty much just puddles in London now.

      Daisy and I have hopes of being able to play (modern. outdoor) tennis again tomorrow morning.

      No gloating here and I detected none from KC either. It was a very close match – it could easily have gone either way – as it happens it went England’s way.

3. Don’t go slagging off other Blackcaps fans, who are generally a nice bunch. I’m just a bitch. And unless you’ve ever cried over an England loss (and I bet you haven’t, bloke and all that) you won’t understand. And I’ve every right to be angry about the stuff most non-Big 3 fans are furious about.

   1. It isn’t very often that big cricket matches go to the wire, such that emotions spill over at the very last ball. Usually there is quite a bit of time to come to terms with the fact that one’s team will almost certainly lose.

      For example, had England lost the 2005 Edgbaston test, which, at 9 down, could have gone either way right down to the deciding ball, I’m pretty sure I and many other England fans would have cried. It took Nigel “Father Barry” White several days before he was able to spake after that victory – goodness knows how long he would have plumbed the depths if England had lost. Even Chas (hardly one of life’s lost for words types) could barely spake on the phone a few hours later.

      As for Kane Williamson’s behaviour at the conclusion of today’s/yesterday’s match, I have absolutely no problem with it. He was clearly overcome with emotion at the end – Daisy reckons that he was crying – but as soon as he gathered himself, Williamson started shaking hands with the England players. Top bloke – respected and liked pretty much universally in world cricket.

      My experience of Kiwi supporters at matches has generally been a very good one – that includes 1999 when the Kiwis had every right to gloat but on the whole didn’t. I have come across the odd idiot in the crowd – but that applies to fans from all the major cricketing nations.

      You’re among friends here, Jayne – no need to fret about sounding off in the heat of the moment.

4. Also, after a tough loss, in which your performance, even though on the losing side, should have earned you MOTM, and in which the in form batsman most likely to help you chase fell to a fluke dismissal, rank Full Member International Captains in order from most to least likely to leave the field without shaking hands. Makes you think, doesn’t it?

   1. With three formats, split captaincies and players sitting out series left, right and centre, the main thing it makes us think is how unbelievably time-consuming it would be to even put together the list of full member international captains. Half the time we have no idea who’s captain of a team in any given format.

      Unless you’re calling Steve Smith a ‘full member’, in which case we get where you’re coming from.

      1. Thanks for making me smile, Alex. ????

      2. Memo to self, emojis don’t work here.

      3. They work for simple folk like me 😉

5. y’know, everyone’s saying that england bowled well in the last few overs, but there were a whole bunch of deliveries in there that I could picture someone like Kohli smashing all over the place. KW doesn’t have that firepower. point is, I don’t think england should be patting themselves on the back(s) too vigorously for the bowling towards the end (well it won them a match, but… what was I saying? eh, forget it.

6. I doubt if there is back-patting going on by England – I suspect they feel they dodged a bullet almost as much by luck as by judgement.

   One other point that none of us has yet made is how often we get really exciting one day matches on pitches that offer a bit to the bowlers and therefore yield a low (by today’s standards) par score between say 225 and 275.

   1. …and yet how rarely the authorities serve up such pitches, is what I really meant to say!

   2. Interesting that lots of people were slagging off the pitch. Yet if you judge a pitch by “does it produce a really tense, exciting game of cricket?” then this one was a stonker.

      1. The invariable tsking about pitches of this sort by the commentators, commentators I otherwise enjoy, irks me.

         I don’t care for cricket grounds converging on a single set of playing conditions, and I particularly don’t care for those conditions being rated on how suited they are for batting practice. But this has all been said elsewhere.

7. I think technically Nasser Hussein WAS correct in that the game did continue to not be over whilst Kane was in. The fact that it was still a contest to the last ball, after which he was no longer batting so technically ‘out’, backs up his statement. I’m not just saying this because he looks like Putin with his shirt off and I’m a Russian BOT

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