This is a slight gamble, but we’re led to believe the Afghanistan v Ireland Test will be broadcast via the feed above from 4am tomorrow (Friday).
We’ll just have to see how that pans out.
Match preview
Our favourite part of the previews for this match are the form guides.
They look like this:
- Afghanistan L
- Ireland L
At least one of the two sides will improve on their stunted Test record in the coming days (and possibly both of them if it’s a draw).
Given Afghanistan’s ludicrous rate of improvement and “home” advantage, you’d think it would most likely be them. But maybe not. While they won all the T20s, the one-day series was 2-2.
The other important news is that Mohammad Nabi will be playing.
Love Nabi.
Paul Stirling vs. Mohammad Shahzad. A real clash of the titans.
Can’t wait. But will have to wait until I wake up at least.
I still think Stirling and Poynter are secretly the same person and for some clever reason they secretly go in with 10 players instead of 11.
I just asked on the Cricinfo commentary why Stirling was behind the stumps. Bit awkward.
Yes, that’s basically where I watched the end of the last ODI, which was splendid viewing as I commented at the time.
In other news – Ged’s back! As in, returned from Manchester – he hasn’t got ankylosing spondylitis – although three days in a row on the tennis court, plus several hours on a “kiddy chair” watching the musical at Hope Mill, followed by the drive back to London today has left me pretty saddle sore.
In other, other news – I have an absolute screamer of a photo article for this site – I’ll e-mail it to you in the next 24 hours or so, KC. I would be all in favour of its promotion up my pending pile, while not interfering with anyone else’s right to prior treatment of course.
I’m still waiting for a six-month-old match report to find its way to the top of the pending pile.
Six months – you were lucky! There’s still a couple of mine from 2014 and a couple more from 2017 in the pile. Plus several of six-months or so vintage.
Still, I’d love to see yours published before any more of mine, Sam. I would even request same of KC, but, as we all know, KC doesn’t do requests.
He doesn’t do requests, but he’s got to do demands. After ten years on this site, it’s time we stopped requesting and started demanding dammit.
Hey KC, where’s that report I never sent that you simply refuse to publish, you lazy bum?
It’s clear the KC commission is playing hard ball. We can’t afford to take No Match Reports off the table. If the unelected bureaucrats who run this so-called website think they can dictate to us ordinary folk, they are sorely mistaken.
The BBC’s front page declares, ‘Sterling volatile.’
Well that’s what you get in this era of T20 isn’t it. Also they’ve spelled his name wrong.
Thanks for pointing this out. It was irritating finding no mention anywhere in my current cricket subscriptions (willow+espn).
Yup, your embedded thingie is playing, KC.
Not sure I want to watch, though, based on the score.
Just watched the 8th wicket go down in the first over after lunch.
I know you don’t do requests (or demands), KC, but could you possibly find a way to turn this match into an interesting contest? Some sort of royal decree?
Your club favourite seems to be doing a job though Ged.
To my surprise that’s a much better quality of feed (and commentary and graphics and everything else really) compared to the Windies-hosted WI vs Ire matches that were free to view on youtube!
Just in case anyone is interested, here is a write up of my recent trip to Manchester, during which KC and I tried but failed to meet up. It contains some real tennis and some soccer football, which seems to have adopted a handicapping system along the lines of the one we use for real tennis.
http://ianlouisharris.com/2019/03/14/two-nights-in-manchester-12-to-14-march-2019/
I also provide some sage advice to the burghers of Manchester – they simply have to do something about the Manchester weather – otherwise the place might start to get a poor reputation in that regard.
Yup, still weird –
https://www.cricket.com.au/news/steve-smith-david-warner-team-meeting-dubai-australia-just-langer-world-cup-squad-ipl/2019-03-17
If Ireland somehow manage a victory from here and nobody says, ‘We flippin’ Murtaghed ‘em,’ there’s more wrong with this world than I thought.
Yes, on the Middlesex Till We Die (MTWD) site we nicknamed Tim “Dial M For Murtagh” very early in his time with Middlesex.
Strangely, I dug out an old lost match report from the summer of 2007 which uses the nickname Dial M for Tim Murtagh and upped it Ogblog just the other week:
http://ianlouisharris.com/2007/07/03/lizzie-and-the-oiks-middlesex-break-surrey-jinx-an-mtwd-lost-masterpiece-by-lizzie-j-3-july-2007/
MTWD scraped most of it as a memory/editorial piece which remains live.
2007 was Tim’s first season with Middlesex and it is interesting to see Lizzie, as early as that July, using the nickname Dial M with so much familiarity it didn’t even need writing out in full. We must have started using the term on the message board early that season.