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Australia obliterated India, England battered the Windies and all for nought. World Cup pressure is not yet here and in fact probably won’t be here until the 18th of March when the quarter finals finally get underway.

Even so, these were striking results. England dismissed the Windies for 122 and then lost only one wicket in chasing that down. Australia made 371 with that wonderfully ludicrous man, Glenn Maxwell, making 122 off 57 balls.

Mohammad Hafeez is out of the World Cup

Told you he was worth watching. His departure gave rise to a great swathe of articles which can best be summed up as:

“Pakistan might replace Mohammad Hafeez with Saeed Ajmal now that the latter has been cleared to bowl again. Oh no, wait, they’ve replaced him with Nasir Jamshed. Well let’s do the Ajmal article anyway because it’s still possible that he might feature in the World Cup if someone else gets injured.”

This is poor journalism. The correct story to publish would of course be one entitled: “Pakistan’s toast is dry and the larder is empty. To the jam shed!”

Steve Harmison is the new manager of Ashington FC

Weird, but good luck to him.

Ashington play in the Northern League Division One. To put that into universally-understandable terms, that’s two leagues below Witton Albion.

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17 comments

  1. Also Zimbabwe were looking relatively strong against NZ prior to the rain, and Bangladesh had Pakistan on the ropes.

    Pakistan are now recovering, and Zimbabwe wouldn’t have been able to chase 180, but these are incidental details.

  2. Half time in the big Ashington FC Vs Sunderland Ryhope Community Association FC match, Ashington losing 2-0. Kyle Barnard and Kyle Downey are walking off with Kyle Oliver.

    Kyle: The gaffer doesn’t look pleased.

    Kyle: Oh fuck, he’s got his England cricket cap out.

    Kyle: Shit, that means another lecture about the spirit of 2005.

    Kyle: How many times can one man talk about one ball?

    Kyle: More than a hundred, apparently.

    Kyle: I read somewhere that it wasn’t even out.

    Kyle: Don’t say that to the gaffer, or he’ll start crying again.

    Kyle: Anyway, the lesson seems to be that we need to let them get to 18-0 before starting our comeback, because that makes it better.

    Kyle: Yes, and if he persists with this tactic of only having three men outside the centre circle that’s going to happen more often than not.

  3. A question, for the fine folks at King Cricket.

    I’ve been running a World Cup sweepstake at my work, for a team who mostly doesn’t follow cricket too closely. I felt it would be more fun for them to unfold representative pictures out of the hat, rather than flags or names: so, a kangaroo for Australia, a lime for England, a “Better Together” picture for Scotland, that sort of thing.

    But I came a bit unstuck upon reaching Zimbabwe and Afghanistan. The two most obvious things about those countries at the moment are… not all that great. Afghanistan eventually got some mountains, but the Zimbabwe-picker had to make do with Robert Mugabe’s ugly face.

    And I couldn’t think of a non-cricketing picture for the Windies. Eventually resorted to a bad pun, and went with a tree being blown away.

    So, what pictures would you all have picked for the teams?

    1. Didn’t the Zimbabwe kit have an eagle on it for quite some time? I would go with that. Afghanistan makes me think either a goat or a kite perhaps. I assume you went for a sheep for New Zealand, some sort of choking vine for the Saffers, and a picture of the “random” button on a calculator for Pakistan.

    2. I did think about having a coin toss for Pakistan, but the non-cricketers probably wouldn’t have got it. By the end of the tournament, after Pakistan have beaten Australia and lost to Monaco (somehow), that may change.

    3. Afghanistan could be a poppy field.

      Zimbabwe could be an artistic picture of a white farmer walking disconsolately away from his farm, the fields already beginning to go to ruin in the distance.

      Or is that a bit more pessimistic than you were aiming for?

    4. The experts in this matter at my place of work (and believe me we have held a sweepstake or three in our time), in these circumstances. tend to go for flags of the countries.

      Unoriginal, perhaps, but colourful and non-controversial, unless profound regime change (of the potentially flag-changing variety) is going on in one of the competitor nations while the tournament is in process.

    5. Not going for a picture of Strop from the Paul Hogan Show for Australia is a criminal waste of an opportunity.

    6. Ged, I did think of flags, but I did want to try and make things a little more interesting. And I really wanted to use a picture of the “No” vote for Scotland.

  4. WI – Caribbean beaches, drinks and palm trees
    ZIM – chicken farms? safari? water falls?
    AFG – AK47

    1. See, it’s things like AK47s and opium that make Afghanistan so hard to come up with positive, uplifting pictures for.

      In retrospect, I should have gone with Mugabe falling over for Zim.

    4. That’s a super article, DC: thank you very much. Unlike Ged, I haven’t seen that sort of thing before. Tragic.

  5. Nasir Jamshed is now going to hit eight consecutive unbeaten double tons en route to Pakistan running away with the World Cup. And they’ll do it all only playing four bowlers, as appears to be their strategy.

    Pakistan’s fifth bowler right now is Haris Sohail, who is a middle-order batsman and not a bowler at all. Not enough has been written about how bizarre this is. Instead, everybody’s writing about Ajmal, who is not there.

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