Group D - West Indies, England, Ireland

[superkingdave]

Originally Posted by four_or_six

Do we have a lot more Saffas coming through at the moment? I kind of assume that these things come and go and so numbers in the side will change soon enough.

Dunno, but Keiswetter would want to be scoring runs soon, Davies has had a pretty handy start to the season.

[grecian]

I'll admit I'm worried about all these Saffies in our side, worried that they're not scoring any ****ing runs.

[marc71178]

Originally Posted by superkingdave

Dunno, but Keiswetter would want to be scoring runs soon, Davies has had a pretty handy start to the season.

Davies has been equal if not better than Kieswetter over all of his career though - doesn't seem to make the selector's pick him.

[Uppercut]

Originally Posted by marc71178

Davies has been equal if not better than Kieswetter over all of his career though - doesn't seem to make the selector's pick him.

TBF Kieswetter got into the T20 team on the back of a couple of insanely good performances for the Lions, one of them against England IIRC. It's debatable who the better player is but it's hard to argue that he wasn't picked on merit.

[marc71178]

Except you could argue that Davies should've been in for the past 12-18 months before that, by which time he'd have conceivably cemented his spot.

[Prince EWS]

Originally Posted by Uppercut

Vaughan's saying shorter matches favour Ireland. Don't know if that's entirely true in the case of this particular team. Their players aren't generally capable of humming along at 10 an over for the last five the way we're accustomed to seeing test sides go.

Yeah, I think he's just going along with the typical "India are a good example of this" theory famously introduced by Ponting that suggests that the shorter the format, the more likely the upset. While this is true to an extent - a smaller sample size will always increase the chance of a false conclusion - you also have to take into account the simple fact that Ireland are a lot better at fifty over cricket than twenty over cricket. It's not just the same thing in smaller sample sizes; the demands of the game change as it's shortened. Shortening it again will just make them even worse, particularly given they've already bowled. This is totally different to, for example, taking a random patch of ten overs from each side's innings in an ODI and comparing them, which would obviously favour Ireland a lot more than the entirety of the ODI.

So I guess what I'm trying to say is that while they now have a bigger chance of pulling off a fluke, their chances of genuinely outplaying the opposition have gone down. Vaughan probably doesn't believe the latter is actually possible.

[zaremba]

Scheduling a cricket event in Guyana in the wet season seems pretty bloody dumb to me

[wpdavid]

Originally Posted by zaremba

Scheduling a cricket event in Guyana in the wet season seems pretty bloody dumb to me

Yup. I blame the IPL, fwiw.

[Uppercut]

Originally Posted by Prince EWS

Yeah, I think he's just going along with the typical "India are a good example of this" theory famously introduced by Ponting that suggests that the shorter the format, the more likely the upset. While this is true to an extent - a smaller sample size will always increase the chance of a false conclusion - you also have to take into account the simple fact that Ireland are a lot better at fifty over cricket than twenty over cricket. It's not just the same thing in smaller sample sizes; the demands of the game change as it's shortened. Shortening it again will just make them even worse, particularly given they've already bowled. This is totally different to, for example, taking a random patch of ten overs from each side's innings in an ODI and comparing them, which would obviously favour Ireland a lot more than the entirety of the ODI.

So I guess what I'm trying to say is that while they now have a bigger chance of pulling off a fluke, their chances of genuinely outplaying the opposition have gone down. Vaughan probably doesn't believe the latter is actually possible.

Yeah, you're absolutely right. Duckworth/Lewis helped England when they played Ireland in an ODI last summer, despite Ireland batting second and hence receiving what looked a pretty generous target. Afghanistan would prefer a short, sharp chase, but we like to play ourselves in. Our bowling is considerably better in ODIs too I reckon, although we've done pretty well so far here.

[King Pietersen]

Originally Posted by marc71178

Davies has been equal if not better than Kieswetter over all of his career though - doesn't seem to make the selector's pick him.

Davies has been consistently good, but Kieswetter was exceptional when the eyes were firmly on the pair of them. Kieswetter out-scored Davies in every single Lions match they played, and Davies was dropped during that tour and replaced by Lumb, who also scored big against England. Davies probably deserved the call-up ahead of Prior earlier, but Kieswetter forced his name into the selectors minds and simply had to be picked. Kieswetter's not exactly been terrible either. ODi century in his 3rd game, and played nicely in the 1st game of this tournament.

[GIMH]

Raining again

Think Ireland are going out on N/R

[Uppercut]

****ing hell, raining again, we're going out, **** this.

[Scaly piscine]

Tells you something when the rain makes things less of a farce.

[BoyBrumby]

****house way to go through if we do.

Feel for Ireland.

[Uppercut]

That's it. Ugh. Football>cricket, I've just decided.