New Zealand v USA and England v Zimbabwe
 

These four teams kick off the tournament tonight (or day in England, South Africa, and the Caribbean, and in Asia), with easier teams to get the ball rolling with a win.

The USA make history today becoming the latest team make their ODI debut against the second best team in the world, the USA will be high in spirts after beating Zimbabwe, but have no chance what so ever against the Black Caps. If Fleming wins the toss, and assuming the wicket is flat, my predication is that he will bowl first, just in case they have to do it against Australia at The Oval, which will be flat.

England, despite losing to India the other day, come in on the crest of a wave, having had a perfect summer (7 out of 7) in Tests, and defeating India in the Natwest Challenge, and the stunning form of Andrew Flintoff to boot, they should comfortably beat a bunch of club cricketers.

NZ versus USA due to start in about 30 minutes so long as no further rain occurs during that period

USA won the toss and put NZL in...........seemed as if it might have worked for the US as NZL were scoring at under 6 RPO - that is untill McMillan joined Astle at the crease in the last 10 overs & let rip..............

Macca - 64* from 27 deliveries - 7x6s
Astle - 145* from 151 deliveries - 6x6s
Styris - 75 from 7 deliveries

NZL 347/4....................

welcome to the big time boys.................

And Solanki is on 40 not out........... No doubt Marc will say it a soft 100 if Solanki gets there

Well...anybody deserves a 100 if they get there. But take a look at the Zimbabwe & USA attacks. They're barely 3rd or 4th grade standard.

Great catch Taibu - Rainsford is bowling well, what was Strauss doing though?

Flintoff that was rubbish

Shows they still struggle when Flintoff fails. Zimbabwe have done pretty well after the crap start, its raining now though

Better he does that against Zimbabwe than SL IMO!

Well, today he scored more than Tresco, Vaughan, Strauss & Flintoff combined, unless my Maths is rusty. I suppose Fred can be allowed one soft dismissal after the summer he's had, but the others need to get their brains into gear. As for Solanki that's three decent knocks out of four innings since his return, which is a big improvement. But we look in some danger of being seriously embarrassed unless Collingwood & Jones keep going in the morning.

USA lost :(

Judging by the pitch and the weather conditions, i'd be pretty happy defending 200, so i think we should easily have more than enough by the end- but if there had been a decent bowling attack on today we could have been shot out for 150.

Oooh, ahh damn.. I was wondering if we were going to have any terrestial cricket.. Then I remembered what country we were in...

Next time, ICC, give the CT to someone who cares?

I suppose the problem for Flintoff now is that everyone expects him to score runs, so when he doesn't he's going to come in for criticism.

The fact is, Flintoff is only human & he's not going to be able to score 50 runs or more every-time. It'll be interesting to see how England go against S.L should Flintoff fall cheaply.

Now that would have been a comment that would have been expected by me.

Well not this time.

He can't do it all the time, so I guess this isn't a bad time to have a low score (ie the standard of opposition).

I think England will get a total of around 230-240.