Daily Result: £92.51
Well it was hardly convincing but England kept their slim World Cup chances alive today by beating Bangladesh. I managed to make a profit on the match but if I hadn't had the very real worry that they would struggle to make a poor Bangladesh total - which forced me to alter my book substantially - I'd have made a great deal more. I don't know. Sometimes you just wish England could win convincingly.
It all started well. Early wickets slowed the Bangladesh run rate and at 65/5 you felt England should be looking to finish the match off in quick time. But they let Bangladesh of the hook - and again at 113/8 - meaning by the time they batted England needed 144 to win. Still a pretty straight forward total you'd imagine. But not for England today.
Progress to the total was slow. Painfully so. Sure, forget the run rate. The win is more important. Get close to it and then perhaps go for it in the last few overs to improve the Net Run Rate. But there comes a point when batting can be so negative all it achieves is to pile pressure on yourselves. Just look at the 2nd Ashes test this winter when negative batting snatched defeat from the jaws of a draw. (In the process we scored 30 runs in 28 overs in an entire morning session, 70 runs in the 54 overs we faced on the final day - and lost 9 wickets for 60 runs as we got totally bogged down) Today just reminded me of that. To give an example England managed to allow themselves to be restricted to 22 dot balls in a row today. Now i've no idea if that is a world record in a ODI but I don't reckon it will be far off!
In the end England made the total of 144 in the 45th over. It's not uncommon for teams to score quicker in test matches. Even the Cricinfo commentator appeared to be falling asleep. So much so that when England achieved two singles in consecutive balls he described it, toungue firmly in cheek, as "carnage".
Ok, ultimately it's the win that's important. And England got it. But you're not telling me the team will be happy with the nature of it. Even Vaughn has conceded the display was slack, lacklustre and far from convincing. Put it this way, England are hardly striking fear into future opponents.
Still, cricket can be an odd game. Who would have forseen England's total transformation to win the recent Commonwealth Bank Series with a string of successvie wins over Australia? Something similar could happen again. However unlikely it seems. I guess I'm just a little annoyed that the laboured nature of today's win cost me money.
No comments:
Post a Comment