On a cool, windy, damp day in Cardiff, England beat New Zealand by a massive 87 runs after dismissing the antipodeans with 33 balls remaining. This result means that England are the first team to qualify for the semi finals, and will also finish at the top of Group A. This is because the first tiebreaker after points is games won, and whilst Australia could potentially match England’s 4 points they couldn’t match their 2 wins.
New Zealand won the toss and chose to field first, perhaps thinking that showers would shorten the game and give an advantage to batting second. The game started cagily, with New Zealand bowling tightly to restrict England’s openers, eventually forcing Jason Roy to take some risks to get the strike rate up. Unfortunately he isn’t in great form and was bowled behind his legs after stepping too far into the off side. From this point to the end of the match followed a very simple pattern: England would score roughly a run a ball, and New Zealand would take regular wickets which stopped England gaining any momentum or accelerating. Fifties from Hales, Root and Buttler helped England reach 310, typically a pretty high target, but somehow it seemed a touch below par.
In the previous game against Bangladesh Jake Ball conceded 81 runs and took 1 wicket, and several people (myself included) wanted him out of the side. Instead he opened the bowling and managed to bowl Ronchi on his fourth ball. This brought in world-class batsman Kane Williamson, who with Martin Guptill and Ross Taylor built a solid foundation for the New Zealand innings and dealt well with a slightly slow pitch, strong winds and a few instances of uneven bounce. After 30 overs, New Zealand were 156/2 and seemingly cruising towards England’s total. It took a cross-seam delivery from Wood which reared up on Williamson and glanced off his glove to dismiss New Zealand’s talisman. From that point, England’s bowlers took a firm grip on the game and never let go. Bowling with impressive economy, the bowlers forced New Zealand’s batsmen to play increasingly risky shots just to keep up with the required run rate. New Zealand finished 87 runs short of their target after their tail collapsed playing big shots with little success.
The notable thing about the second innings for England was that there wasn’t a single weak link in their bowling unit, something which we probably haven’t seen in a while. Each of the 5 bowlers used took at least one wicket, had an economy rate below 6.00 and gave Eoin Morgan no reason to call on either Moeen Ali or Joe Root. In the first time for a few years, I would say that England’s bowling was better than their batting. Jake Ball won Man Of The Match, but the other 4 bowlers had almost equal claims to the title.
With England topping the group, they can potentially rest players in their game against Australia at Edgbaston on Saturday and keep them fresh for their semi final in Cardiff on Wednesday 14th. Alternatively they might not want to disrupt a winning side, which is certainly what New Zealand and Bangladesh will hope for as their future in the competition relies on Australia not winning their final group game. England’s bowling performance in this game will certainly worry the other teams, because if their bowling becomes as strong as their batting has been over the past two years then England might be virtually unbeatable.
On a sidenote, New Zealand finished bowling in the first innings 28 minutes after they were supposed to. This was very close to the 4 hours Sri Lanka took to bowl against South Africa, an over rate which saw Sri Lanka’s stand-in captain Upul Tharanga summarily suspended for two games. Several people have commented that Kane Williamson was lucky to escape a similar punishment, as he was given a fine and warning, and it certainly seems to show that banning a captain has not acted as a deterrent for other teams. Hopefully the ICC or MCC will look at other ways of guaranteeing innings finish on time in the future.
Being Outside Cricket 
In the days of the John Player League, if a team failed to bowl 40 overs in 2 hours, the innings was just declared closed at that point. The bowling team were given the same number of overs as the opposition. Alternatively doesn’t Ducky Lewis enable a similar calculation to be made?
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My personal preference would be to declare the innings closed on time and award 6 runs for every ball that hasn’t been bowled by that point. In other words, the maximum possible (barring extras) the batting team could have scored in the remaining overs. To put that into context, in this game it would have boosted England’s score to roughly 500. That’s a massive incentive not to bowl slowly, I think.
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To be fair to NZ……England did score many more 4s & 6s (at least it felt like it) and it does take time to keep retrieving the ball. Also, I think if England hadnt bowled NZ out, they would also have gone over the time.
One of the reviews took an age. They did the no ball quickly, but then spent ages trying to establish if the batsman had hit it. Or it had hit his gloves. They rocked the tape back and forth, then we had snicko, then hot spot. Finally they decided he hadn’t touched it with the bat so they went to ball tracking….. only to see the ball pitching outside leg stump. A complete waste of time.
I would do ball tracking first with LBWs. If it’s not hitting the stumps the rest is pointless.
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Yeah, but the opposition scoring boundaries and there being maybe two or three reviews per innings are things that happen pretty much every game, and so I wouldn’t count them as exceptional circumstances and allow extra time. When England were bowling, for example, there was the stoppage when Kane Williamson was hit on the head. It would be important not to put pressure on medical staff to rush their job, so that would be time added on at the end. Likewise when the boundary rope and advertising hoardings had to be repaired due to the wind probably added a little time. A few times the bails were blown off too. England were slow, but nowhere near as slow as New Zealand and with more valid excuses.
And of course if this was brought in, making reviews quicker would be a move probably supported by all teams because they wouldn’t want to concede penalty runs.
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That would not work. Home ball boys could mysteriously not find the balls when the visitors are bowling, thus giving their home team an easy win. Or should the ICC do the same as the US open and have 50+ fully trained specialists around the ground to stop that from happening?
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Or even worse: should every fielding team hire those 50 specialists from their respective countries? I am asking because in case of injury to half of the players of a team, they do need to find nationals to take over fielding duties.
How are the Irish / Afghanis / other poor cricketing nations even going to fund that? And how is CA ever going to pay for grassroot cricket then?
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I went to the game today and offer a few observations. First off, once Wiliamson was out followed not long after by Taylor it was in effect game over. England had been quite measured in their own innings in the morning, but once again past 300 with ease. The conditions were not easy and there was a strong wind particularly in the afternoon. Englands bowlers did well to keep control. The opening spells restricted NZ in the first 10 overs. Although NZ looked like they were cruising at 150/2 it didn’t feel like they were cruising at the venue. You felt one wicket would bring the end, and so it proved. They don’t have the depth of batting.
A couple of general points. First off, there were many empty seats. Sure, the crowd was quite good, but it was not sold out, far from it! If it was sold out, many people wasted their money by not coming. I suspect the people who had the tickets were the touts. I was approached by 3 different touts within 100 yards of the stadium. The way tickets are sold seems ludicrous to me, and quite pricey since there were so many empty seats.
The England innings took nearly 4 hours to complete. Part of the blame has to go with all the off field entertainment. Someone has decided it’s a great idea to have drummers banging out a rhythm at every wicket, and every drinks break. And sometimes between overs. In fairness, they were quite good, and it added to the occasion, but there were many times when the players were ready to play and the they had to wait while the drummers completed their routine. One of the biggest cheers of the day was in the afternoon when the wind got up, and a metal advertising hoarding blew off its fixings and cartwheeled into one of the drummers. Knocking of his hat, and leaving him dazed and nursing a sore head. It happened right in front of where we sitting. He got some terrible stick. And that was the end of those drummers. They packed away their deckchairs and disappeared. It was just too windy to continue in that corner of the ground. There were still two other sets of drummers in other parts of the ground, who continued on their merry way!
The bails kept blowing off, which of course sets off the flashing lights of the stumps. Technology Hey? Bar humbug! But it does add extra time to proceedings. Having said that we were lucky to get a full game. The showers just kept missing the ground. In fact the biggest downpour came in the interval when we were all under the stand getting some food. Don’t know if it spiced up the pitch a bit, but England bowled well in that wind.
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I forgot you were going. Miserable weather but not a bad game.
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Officially, the game was a few hundred short of sold-out (source: Hoult on Twitter).
Do this many people really not turn up if the weather is less than fantastic – or is there something rather dubious going on with the ticketing?
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“A few hundred short of sold out?” Hmmm
Watch the highlights package from last night, and see if you think there were just a few hundred short of sold out? The definition of SOLD OUT needs some defining if you ask me. Sold…. I would have thought……means to some person or persons who intends to attend the game. Not to parties who intend to sell on the tickets. Of course as far as the governing bodies are concerned they are just happy to get the money…… for selling to the ticket agencies and touts. They bank the money, and the touts take on all the risk if they can’t sell on the tickets. But it does mean you risk lots of empty seats. Which in turn reduces the atmosphere at the grounds.
If you go to The ECB web site, and press tickets there is nothing on the Champion trophy. The tickets they are selling are for the up coming South Africa series. Interestingly the other day I went on there and clicked “fixtures,” and there was also nothing on the Champions trophy. The Lions matches were given more prominence. That has now changed, and they do have the CT games listed.
We know this is an ICC event, and the tickets are sold through them originally. And I’m sure there are reasons why they don’t want the home nation having control of the tickets when there are visiting fans from around the world. (I’m sure the ECB don’t want the hassle , but should home nations be able to sell tickets for there own teams games?
Anyway, what they mean by sold out means money to the ICC, not real people sitting in seats. The people who were there yesterday were very good natured. It was a good friendly atmosphere. Just a pity there weren’t more of them. And to answer Simons question,no I don’t believe it was down to the weather.
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At football matches, it’s a requirement for clubs to announce attendances based on tickets sold rather than those through the gate. I don’t know if it’s the same at cricket.
It did look more or less half empty though, that’s for sure.
The selling of tournament tickets through the tournament owner is pretty common though. Same thing goes for the Rugby World Cup, football World Cup and so forth. So that’s not at all surprising.
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But surely people through the gate is the only true measure of how many people are at the ground in attendance? Tickets sold is a meaningless concept as far as attendance is concerned because many of the tickets are in the hands of ticket agencies and touts.
For the club or body selling the original tickets…….money in the bank is all that matters. If you have sold 100% of tickets at face value you’re happy. If only 50% of those tickets show up its not your problem.
There is also the issue of controlling supply to manipulate the price. If the meme is that the Event is “sold out”……… it gives the impression that tickets are in short supply, and therefore you can increase the price. It’s only when you sit in the stand and see all the empty seats that you question whether the price should have been much less. I guess it all comes back to whether you should sell out a game at £20 per ticket, and sell 100% or sell 50% at £40 per ticket? The result is the same financially. But not the atmosphere.
Rugby and football (certainly premiership football) don’t seem to have all the rows of empty seats. So whoever is buying the tickets is attending the matches. Cricket doesn’t seem to be able to do the same. Whoever is buying all these tickets in not showing up.
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Don’t shoot the messenger Mark!
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I would never shoot you Legglance or anybody else for that matter. I’m just interested in the disconnect of this issue between what we are told by the media, and sporting bodies, and the cold hard facts in the stadium.
My guess is that the governing bodies (in this case the ICC) have sold most if not all of the tickets and therefore are quite happy. What happens to them after that is not their concern.
Outside any game involving India, I would say there are lots of tickets available. The so called sold out meme is claptrap. Just a brief bit of research this morning shows There are plenty of tickets available for Saturday’s game England vs Australia. Yet I bet the line is that the game is sold out.
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During one drinks interval they decided to interview a man dressed as a banana on the big screen. He had to name as many fruits in 30 seconds as he could. Amusingly to all, he failed to name….. a banana.
It was all going so well, until the interviewer ended by saying…….. “do you think England have enough runs?”……… To which he replied…………”I FUC….hope so.”
Live TV, and interviewing drunks dressed as bananas is not a great combination. I’m sure this is all part of the expeirence that 39 thinks is the future.
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As I’m sure The Analyst and the ECB will tell you, it won’t be drunks on TV being interviewed, it’ll be kids. After all, the Big Bash is a family event so obviously the new T20 league will be too!
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Dare I say it – and in this competition one slightly iffy performance knocks you out – but England look rather good.
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Actually, two decent performances and the weather have conspired to mean that England can perform as badly as they like against Australia with virtually no consequences. That said, I assume they would prefer to knock Australia out of the competition if possible, as they are probably the most dangerous team in the group to face in the final.
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Looks like we finally have a game on our hands. It is only the 7th game of the tourney, and we might be in for an upset / cracker of a game with an actual decisive result.
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More to the point, how are Pakistan going to mess this up? My money is on at least 2 run outs…
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Nah, looks like the rain has saved them… from themselves (!)
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Of course, rain had to ruin the game, so Pakistan won on DLS. Qualification for South Africa is suddenly tricky. Though even if they lose, they may still qualify if India wins against Sri Lanka, and Sri Lanka beats Pakistan. That way it will all come down to NRR.
With regards to South Africa: I expect Pretorius to come in for either Morkel or Morris. If Parnell gets the well deserved drop, it is for Behardien or possible Phehlukwayo. Can’t say I am too thrilled about Farhaan.
Why did AB de Villiers bring on his most expensive and unthreatening bowlers when the rain delay / termination was around the corner? Shockingly bad captaincy. That alone would justify it if South Africa fell short in the group stages here. Given their healthy NRR thus far, just about any win against India would suffice for them to qualify (unless India beat Sri Lanka, and Pakistan absolutely trash Sri Lanka).
Either way, it is a massive advantage to Pakistan (at least normally speaking) that they will know exactly what they need to do to qualify, since they play in the last game of the group. Same applies to Sri Lanka, if they somehow manage to beat India (or if India beat South Africa and Sri Lanka).
This tournament is devolving into a farce, so I am waiting for Australia – England to be rained out, and New Zealand / Bangladesh either qualifying through beating the other on the day before, or alternatively both going home through yet another rainfest – though they could qualify if Australia lose by a fairly large margin (in either a 50 over contest or a shortened contest).
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Unfortunately that’s British weather. We’ve had one of the driest winters on record. C’est la vie.
Thought AB’s captaincy was odd today. The weather radar clearly showed heavy rain from 7pm, so why take the chance of batting first?
I also don’t know how Morkel isn’t opening the bowling. Parnell is a decent 4th seamer imo, that can share duties with Duminy, who I also think is lucky to be in the team. Big game against India now…
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I’m rather amused by some of the moaning as though this is the first tournament ever to suffer from bad weather. I can recall Sri Lanka being ruined by it in a World Cup, and the West Indies in a World T20 as well, to the point England nearly went out in the one they won in the group stages. It’s just luck of the draw. From: Being Outside CricketSent: Wednesday, 7 June 2017 23:22To: chris@blueearthmanagement.co.ukReply To: Being Outside CricketSubject: [New comment] England vs. New Zealand – Champions Trophy 2017
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/* @media only screen and (max-device-width: 480px) { .post { min-width: 700px !important; } } */ WordPress.com Sean B commented: “Unfortunately that’s British weather. We’ve had one of the driest winters on record. C’est la vie.
Thought AB’s captaincy was odd today. The weather radar clearly showed heavy rain from 7pm, so why take the chance of batting first?
I also don’t know how”
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It’s why I am also suspicious of a so called “winter break” in football. I can see them stopping in early January with it dry or midly wet. Then when they come back in Feb, it snows for 2 weeks and the matches are frozen off.
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Once again I repeat my call for the process of LBW reviews to be changed so that ball tracking is done first. Or at least second after the no ball check.
We just wasted minutes in the Pak vs SA match going through snicko, hot spot over and over again, and then we find at the end of the whole process that the ball was going way over the stumps.
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I periodically have a Twitter rant about exactly that. I know that it’s supposed to take a few seconds to cue up the Hawkeye, but it should be done by the time the no ball has been checked. It’s a daft system, unless the intention is to try to use it to increase the drama.
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Agreed!
I would hope they don’t do it to increase tension, and drama. With teams now taking 4 hours to bowl their overs, we need as fewer delays as possible.
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Assuming D/L doesn’t have a “but it’s Pakistan…. ” setting….
if Pakistan can get their act together to beat SL, England could be playing them in the SF.
SA’s game plan of only Miller and Morkel turning up and everyone else having the day off hasn’t worked out too wel.
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So, how many matches did not have rain delays?
It was shaping up to be an exciting one. Pakistan ahead on DLS, but they have not been blessed with the ruthlessness to chase targets down, and anything could have happened. I suspect no more play will be possible, and thus that Pakistan win by 19 runs on DLS.
Another (relatively) close game ruined by the weather. Bodes well for the 2019 World Cup too. Which is just 6 weeks of praying that rain does not ruin your teams chances. Wow, the ICC is really making rain dancing great again.
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It’s the vagaries of the British weather I’m afraid. Ironically if it had been held a month ago at the beginning of May the weather was dry and sunny. But nobody in their right mind would risk holding an international cricket competition in early May in England. As it is they have avoided any of the northern grounds to try to insure better weather.
Don’t know what the answer is unless you ban England from holding any tournaments because of possible rain. Seems a bit harsh. It has been known to rain in other places too.
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June is one of the driest months of the year, second only to July. It’s just bad luck, it happens. No point whining about it.
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Interesting that you say that LG, since my Facebook feed shows me that the weather must have been very similar in 3 Junes since 2010.
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Itâs Britain. We donât have a dry season and a wet season, we have a damp one year round. Any given month can be dry or it can be wet. Itâs just how it is, and I donât see the point people complaining about poor luck with the weather. Weâre a north Atlantic island with arguably the most complex weather system on the planet. It rains a fair bit.
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It is fine to have the tourney in England.
Statistically speaking for the Champions Trophy, for instance we’d expect 2 games in each group to be slightly affected by rain (according to Met-Office data over 1980-2010, we’d have to expect rainfall of more than 1 mm on two match days in each group. That does not even necessarily mean that play is delayed by this weather. It could just as easily happen after the game has finished, or 6 hours before the game is due to start.
Scheduling this tournament in England is fine on the basis of that. What is less than ideal here is how the tournament organizers (as in the ICC) deals with bad weather if it becomes a major feature of the tournament.
Obviously bad weather can happen anywhere. And while chances of bad weather may be higher in England than in say Australia or India, you cannot rule out bad weather anywhere. And obviously with global warming going on, it becomes harder to predict well in advance what the weather will be like in any given period, even if we are aware of the “traditional” vagaries of weather.
Any tournament is supposed to be about a sport first and foremost, i.e. which team is better. Bad weather takes skill out of the equation to a lesser or greater extent.
Bangladesh just about batted well enough to get a no result against Australia; if they had collapsed half an hour earlier they would have lost. So at least some cricketing skill was involved. But if it rains all day, the result is arrived at without any chance of cricketing skills influencing the outcome of the game. For an individual match in a bilateral series that is perfectly fine. Such an event would basically shorten a bilateral series by one game.
It becomes problematic if it impacts on other things. As is bound to happen in 8 or ten-team tournaments. If you are going to crown a world champion, you want the world champion to get that title on skill, not on the vagaries of an external factor no one can control (such as being eliminated in a semi-final due to rain, and lack of reserve day available).
I know it happened in the past (eg. when Pakistan won the World Cup in 1992; don’t think too many Australians will be happy with how Pakistan pipped them to the last semi final spot). That 1992 World Cup had 2 no results, and a further 8 games affected by rain, if I checked correctly).
How would an Australian player feel if say Australia gets eliminated from this tournament on having suffered three washouts (in the group stages) or four washouts (in the semi finals), as is perfectly possible here? Would Australia have gotten eliminated on being outplayed by someone / anyone, or simply because of bad luck? Seems to me that we can’t call it a cricketing skill to ensure that the weather actually allows the teams to complete a game (even if shortened).
I don’t know what the answer is here. Having reserve days for games that are washed out is not ideal either. It works fine if there was no actual play possible. But if there was, then it already becomes problematic. Either because conditions change substantially, in case of a resumption at the point in which the game was no-resulted under current regulations), or complete turnarounds in a new game (eg. if Bangladesh absolutely trashed Australia in a fresh game by 200 runs or something of the sort, when that outcome would had been absolutely impossible in the abandoned game).
But even if we’d accept reserve days as a solution, one of the problems is that the authorities in charge are that desperate to fill the calendar to the brim. Cricket ought not to be played in South Africa in August. And I am sure there have been real luminaries involved to schedule cricket in Bangladesh in the middle of monsoon season as well.
Funnily enough the continuing from the point where the game was abandoned at seems to apply to World Cricket League games; but I suppose the ICC is happy to allow reserve days to Associates; it is not like they get to play more than 20 days in a year anyway. Out of 38 games that have been played / abandoned so far in the current WCL, 5 went over two days, of which 2 were abandoned without a ball bowled at all, and one more was no-resulted as the second innings of that game could not get under way); in two cases the game was finished with a decisive result on the reserve day.
Likewise roofed venues are not ideal. It may take conditions in the air out of the equation.
But I do suspect that the more teams a group stage has, weather results (or rather no results) are more likely to be decisive for determining who goes through to the knockout stages, IF (and that is a big if) the teams are relatively closely matched, and the number of fixtures is relatively modest (eg. single round robin). If anyone can beat anyone, you expect quite a few teams to be close to qualifying spots for the next stage.
The reason for this is that while chances of a weather induced abandonment are small for any given random day, because of their randomness, it is unreasonable to expect that they will even out over a short tournament (just as umpiring errors don’t even out in a single innings, but are presumed to be evening out over a batsman or bowler’s career). The number of abandonments will be too small for that to happen. But given a lengthy (as in number of days) tournament, such as a World Cup, we can fairly predict that bad weather will feature in some games.
Of course the chance of an abandonment duly influences this. If the chance of an abandonment is 0%, then obviously group size does not matter. If it is 100% group size does not matter, just tie-break rules (though obviously that defeats the purpose of a tournament). But even if it just 5%, it really matters which fixture(s) gets affected.
Likewise if all teams are ultra-competitive with each other and only would get separated on NRR after a group stage, every abandonment is of great importance.
For an abandoned game to be inconsequential, it either has to be between teams that are far off the pace, or between two teams that are way ahead of the non-qualifying pack. See the 1992 World Cup group stages that seem to illustrate this point. The one washout that would prove to be inconsequential was between India and Sri Lanka, both of which were quite off the pace (and even here of course there are caveats to be made). The one that was important, happened to be a team that was in the lead pack (England), and a team that did so-so in the group stages (just like Australia and West Indies). And of course if such abandonments happen between two so-so teams (in a game featuring two of Australia, Pakistan and West Indies, in that 1992 tournament, the impact could have been decisive as well).
Of course, even there, statistics may well indicate that that is true up to a certain point only, given that bad weather distribution resulting in abandonment of games with a no-result, is assumed to be random. But that certain point is certainly beyond a single round robin format for a group.
One reason that the abandoned Australia – Bangladesh World Cup 2015 game was inconsequential was that England were hopelessly off the pace. And if they had beaten Bangladesh, they would have been through, unless Bangladesh would have beaten Australia in that abandoned game (and ended up with the superior NRR). The no result would have been decisive if England had beaten one of Australia, New Zealand or Sri Lanka themselves, i.e. not hopelessly of the pace of the qualifiers. And they were, as can be safely judged from the margins of defeat England suffered against those three teams.
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Weather looks like it could be a factor on Saturday (although they might just get away with it).
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British weather… the only thing that’s more variable and the forecasters more clueless than our politicians and the MSM fed electorate…
Ooopz, soz, #politixbolloxfrolix ;(
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That was a great chase by Sri Lanka to get 320. And they only lost 3 wickets doing it. They had two run outs, and a retired hurt. India got just one wicket by bowling.
Every team in the group on two points now. Final matches will decide who goes through. SA vs India will be interesting.
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