With everything that is going on outside of the cricket world, none of us have managed to find the time or inclination to do a full match preview in what is essentially for England at least, a dead rubber.
That being said, the game is against the Auld enemy with a chance to send them packing from the Champions Trophy, so motivation shouldn’t be a factor, but England and dead rubbers rarely go well together from past experience. The weather whilst changeable doesn’t look at this moment that it will wipe out the game and whilst many of us would heartily laugh if the game was a wash out, I’m not sure I can take any more whining from certain Australian fans about the British weather (yes it rains in England, get over it). I think we would all much prefer England to win in without any rain affections.
I’d be surprised if England named anything but the same team that played against New Zealand, despite the fact that they have already qualified, as the dreaded ‘M’ word seems to be emanating from the team and MSM – Momentum. As for the Aussies, I’m not sure there will be any changes for them either, although Chris Lynn from what I have seen of him looks unlucky to have missed out so far.
Anyway for those with the inclination to do so, do add your thoughts on the game below.
Being Outside Cricket 
Surrey’s development plan (presumably a response to the Olympic Stadium talk?):
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/cricket/2017/06/08/surrey-plan-50m-redevelopment-make-oval-biggest-cricket-ground/?WT.mc_id=tmg_share_tw
Meanwhile, another “sell out” has quite a bit of conspicuous empty seating. I don’t know Edgbaston, but I’d think it would be the members’ area that is where most of the gaps are. What’s going on?
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Looks like there is a better crowd in today, but it’s not a sell out.
The ticketing for this tournament has been shambolic. There is way more supply than there is demand. Which means the prices are too high or hardly anyone is interested. I’m not sure if you can buy tickets at the ground? But why would you travel to a venue on the off chance, when they give the Impression that a lot of these games are sold out? Farcical!
The people running cricket remind me of the old tweed wearing estate agents of 30 years ago. They worked bankers hours, and never sent you any details of houses for sale. If you put your house up for sale with them the best they would do is put a picture in the window and hope for the best. If miraculously they did find a buyer they would then charge you a small fortune for the little they did.
Perhaps they are all running cricket administration these days! If you want to come they will happily take your money, but they won’t do anything much to promote the game.
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Did you not attend a game Mark? And were you not offered tickets by 3 different people when you did?
I seem to recall that the ECB do keep track of the total number of cricket sales (about 2 million tickets sold to all cricket in England last year, both domestic and internationally; the Blast took the lion’s share of the domestic cricket), but can’t be bothered to:
a) count how many of those were double / triple / etc. attendances. One person may have attended 20 days of cricket, thus give an inflated sense of how many people actually have gone to the cricket in any given year. I am guessing that a division by two is the least that needs to be done to arrive at a more accurate estimate.
b) count how many of those actually attended for the cricket. Tickets sold to touts / corporates who only use it for the hotel venue / getting pissed without any regard for the game really should not count.
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Yes, I was offered tickets by 3 people….. all touts. But they are not the official sellers. I’m not convinced I could have bought a ticket at the gate legally. (I don’t know because I didnt ask as I already had tickets.)
Point is they give the impression that these games are sold out. The empty seats say otherwise. Unless thousands have bought tickets and then don’t go. Hmm….. I suspect many of them have been bought by people planning to sell them on like touts.
It just seems odd to me that you can’t buy tickets for this event throught the Home governing body when many of the grounds are half empty. I wouldn’t mind if the games were full, but they are not. I suspect the ICC have sold all their tickets, and have banked the money. So it’s the ticket sellers and touts who have lost out because they are not selling them on. I guess cricket therefore couldn’t care less.
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As it’s an ICC event, the ECB still have to charge the members to attend I believe. They only seem to be particularly poor at selling the hospitality as that was empty last Saturday when the ground was heaving.
That said, the turnout in Cardiff yesterday was particularly piss poor..
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Then this is curious…..
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Have Edgbaston increased their seat capacity in recent years? That would explain why they have a record crowd, when there are empty seats.
I’m looking forward to watching 39’s great white elephant selling 60,000 seats PER MATCH.
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She appears to have the eyes to read press releases – but not to see the evidence of what anyone looking at parts of the ground can see:
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How does she know it was a sell out? We don’t know that the empty seats were sold to actual people who wanted come.
It comes back to what is the definition of sold out. Sold out to supporters who are coming or sold out to touts and ticket agencies?
To be fair…….the crowd looked a good one today. And so it should be ……. Eng vs Aus on a Saturday with the chance to knock Aus out. If you can’t sell that out then they might as well give up.
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Rashid looking particularly mentally fragile today!!!
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Doesn’t really count. Dead rubber game – no pressure on him. (Just playing Devil’s Advocate!)
The way things are going it looks like he may need to contribute with his fragile batting too.
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HeHe! Me and my predictions. It was looking a bit iffy at 3 down for 35, but all credit to Stokes and Morgan. I was also wrong about England not being ruthless. So they are the only unbeaten team left in the tournament and go on to a semi final against whoever scraps their way to the runner up spot in Group B. Obviously it’ll be OBE’s all round if they go on to win the thing, with a triumphant open top bus parade through London and Ben Stokes voted BBC SPOTY. Or not…
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Bangladeshis praying for rain today. And not so much on the semi finals day(s). What a tournament. What utter competence from the ICC not to have reserve days, as they do have for what is to them their Mickey Mouse leagues.
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Looks like New Zealand may be eliminated by the rain against Australia, and Australia being eliminated by the rain against Bangladesh (maybe regardless of whether or not the rain happened against New Zealand).
It could have come down to NRR (if there had been no washouts), and while BD did least terribly against England of the those three teams, it is anyone’s guess what would have happened if the Australia – Bangladesh game had been played out in full and the same for Australia – New Zealand. Both the rain non-results helped Bangladesh to qualify. Happy for them, but cannot help but feel they were quite lucky in the non-cricketing skills department as well.
Sorry, if I don’t find that particularly satisfactory. Nor would I find it satisfactory if South Africa qualified for the semis on the basis of two washouts in the remaining group games. Or that we get an India-England final because both the semis got washed out. And remember, washout in the knockouts game is also a selling feature for World Cup 2019 (as it was for 2015 as well).
That would resemble more of a lottery with regards to which games get washed out and played out in full. For an elite tournament that just feels wrong. I may be old fashioned, but I’d like a cricket tournament being decided on cricketing skills. Shocking idea, certainly for the ICC, but it might catch on! It caught on in WCL, so I am confident it might have caught on in flagship tournaments as well.
It ought to be about cricketing skills, not about accidental fixture allocation on any given (rainy) day. This could have happened everywhere – the scheduling is a farce.
Or do the administrators deliberately try to go down the football route? In that no matter who you support, you can always blame the refereeing / umpiring / idiotic rules with regards to interruptions, so that supporters will always claim bragging rights, no matter what actually transpired on the field. Certainly would fit with the narrative that T20 is an absolute must or cricket will die …
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Fantastic batting and “real leadership” from Capt. Morgan. What say you Alistair?
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You wouldn’t let it lie…
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Particularly looking forward to the fulsome praise for Morgan in Newman’s write up……
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Can’t wait for Oliver Holt’s analysis!
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Never! 🙂
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