Just to set things straight for confused England, The Semi Finals will be played by top 4 finisher of the table, not middle 4, if that is where they are aiming at. And i do not think there will be a Moral World Cup Winner or Moral World Chump 😂 😂
Please continue to “Evolutionize” the game 😁

Call me a pessimist,but i am yet to be convinced that our boys have delivered complete performance. Yesterday being at 190/5, we could almost sense trouble if there was another early wicket. It looks good on paper that we have won 5 out of 5 matches, but i am having deja vu of 2015, 7 match 70 wickets,remaining unbeaten, then came the day of reckoning.
We need to ask ourselves some hard questions–

1. Has the dependency on our top 3 reduced? It seems we are very dependent on Rohit delivering upfront and Virat taking us through. While Virat’s resurgence is a good sign, both Rohit and Virat has a history of failing at biggest occasion. Did our middle order deliver solid performance? I do not think so. Rahul’s form is a big plus though.

2. So far we have been lucky to be the chasing team. If yesterday’s match was other way around, If New Zealand was the chasing team, would we win? It took us 48 over to chase 274 in relatively easier batting condition. When New Zealand was batting, the slower balls were gripping, it was evident by their batting in last 10 overs.

You folks are getting it all wrong. England lost deliberately to give other teams a chance. According to their own players, England can chase anything. In their last match, England with score 1500, and will go to semi final directly based on NRR alone. They have the universe best batting line up in case you all forgot. It is another 7D chess move by England to revolutionize the game.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
😂 😂 😂 😂

Another massive moral win for England. South Africa learnt well from last world cup final, so they did hit more boundaries and sixes than England, not leaving anything to chance, you never know if just in case another “rule” pops up, better be prepared. Though i am not sure this kind of hammering is within spirit of cricket when it is done against England.

Collective success of the moment sometimes can be masking brewing individual crack underneath. Nobody knows that better than we do.I believe Australia should ask themselves,given the opponents in their last two games, did they win the phases, which was their weakness against better teams in matches earlier? They should not be looking at the collective results in my opinion because they did not play against tiers in those games.

Couple of question from me –
1. Did Australia chase the target convincingly enough against Sri Lanka so that now they have belief they can chase any target against better bowling attack?

2. Did Australia get enough wicket in power play to put pressure on middle order on the top tier teams? Both game against Sri Lanka and Pakistan say otherwise. Australian bowling attack looks toothless when things go against them. Let alone getting wickets, they do not seem capable enough to stem the flow of runs,like they were hapless, against Sri Lanka. Yes, Australia came back against Sri Lanka, but against team like England or New Zealand, Australia might not have the time to make a comeback.

3. Did Australian middle order problem get sorted? I do not believe so. The fielding too is questionable.

Feel free to disagree.

I wonder how this works?!!!
Baring any accident or upset, to win a world cup we must beat four teams – Australia,New Zealand, England, South Africa.
We played three games,only one of the strong team was involved there, so we have still a looongg task ahead given we have spent two of our relatively easy match.
Australia looks scratchy, but two off their hardest match is out of the way.
For me, New Zealand is the most all rounded team, followed by South Africa. And we will be playing New Zealand at HCA, which will be a problem if we lose the toss. Add to that We will be playing England at lucknow , and South Africa at Kolkata, both of this at respective venue is going to be very tough.

That was some performance 😱

Why is that this particular comment smells like it’s from our particular “majority wannabe nationalist” community always desperate to be cheer leading babe for a particular community in West Asia? The selective cheer leading is not any one want to see. There has been a pattern to this from time to time.

Australia’s team selection and tactics is odd for sure. They keep playing almost same 11 across all format for almost half a decade now.They choose a team completely disregarding the conditions. And I do not think I have seen an Australian coach as clueless as the current one. And that is extending to players. Completely clueless,looks like 11 random blokes have been set loose on the ground. This does not go with the typical Australian way we have seen. It makes me wonder if Australia went overdrive with the entire culture fixing thing.
George Bailey is a respected person. But I believe he is needed to be asked some hard questions. You do not select world cup squad based on “We thought it might…”.

Underdogs? Someone has been living under rocks. Afghanistan easily boosts best spin trio of short form cricket, but a good margin.
To England, you have got to learn to walk properly before you run. We have witnessed undisputed empires of cricket who did not claim to “revolutionise” the game despite being labelled as Undefeatable. Focus more on improving on field then trying to look good with fancy playing style or on media.

Lol. I believe writer got a little carried away?
Narendra Modi? 😂
Anyway, as we have seen before, being IPL Megastars and doing advertisement does not help winning world cups.
Undisputed favourite is a over estimation to a degree of magnitude.
England technically did not win last one day world cup. And if we look closely, no host nation won ICC trophies since 2015. We hosted two T20 world cup, lost both. England never made it to a single final in either of test championship.
Rohit, Virat has made a name for themselves to fail at times they are needed most. It is a reoccurring phenomenon.
I rate our chance to win the world cup at 15%. Given that it is round robin, it is going to be hard to reach the semi I reckon.
New Zealand at 6? Surely we were watching cricket for last 4-5 years .

I have got zero clue about Rugby and it’s history so i have no idea about the comparison, purely from cricketing perceptive —

1. The claim of We being spoilt with talent, the myth that started from Greg Chapel era is, exaggerated by distance of a universe. We keep playing new guys who do not have the necessary skills to do consistently well. Extraordinarily this myth very closely resembles the myth regarding our economy too, but i will not get into that.

2. The importance we attach to meaningless bi lateral series is far greater than any other team on the world. We become number one playing these series only to fall flat in time when it matters.

3. If any person can earn significant sum by carrying drinks in an IPL match, that person does not bother to hone his skills to win crunch moments in tournaments like world cup.

4. World cup is a different ball game, and add immense pressure to that, knowing on that particular day you do not have the option to fail.
It says a lot South Africa is yet to win a single trophy, England won some in this decade, New Zealand won one.

5. On a side note, we have been watching ,since IPL started ,how commentators from other countries have been over hyping our boys to the very last edge of the multiverse. It makes the situation only worse. We have 2-3 super star, 2-3 good players, rest of them are wild cards. Yet the use of such as –

“There is no doubt some of the greatest players of modern times have been Indian stars like ….. more recent times, Jasprit Bumrah, Rishabh Pant and Shubman Gill.”
Pant and Shubman are “some of the greatest players of modern times”?

or
” India having the most explosive batting unit among the 10 nations chasing the trophy.”
You have got to be kidding me.

or
“Their bowling attack is also arguably the best particularly in home conditions. ”
How come we did not win last 2 t20 world cup we hosted?

People needs to stop this level of sensational pampering.

Australia has lack of depth? Lol. How many players do Australia need? The players we have seen from Australia for last 2-3 years, they can field 3-4 teams. Selection problem is the biggest problem Australia has.
As for comparison with India, we did not win a single major trophy in last ten years,because of too much depth.

Australia’s dumbfounded team selection saga now enters into disastrous mode. In a world cup that is to be played on sub continent, several medium pacer all rounders and one specialist spinner is a sign of blatant arrogance disregarding the playing condition. Australia is highly unlikely to reach final.

To be fair, it was difficult in the end. Even Rahul said he did not expect it to Spin that much. But Australia’s decision to bowl first on a pitch Steve Smith described good, in a series they claim to be practice,because due might arrive at late, is odd. But Australia’s biggest problem is team selection. Any time Australia’s big bowlers go missing, they want to fall in their comfort zone of medium pacer all rounders. This is Australia’s biggest problem, specially in Indian condition. They went in first day with 2 front line bowlers, in second one they went with 3, one of which is a debutant. Trying to win world cup with 2-3 front line bowlers in India is more than just wishful thinking.

Was it Australia’s B grade bowling though? The one played in South Africa could be rated as C grade I believe.

Yesterday was a good performance from our boys. Now i would give a 12% chance of us winning the World cup, up from 10% before this series.

I believe we were few runs short in first innings. Australia, South Africa, England batting first there would have scored 420-430. England probably would have scored 450+.
I am still of the opinion that Our batters were untested against inexperienced,inadequate bowling line up in very good batting conditions. So i would exercise extreme caution.
Would it be enough for Ash to get a place in wc squad? Probably no.

Australia needs to bring clarity in their selection as well as in their bring clarity in their players of queue . Selecting that many all rounders in a squad is not good when specialists are required.
Australia seems adamant to fill their squad with all rounders to do their bowling. They need to get their bowling house in sort.
I wonder if Sean Abbott is Australia’s one of front line bowlers. I believe bowlers like Nathan Ellis, Jason Behrendorff, Billy Stanlake , Riley Meredith would be ahead of him?
Giving Marcus Stoinis new ball is a bit baffling. I believe Australia should go ahead with Spencer Johnson and play him next game too.
Also the amount of Short balls Australia bowls ,is annoying and displeasing to the eyes. Sometimes so annoying You have to turn the display off. In India,medium pacers bowling loads of short balls is recipe for disaster.

Cameron Green did well opening in last series. Try him at opening.

I believe Australia’s squad for typical Chennai wicket should be
David Warner
Cameron Green
Steven Smith
Mitchell Marsh
Marnus Labushane
Glenn Maxwell
Alex Carey
Ashton Agar
Pat Cummins
Mitchell Starc
Adam Zampa

As an Indian fan, I did watch this match with lot of concerns. It is not the first time we have been over hyped before. These types of wins just cover the cracks for short period of time only to be shown wide open in any crunch game of any icc event. We celebrate these meaningless win without taking into account how much importance are being attached by our opponents to these games. We do not look at the macro level.

First of all, we rested players, Australia rested players. From our part it was siraj, kuldeep, Virat, Rohit,Pandya. For Australia’s part it was Mitchell Starc, Josh Hazlewood, Ashton Agar, Glenn Maxwell. That is without counting injury of Travis Head. I am looking at the missing name. And trying to weigh up the loss through resting of each team to justify the win. I believe except Siraj,our bowling was full strength, since Ash is a far better bowler is all format than Kuldeep. It was our second best bowling attack versus Australia’s z grade attack.

Which brings me to my second point, do we think Australia is going to play world cup with two front line bowlers and bunch of all rounders,medium pacers? I doubt it very much.

We won the toss,elected to bowl, much like Test championship final. It we were to bat, would we reach two seventy? That was not typical Mohali pitch.

Thirdly, it looks great on the paper that we won by five wickets with eight balls to spare. But how that weigh up against the quality of bowling we faced yesterday? If it was not for that opening partner ship, could we be in trouble?

Fourth , Australia played only two front line bowlers. Against whom ,our batters played safe, with economy of 4.4 and 5.7 . I find it very concerning that economy of a part time spinner, Matthew Short was 4.9, comparable to Ash’s 4.7. Our batters found scoring option against All rounders and medium pacers such as Marcus Stoinis or Cameron Green.

Over all i would say it was a performance in category of not bad, given how Ruturaj or Shubman performed,but under no circumstances we should be under the delusion that we won comfortably. When those 4 wickets were gone quickly, i believe everyone was thinking what i was thinking at that moment – Here it goes.

Well then what percentage would you give India to win the world cup?

I doubt chasing two hundred fifty under cloud would be as easy as chasing three seventy on a highway road. England failed to score on flat track under clear sun. It comes down to weather,which does not argue well for England.

Loser’s lectures does not worth much. Pat Cummins should have said “Go cry over there”.
“Especially given what their team has been through over recent years, with all their cultural change.
Cultural change like what? Elitely and honestly handing back the Urn to the poor pommies?
He admitted England tried the same tactic but claimed the circumstances were different.
Like stealing a world cup they never actually won?
if he does not sit back and think ‘I got that one wrong’.
Got what wrong? Winning the game as he should have? Bazz Bull S–t is not working anymore. You know are staring way down from the edge of the cliff.

He didn’t look like a leader.
Not just leader. He is also a hero for standing up for his players when other teams continue to sush their players because it might hurt public feelings. Well done Pat Cummins. True Captain. And well done Usman Khawaja.

Not a single damn was given. If public determines everything, then there would be no need for laws.

Englishmen failed that four years ago. Remember 2019 one day world cup?
#TimeToGiveItBack
#SpiritOfTheGame

According to who? The public opinion? LOL 😂