Match Abandoned – Rain

A busy few days at CWC19 and we have seen the first complete washout of this year’s tournament. Unbelievably the match between Pakistan and Sri Lanka was only the 3rd full washout in Cricket World Cup history dating back to 1975. The powerhouse teams of England and New Zealand managed to deal with lower ranking sides without too much trouble in Cardiff and Taunton. India and Australia shared nearly 670 runs but India coming out on top at the Oval by 36 runs.

The first men’s tournament was held in England 2 years after the first women’s tournament. 8 men’s teams participated – with the top 6 ranked sides and 2 invited teams from Sri Lanka and a combined team from Kenya, Zambia, Uganda and Tanzania playing as East Africa. ODIs were still in the early stages with only 18 matches taking place between Test match playing countries.

Unlike more recent ODIs the first world cup had matches of 60 overs per side, with England and India taking part in the first fixture. England scored a 2019 esque 334/4 in their allocated overs, however India may not really have grasped the concept and scored a tortuous 132/3 in their 60 overs with Sunil Gavaskar scoring 36 not out in the full 60 overs. The tournament only lasted a fortnight – as there was not much thought for the television audience with matches on the same day through the 2 group round robin stage. The semi-finals were between England and Australia, West Indies and New Zealand – this is the only time in CWC history that no team from the Indian sub continent in this stage of the tournament. England, ominously the pre-tournament favourites, were rolled over by the Australians for 93 all out, who then knocked off the runs with 4 wickets left. WI had to score just 156 to beat the Kiwis to set up the final on the year’s longest day.

In the final, the West Indies beat Australia by 17 runs, after a captain’s innings from Clive Lloyd (102). The Australian innings was marked by top-order batsmen being run out when going for runs after mis-fields. A total of five of their team were run out, three by Vivian Richards.

Cricket World Cup

Having watched my son’s Twickenham U15s cricket team play against Switzerland U-15s on 02 June and then attending a Cricket World Cup (CWC19) match at the Oval between Bangladesh and New Zealand on 05 June, I have felt inspired to write about the tournament and world cricket in general.

The world game, and the current tournament in England, is run by the International Cricket Council (ICC). Their stated goal and ambition is for cricket to become the world’s favourite sport – not sure how that can be measured but with the timings of the matches, the huge fan bases in the India, Pakistan and Bangladesh will be fully engaged. The Bangladesh fans at the Oval certainly made for a fantastic atmosphere.

The CWC19 involves the top 10 ranked One Day International (ODI) teams in the world so the likes of Ireland, Scotland, Zimbabwe and Nepal miss out with Afghanistan come to the party. Are Afghanistan the dark horses? 2 of their current players are in the top 3 rankings for all-rounders (players who bat and bowl with equal ability). Indeed both Bangladesh and Afghanistan have more bowlers ranked in the top 25 than England do!

England are the number 1 ranked side and favourites for the current tournament. They have 4 all-rounders in the top 20, and 5 batsmen.

The format of this tournament is different to the last one, held in and won by Australia. Each team will play against each other in matches scheduled to be 50 overs each side. After these round-robin matches, the top 4 teams will proceed to the semi-finals and the final taking place at Lords on 14th July.