Need an opening partnership badly. Even when Bray made a hundred against Zimbabwe in the first match we lost a wicket in the first over when Porterfield went for a duck. In every game since we’ve lost early wickets.
Can we handle Shane Bond? He’s probably the best out and out pace bowler in the world game at the moment. He carries a lot of injuries because of the sheer effort he puts into his bowling action and they’ve been managing his schedule so far. There’s even talk they’re considering resting him today as they’re confident enough of defeating us amateurs without him. This would be a bonus.
Can we keep the scoring rate up against the spinners? They’ll definitely play Vettori, one of the best off spinners in the world, and they might also play Patel. We’ve really struggled against spin in the tournament, losing momentum in the middle overs and we need to improve greatly on this.
We need early wickets to put the pressure on them. Fleming is playing very well at the top of the order and Scotty Styris is having an exceptional tournament also. These are the 2 key men to get out. We need Boyd Rankin to maintain his high standards and Dave Langford-Smith to get some consistency so we carry a threatening opening attack from both ends.
We need to continue to get dirty in the field and anything could happen.
Very interesting game in progress. NZ won the toss and chose to bat on what the commentators said was a very good batting pitch.
They are now 87/3 after 17.4 overs.
We have got the key wickets of Fleming and Styris and even though they’re going along at 5 runs an over they’d be in serious trouble if we could nip another couple out quickly.
It’s been a reversal of fortune today in that Rankin has bowled quite poorly (though he did get Fleming) while Langford-Smith has taken the other 2 wickets and has bowled 9 overs on the bounce.
They have selected Bond and the 2nd spinner, Patel. They’ve a few big hitters down the order so they’ll want to consolidate for a while before unleashing them late on. Another wicket or two for us and we’d be getting deep into their order relatively early on.
Botha missed out and Mooney was dropped with Kev O’Brien coming back in and Peter Gillespie getting his first start of the tournament.
Great captaincy by TJ. McMillan caned Rankin for 13 from one over so he brought on spin at both ends to take the pace off the ball and gets him almost straight away. 121-4 after 26 overs. Oram, another big hitter, is in now and McCullum, who’s in next, holds the record for the fastest ever WC 50 so if we can get these two quickly we have a real chance here.
Game seems to have slowed down but as I just remarked to an ex-work colleague of mine by SMS: a wicket is crucial. They’ll have seen how England punished us in the last 10 overs once they saw off the spinners and NZ will and can do something similar. A wicket (preferably Oram) would keep them honest.
Yeah, they were 140/4 after 30 overs and the rule of thumb is to double that by the end of your 50 over innings as you pick up momentum and take more risks towards the end. They’ve swiftly moved on to 164/4 after 35 overs so we need to chip away and take wickets to lower their scoring rate or they’ll push up towards 300 by the finish.
We’re holding them well. 172/5 after 38.1 overs. About to resume after rain.
All our best bowlers are close to bowling their full allocation of 10 overs so someone will have to fill in. Oram and McCullum will want to tee off in the last 10 overs.
Sky say they’ll want to get to 230 and Paul Allott, rather dismissively, has suggested they have enough already. Just need to bowl well now for the last few overs and then we can reassess things.
We are absolutely fooking it up - 248/7 after 49 overs. Last two overs have gone for 30 odd. Like England all over again and hugely frustrating. Think we needed to restrict them to 220-230 and we could have chased it. Not now with an attack containing Bond and Vettori.
Awful last couple of overs - really need to work on that because we’re getting ourselves in great positions. Even held it together for 46 overs or so today but can’t afford to leak runs at the end.
Worst performance of the tournament in the end from us today.
Again the last 7/8 overs cost us and they got 30 runs more than they should have.
We had a horrible start to our innings and I got pi$$ed off and stopped watching. Then at about 75/3 I started watching again as the O’Brien brothers set about rebuilding. I thought Niall played a very selfish innings (I hope he wasn’t looking to impress England by playing for himself and trying to increase his personal average) by just sticking around playing with no urgency even though the situation required that we score quickly. Then he ran out his own brother and Kev had been playing excellently (49 from just 45 balls) before belatedly hitting out and getting caught in the deep immediately.
Shame because at 115/3 we had a sneak of pulling it off if Kev O’Brien could have kept things going. The collapse after that was mildly embarrassing. Bond and Vettori are excellent though but their batting has to improve if they’re going to threaten to win the whole thing. They’ll miss Lou Vincent (although Fulton was good today) and need Ross Taylor back asap.