Ireland-Sri Lanka, Wednesday 2.30pm

1

So it’s the final game of our World Cup odyssey today. What a credit to the country these lads have been - northmen, southmen, comrades all.

I’d like to see them give Kenny Carroll, the only one of the 15 yet to play in the tournament, a start as it’s been a long slog away from home and it’d be great for the youngster to be able to say he played a game at this level.

Sri Lanka, already through to the last 4, rested Vaas and Murali the other day against Australia. It’ll be interesting to see what they do today. Malinga appears to be out with an ankle injury but they hope he’s fit for the semis so that’s why they wrapped Vaas and Murali up in cotton wool against the Aussies. Murali just loves taking wickets so apparently he was annoyed and didn’t want the rest. If all 3 of these guys, or even 2 of them, are missing then we might have another sneak of a chance though seeing as how Vettori totally bamboozled us I don’t see our lads having a chance against Murali.

When we’re bowling the key is to get Jayasuriya out early as he goes off like a train. The other key wickets are Jayawardene, their captain, and Sangakkara, one of my favourite players in world cricket.

Anyway, best of luck to the Irish bhoys. Heroes one and all. hi5

2

I was going to post that about Kenny Carroll but I wasn’t sure if it would be seen as the wrong attitude or not. I suppose we can’t win the tournament and we’ve achieved what we goals we could have aimed for no matter how unlikely they might have seemed at the start(Super 8 place and proper one-day status). So I’d say yeah give the lad an outing. What’s his role?

3

He’s an opening bat but can bat anywhere up around the top order.

4

Who has impressed you most of the Irish lads so far Bandage?

I’ve been delighted with:

Porterfield - decent enough batting and sensational fielding where he’s really put the effort in
Kev O’Brien - a couple of decent batting scores and a crucial wicket against Zimbabwe that gave us hope
Trent - first class captaincy. Good bowling and good hitting - pity he didn’t promote himself up the order in a few of the earlier games
Rankin - wickets in abundance
McCallan - excellent disciplined bowling.

I know that’s a lot of guys but they’ve certainly outperformed Botha, Bray and Morgan (3 more heralded players) anyway. Then lads like Langford Smith have done well too.

5

Kenny Carroll is in. Fair play to them. Andrew White drops out.

Murali and Vaas are back for them.

Sri Lanka won the toss and are bowling. TJ said they would have batted anyway.

6

2 maidens to begin with.

Agree with those 5 you have mentioned.

TJ’s captaincy has been phenomenal too.

7

Fook sake. Bray starts the 8th over, Maharoof’s 1st, with two 4s, one either side of the wicket.

Maharoof comes around the wicket 3rd ball and Bray loops up an easy catch into the ring.

For some reason Botha comes in at number 3 and after leaving the first ball he edges the 2nd behind.

Then Morgan comes in at 4 and edges his first ball, a jaffa, behind where Sangakkara takes an incredible catch.

Maharoof’s on a hat trick when he starts his next over. One minute we’re 28/0 after 7.2 overs, the next we’re 28/3 after 8.

8

This has gone horribly, horribly wrong.

49/8.

9

49 without reply now. It’s one way traffic out there. Sri Lanka can’t even get on the board and we could go 50 up on them by the half way stage. Surely unassailable?