What's Next Dave Richardson? The BCS?

http://www.cricinfo.com/ci-icc/content/current/story/410448.html

Dave Richardson and Adam Gilchrist would like to see I-A and I-AA Test Cricket (suck it, bowl and playoff divisions). The feel that people stopped watching the cornerstone of the game is that the games are no longer competitive enough, because there are too many bad teams playing not enough good teams. Ignoring the fact that the sport is biased towards India and England (and occsionally Austraila, except when they piss it away like at the 20/20 Worlds), I don't see how keeping the "bad" teams away from the "good" teams would improve the sport at all. If England wants to no longer play Zimbabwae that's fine, but how do you know you're not killing the sport in Zimbabwae because you're taking away showing those people what they could become?

I mean let's just look at what the two divisions would probably look like (these are based entirely on my assumptions, and Test Results as of May 18, 2009)

I-A:
1) Austrailia
2) South Africa
3) England
4) India
5) Whoever is currently hotter of Pakistan and Sri Lanka

I-AA
1) Whoever is cooler of Sri Lanka and Pakistan
2) The West Indies
3) New Zealand
4) Bangladesh
5) Zimbabwae

There are only 10 teams to choose from in the entire world, and instead of trying to level the playing field and expanding the oppertunities to more teams in the world, they would rather narrow it down and keep the teams they don't like out of their "good game". It's a disgrace and a joke and I hope it never comes to fruition.

BLNAH: Now Predicting the Future with Bad Puns

I told Sri Lanka to be Afridi, but apparently they decided not to listen, and Pakistan (if they could put the guns straight up into the air in celebration instead of at each other, I'm sure the ICC would appreciate it) are your 2009 ICC World Twenty20 Champions. I would tell you the man of the match, but you should already know by now, but in case you don't here's the title of the Cricinfo article:

"Afridi fifty seals title for Pakistan"

So go crazy folks, Afghanistan and Pakistan have one the last two international cricket tournaments, up next, we clearly need an Iraq-North Korea final.

Be Afridi, be very Afridi

Copyright AP

That's Shahid Afridi in the middle of the picture. Come Sunday, you might want to remember that name. You might also want to remember the numbers he put up against a South African team that was 5-0 in this tournament, and had been making teams look very very bad for the past two weeks:

51 runs off 34 balls (8 x 4, 0 x 6)

4 overs bowled, 16 runs allowed, 2 wickets.

Afridi does not really need me to sing his praises (he's got his unoffical Youtube fan club for that). But whoever wins today between Sri Lanka and the West Indies had better come full force on the 21st if they want to put up any serious contention against the man who knows this title is his for the taking.

I'll have my thoughts on WI-SL after it's over, but we all know to say Go Windies!

and since I don't have anywhere else to put it, here's a great song to get you amped up for the game:

Alright I'll say it, I'm a bad blogger, it's been exactly three weeks since my last post, and here we are in the middle of the international tournament of the year (since we're in a down year for the ODI tournaments) the ICC World Twenty20 Championship (..of the World). I want to mix things up a little, so lets try this in FAQ form.


Q: Who qualified for the tournament?
A: The top ten teams in the ICC's world rankings, plus the top two finishers from the Qualifying Tournament. However, because it is a corrupt political entity, Zimbabwae was forced out of the tournament. and was replaced by the third place finisher in the Qualifying Tournament. This is how they're ranked.

1) India
2) Pakistan
3) Austrailia
4) New Zealand
5) South Africa
6) Sri Lanka
7) England
8) Bangladesh
9) Ireland
10) Netherlands
11) West Indies
12) Scotland

Q: Wait, 12 teams, how do you set up a single elimination tournament that way?
A: You don't. Instead, they have four pool groups each consisting of one first tier, one second tier, and one third tier team. You go by ranking. So you get four groups that look like this:

1-8-9
2-7-10
3-6-11
4-5-12

Q: What have we missed so far?
A: So far you've missed the pool play I just mentioned.

Q: Any Suprises?
A: Austrailia went quietly into the night losing to the West Indies 172-169 (in a match where WI only sent 5 batsmen to the stumps), and losing to Sri Lanka 160-159 (this time only 6 Batsmen for SL). The Netherlands were elimnated in heartbreaking fashion when they were only able to put up 93 runs against Pakistan to allow England to move on to the Super Eight.

(and let it be stated here that I am glad for Bloggers autosave feature that allowed this to still be here when my computer shut down on me)

Q: Super Eight? What's that?
A: The Super Eight is the second round of the competition and it started today (South Africa 114-England 111, and New Zealand 198-Ireland 115 for those keeping track at home) It is two groups of four (the first and second place finishers from the four opening round pools. Each plays the other three in the pool, and the top two from each pool move onto the semi-finals.

Q: Anything else we should know?
A: If you want to learn about cricket, 20/20 is probably the best way to do it, it's the shortest game, has the fasting pacing, and is the only version of the sport played at night. If you've gotten into the sport at all through this, first off that's nice, cause hey, I've accomplished something. Second, you might want to take the next step up, and learn about Net Run Rate, which is the first tie-breaking tool, and will save you a lot of confusion (if you're good at math). Finally, enjoy the games! They're in England, so you can have cricket with your breakfast (Game one Tomorrow starts at 6:30 EDT, and Game two starts at 7:30 PDT, so there are options for everyone.)

So I'm not sure if yesterday's post was clear enough, it doesn't really look that clear to me, I've been sick this week, so my writing is not really at its best. With that in mind, I thought I might turn to what I find to be a very reliable source when it comes to unraveling complicated news like this Sri Lankian Cricket Team attack, because really, it's not just about Sri Lanka and Pakistan, it's about all of the Indian Sub-Continent Cricket Playing nations, can we really be sure that any team can be safe in any of those countries now? With all that said, I turn it over to NPR, who had a terrific report this morning explaining exactly what happened, and what kind of effect it will have on the game.

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=101408045

Edit: So I failed to mention, you should click that listen now link to get it to play.

I Can't even belive this happened

http://sports.yahoo.com/top/news?slug=ap-pakistan-cricketersattacked&prov=ap&type=lgns


The Sri Lankian Cricket Team was attacked outside of the stadium in Lahore Stadium today. Clearly this was an attempt to strike deep into the heart of Pakistani culture and security. It's baffling upsetting news that goes to the root of how important cricket can be around the world. It would be like if one of the World Baseball classic teams was assulted outside of the RN Centre. It's sad, and I for one hope the criminals are brought to full and swift justice.