Australia in with a real chance I reckon. I didn't mind Smith/Warner being booed except for when they booed his century. The reason you came to the cricket was to see world class players scoring runs and taking wickets and Smith delivered. He'll have a big tournament I reckon. To be honest I don't really care how Warner goes. After he made that 200+ in a day versus NZ a few years back I put money on him to score a 400. If he does that he'll be redeemed.

Afghanistan to get an upset win (hopefully not against us), England to play Australia in the final, Smith most runs Cummins most wickets, Zampa player of the tournament.

warner is fresh off being top scorer in the IPL, so hes in form too.

should be a cracker of a tournament.

England are red hot. Root, Roy, Stokes and Archer are on fire.

Stokes catch last nite was one of the best of all time.

Would love to see Afghanistan go well, they play hard!

bangers beating the saffers last nite was sooooooooooo good.

Not sure whether it was an upset or if Bangladesh are now the better side.

bangers batting was quality. looked like their bowling went well too. saffers are certainly a shadow of their former selves.

It's not too soon to start caring about cricket again?

i never stop caring.

It's not too soon to start caring about cricket again?

Smith's back turn up the cares to max.

aussies lucky to get away with a win against the Windies. Thang kod for Coulter-Nile's batting!

Yep I went to bed thinking the worst and woke up happy when I checked my phone.

same.

saw this super interesting stat about how good smith is against windies:

false shot percentages:
https://twitter.com/cricvizanalyst/status/1136590294915387392/photo/1?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E1136590294915387392&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.theaustralian.com.au%2Fsport%2Fcricket%2Fcricket-world-cup-2019-live-coverage-of-australia-v-west-indies-at-trent-bridge%2Fnews-story%2F78fa6fd8255bab784d3511d32ca3c4b8

Bangladesh really fighting hard to knock New Zealand from my second team spot.

good result for them overnite, putting the windies down easily!

we got them next on thursday, aussies better be on their game.

Yeah definitely, Shakib is having some kind of tournament so far!

South Africa's (my bottom team) repeated failures are a rich vein of schadenfreude for me of late. Hopefully NZ crush them tonight.

Sri Lanka upsetting England really spices things up a bit.

busted up england vs australia next tuesday nite!

aussies comfortably accounted for the poms on the strength of another big opening stand from warner and finch. warner and finch number 1 and 2 leading run scorers in the world cup!

kiwis this weekend will be tougher.

india threw that game against england!!!

Maybe. Probably not though England are a good side and they played well.

If South Africa beat Australia it's really going to kill the good vibes I've been feeling from watching them fail.

Aussies are in trouble against the Saffers, need 10 an over for the last 10, with 5 down.

Ahh well perfect feeling gone :(

We'll still win the tournament. Perhaps some players should have been rested after qualification was achieved. That's my only concern atm.

us vs england
india vs nz.

omg NSW win and India lose. What a great day.

Perhaps I am being a bit hasty...

turned the cricket on and india were 3/5

Ended up being an awesome game NZ vs India, what a throw from Guptil to run out Dhoni and snuff out India's chances.

Aussies vs England tonite, should also be a complete cracker of a game.

not a great start...

sheeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeet

Not going well

Bit better now.

Oh well at least the Blues won.

f*** f*** f*** f*** f*** f*** f***

wow, what a finish. Double tied game, NZ robbed twice!

So unlucky to lose the main match with a throw ricocheting off a bat for 4 over throws.

then to lose the count back during super over to less boundaries!

dream outcome for UK.

pretty good world cup.

Greatest world cup match ever?

certainly the closest. not sure about greatest.

you'd be pretty hard done by if you were a kiwi supporter.

Well the only other contender is the famous Australia vs South Africa SF which I believe this one pips due to it being a final plus the added drama of a super over.

nothing will ever compare to our victory over south africa.

i will never forget where i was when that happened (at work watching it on internets text updates, mite have been the first time id watched a game of cricket via online scoring)

I was in grade 11, had midyear exams the next day and wasn't allowed to stay up and watch it :(

So Ireland are in with a big chance of beating England at Lords which would be awesome.

Saw something for the first time ever in a test match. England set out a night watchmen in lieu of opener Roy. Only one over to face before the end of the day which is also unusual. In the ultimate universe where Roy opens and gets run out facing zero balls it is a brilliant move and maybe I'm being old fashioned but opening batsmen are meant to open.

yer, ireland aint winning s***.

Yeah I certainly kiboshed that one for them didn't I :/

lol Warner was out first ball :D

THANG KOD for steve smith.

he truly is a machine and has saved australia so many times.

Nothing quite like a vintage English batting collapse.

Steve Smith doing it all again it seems.

yup, just need head or wade to hang around wiht him (and a bowler).

put on another 250 and hopefully we can bowl the poms out!

(both wade (100) and head(50) did hang around)

we got england by the balls now.

Is Smith the second best batsmen of all time?

yes. yes he is.

SMITH 142
WADE 110

how?????

How what?

the combination of:
a not-top-of-its-game australian team
the rest of the team falling at not great scores
playing away

led me to guess that we would do a whole lot worse than we have, and i suppose i was a little dismissive of smith, having not had him to rely on in such a while

So the only reason I can think of why Anderson is batting is that he must be retiring after this game.

omg, so good.

Dragging up old issues:

A friend of mine raised the issue today of whether Smith should be at all culpable for the cheating incident.

I confess I didn't pay much attention to the details of the whole thing. I was so disgusted that anything even remotely like that could happen in any Australian professional sport I kind of just immediately checked out. I assumed that Smith was directly involved, but my mate suggested that was not that case and he was basically taking some indirect responsibility just because he was captain, and it's what we'd expect a "good captain" to do - step up and take responsibility.

But he also raised the question of what does being a captain even mean? Everyone in the team is an adult and makes their own decisions. So now I wonder if Smith was at all involved and was just trying to do the right thing as a leader. Maybe this is totally obvious to everyone else but again I just haven't even thought about it at all until now.

nah, its unfortunate, but by doing nothing, he is implicit.

its a shame, he seems like a good person and it obviously affected him greatly.

i am happy that he got pinged and i dont think we'll ever see anything like that in australian cricket again.

The Review Heard Around the World.

So the dropped catch and the missed run out (especially the run out, it was club cricket stuff) are certainly a thing. But the review that was taken which was 100% never out was a tactical error that can't be excused. Drop Paine and replace with Labuschagne, Wade keeps. Hope they can come back from that giant clusterf***.

Test cricket best cricket.

edit: oh yeah, and make Cummins captain.

great cricket, bad result for us. we fluffed it bad.

So yay and stuff The Ashes are ours but it would be awesome to win the series so come on aussie come on come on etc

Odd decision for Paine to bowl first I reckon but my oracle skills have been particularly bad lately so I'll keep my mouth shut about that one (Cummins... so very tired). Surely Smith can't make runs again. I mean he has to fail at least once right? Also, why Mitch Marsh?

i have no idea what the aussie selectors are playing at.

Seems Marsh turned out alright. I had forgotten that's he's sacrificed large amounts of cash in T20 tournament money and played County cricket so good on him. Hopefully he makes runs too. But Starc would have had this tail knocked the f*** over by now and also wouldn't have dropped that catch.