ICC Cricket World Cup 2015

moonred said:
Rahat dropped both Pakistan and India's WC. Na we will beat the aussies.
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:nervous:

kotha said:
Afridi is bowling too short.. Need to pitch the ball up..
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He's been piss poor. If the Pakistan selectors have any bollocks, they'll pack him in, along with Younis khan. Fortunately for him though, their fans love him, so it doesn't matter if he fails repeatedly.

kps88 said:
If they did this against India the conspiracy theorists would have had a field day.
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Been done already, but anyways: @Dumbstar
 
kotha said:
What a joke the ICC is..

Apparently it's own president is saying the umpiring decisions might have been pre-arranged!!:lol: An idiot to lead a stupid organization.. Just perfect..

https://cricket.yahoo.com/news/cricket-icc-chief-blasts-own-president-over-fix-085501508.html
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Kamal, whose position has been largely ceremonial since India's Narayanaswami Srinivasan became the body's chairman last year, said the ICC's acronym seemed to stand for the Indian Cricket Council.
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:lol:
 
That Wahab spell was one of the best spells I've ever seen. That was brutal, almost MJ like in the Ashes.

India should beat Australia if their bowling can keep calm and composed, because the Aussie bowling is not keeping India to under 300.
 
Wahab has come on leaps and bounds since coming out of the shadows. When's Mohamed Aamir allowed to play again? I bet its soon. ;)

Oh yeah, #gloryglorymanutd :(
 
The way Pakistan played during the league stages, and somehow fluked a win - Would have been an injustice on the scale of Scousers winning the Champions League in 2005.

@Dumbstar
 
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The Man Himself said:
I always laugh when subcontinent teams or any team for that matter try to sledge out Aussies. They have invented it for ffs...they know how to do it and how to react (or not) to it. Best example, check Zaheer vs Hayden 2003 final. Hayden was laughing when Zaheer was sledging.
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:lol:

That was horrible. Zaheer sledged and put the ball all over the place. But Australians can be got at though. Ganguly regularly did it to Steve Waugh hehe.
 
Wahab v Watson, the fury and the folly
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ANDREW FIDEL FERNANDO IN ADELAIDE
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For 30 minutes, everything else took a backseat, as the world watched in awe and fear, a fired-up Pakistan fast bowler mercilessly bullying an Australian batsman




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Play02:46
Chappell: Wahab could've won it for Pakistan


"Are you holding a bat?"

When Shane Watson stalks in from the slips to lean in and spit those words at Wahab Riaz, does he know? Does he have any bloody idea, what he is really doing to Wahab, and 90 minutes later, to himself?

Australia had, at one stage, spoken in team meetings about easing off Kevin Pietersen verbally. "It fires him up," was Brett Lee's reasoning. They had not had this meeting about Wahab. When Mitchell Starc beats his edge with an outswinging yorker in the 39th over, the bowler slithers forward. He tells the batsman: "It's the white thing, you have to hit it." Wahab, already cranky at another middle-order meltdown from his team-mates, follows Starc down the pitch. He seethes at the bowler, complains to the umpires.





'Wahab one of the best in the world'
Misbah-ul-Haq on Wahab's spell

"Nobody in this world is very good against a bowler who is bowling 150kph and with this sort of deceptive pace and bounce. Today he's shown his class again. At one stage we were pretty much in the game, and the way he was bowling, that catch could have made a big difference, but this the way it is."

On Wahab's World Cup

"He was a different bowler in the World Cup. You could rate him at the moment one of the best bowlers in the world - the kind of pace he's generating and the way he's bowling. I think still, to become Wasim Akram and Waqar Younis, he needs a lot of experience and especially the kind of yorkers and reverse swing they really bowled. But I think he's a much improved bowler, and he could just be a leading bowler for Pakistan."





Next over, James Faulkner throws Wahab a stare. Brad Haddin, running close to the stumps to collect a return throw, sticks his own verbal shiv in Wahab's side. Watson's sledge is only one of many, but it's Watson's sledge Wahab remembers. Before the end of the night, Watson would know best of all, this is not a man worth ruffling; that Wahab's blood boils when you turn up the heat.

Eighteen overs and an innings break later, it is Wahab with the white thing in his hands. Third ball, he rushes David Warner into an uppercut, which settles in the palms of third man Rahat Ali. Tenth ball, Michael Clarke arches his creaking back and fends the white thing to Sohaib Maqsood at short leg.

The first ball to Watson would have flattened the batsman's grille. He dips beneath it with only a little discomfort, but for Wahab, ducking is tantamount to submission. He gets in Watson's face, claps him sarcastically. The next ball is 150kph, Watson dare not play.





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Wahab Riaz smelled blood and did not stop © Getty Images






The next over is even more intense. Wahab is an inferno. The white thing is a meteor. Watson goes through series of evasive full-body spasms. His back and limbs are aping the shape of half the alphabet, but his mouth can form no words now. In the stands, 35,516 people all smell leather, voices hoarse, fidgeting, pumping fists from the edge of their seats. In the slips, Haris Sohail's face contorts at the climax of each delivery, sometimes with glee, other times with desperation. On occasion his eyes are filled with fear. Is he afraid for Watson?

Steven Smith, who is bending space-time to appear in a parallel universe from his partner, routinely takes a single early in the overs that follow and coolly observes the combat from the best vantage point in the world. Does he feel the heat pouring off Wahab? Is he enjoying the view?



All through the match, the cricket had not failed to be interesting. This spell is transcendental. Of the tens of thousands in the ground, there is only one protagonist, and one victim, but the cricket so good, all are drawn in. Wahab's anger is felt as keenly as Watson's timidity. So bent is Wahab on embarrassing Watson, he taunts him after every ball.

In one over, he does it so many times, it's as if Wahab rides a conveyor belt from the bowling crease into Watson's personal space. In the crowd, nothing of their exchange is heard, but its details are intimately understood. The Adelaide Oval playing surface covers acres of land. The stands themselves are vast and high. But in those moments, it's as if the whole stadium exists in the burning space between these two men.





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Shane Watson experienced an onslaught like no other © Getty Images






"When I was batting Watson just came up to me and said, 'Are you holding a bat?' And that was going through my mind," Wahab later said. "I let him know that even he is having the bat, but he couldn't touch the ball. I know that nowadays, he's not good on the short ball. It was a plan of myself that we discussed in the team meeting."

Eventually, Watson is defeated. Having ducked, arched and hopped, he is eventually humiliated into playing a hook shot off the first ball of Wahab's fifth over. Australian crowds so often scream insults at foreign fielders lining up high catches, but in the seconds this top-edged ball hung in the air, the wind's rustling through the trees at the Cathedral End was heard in perfect silence. When Rahat spilt the simple chance, 35,000 yelped - more in relief than frustration. A sheepish Watson is avoiding gazes at the non-striker's end. A disbelieving Wahab is keeled over, mid pitch.

In the limp finish, an hour later, Australia cruise to the semi-final with six wickets in hand and 97 balls remaining. On the scoreboard, Wahab's figures read 9-0-54-2. Watson has 64 not out from 66. Few will remember in years to come, the ins and outs; that Pakistan had been bowled out for 213.

But few will forget the theatre, and the unbridled, oscillating emotion of this spell. Tattooed into their nerves will be the night a fast bowler filled a stadium with his fury; the half-hour their collective pulses raced in sync with a batsman's heart.

Andrew Fidel Fernando is ESPNcricinfo's Sri Lanka correspondent. @andrewffernando
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ICC charging Watto & Wahab is pathetic. It was a great spectacle between the two and made for a compelling battle on the field.

Early wicket of McCullum but a good start by NZ.
 
Wahab did brilliantly but his fielders let him down. Would have been a much much closer match had Watson been caught given how the Aussie innings were going. Was a fun spell, seeing them charged is ridiculous.
 
4st Quarter-Final: New Zealand vs West Indies
Think WI can win today.
 
Dammit, we needed Kane badly. Have no faith in Taylor.
 
Dumbstar said:
That is truly, truly sick. :annoyed:

But yes I agree, I'm confident and I want to be tagging you on to many 'Dumpstar was right' posts when Liverpool beat you.

I don't do disappearing. I've been regular on here since, well, a very long time. Besides me disappearing is what everyone on Redcafe wants! :wenger:
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:D

So.....dumbdumb, Mar diya jaye ki chod diya jaye, bol tere saath kya salook kiya jaye!

I actually feel bad winning this bet. I know that cliches and rhetoric is the language of the internet and the current media but contrary to the perception this is not a "Mercurial" or "Temperamental" Pakistan team. They are just basically shit. I also have been watching cricket since a 16 year old Mumbikar was hit on his nose in Sialkot and kept batting with a bloodied nose against Waqar, Wasim and Imran; this is the worse Pakistani team I have seen in my time. It's actually a huge disservice to compare them to the '92 team or the teams of the past, like they were in the media. Imran, Miandad, Malik, Mushy, young Wasim and Inzi et.al to this bunch? Jesus Christ!

Pakistan teams always had great bowling which was inconsistently complemented by their batting. The teams were hampered at times due to internal politics but those guys never lacked talent. I find it hilarious when someone mentions, "we miss Mohd. Amir". Oh,yeah, that guy who hasn't played for 5 years. :rolleyes:

When I was 12,13, 14 we used to have SG Ball or Pepsi (winning team got a new SG cricket ball or we went for Pepsi post game and the loser paid) matches on Sundays. And I am not exaggerating when I say that we used to show more patience and intelligence while batting than this Pakistani team. Harris Sohail, Misbah, Umar, Maqsood - what the feck was that? Dumb shots, one after the other when they could have got 250 by applying a little bit of their brains. The fielding and the dropped catches were on expected lines too.

The thing with our part of the world is that we'll always take the easier option, always. Pakistan cricket needs a rethink. Or they would join the West Indies in only producing technically inept and impatient 20-20 cricketers.

Anyway, I'll get down from my soapbox now. Don't worry, I won't torment you too much, just a little bit if we beat you guys on Sunday. :)
 
It's been a while since Taylor was decent. Fingers crossed that he can find some form here however he just doesn't look like he is going to do it in this game. He looks unsure in his strokes.
 
Stack said:
It's been a while since Taylor was decent. Fingers crossed that he can find some form here however he just doesn't look like he is going to do it in this game. He looks unsure in his strokes.
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He's faced 50 balls now. If he doesn't kick on and start getting boundaries, he may as well give his wicket away, the run rate needs to go up.
 
Taylor running between wickets will always make me nervous.
 
Stack said:
Well he has done his bit in helping guptil get a decent total so it's not all bad
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That's true, but it's sad that someone as good as Ross Taylor is helping the other batsman and not smashing them himself.
 
Guptill going for the double.
 
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