Charismatic

Looks like Scotland have every intention of batting towards a 300+ target. England need wickets to slow them down.

LauraNotts

I think victory for England was almost inevitable. Their bowling needs some serious work though and good effort by Scotland to hold out and be defiant until the end.

Blade Down Under

The only positive today was Ali.

The rest was utter rubbish!

Struggle to get over 300 against that lot after the first wicket. Then struggle to bowl a bunch of part timers out that Nottinghamshire would thrash!

Huge improvement is required against Sri Lanka in order to qualify and hopefully avoid South Africa. Ballance in particular should not start the next game. He can only do test matches, not one days. Get Hales in now!!!

Charismatic

Gayle looked in trouble on after the Pakistan match but has just hit 100+ against Zimbabwe making Dave Cameron look like a real twit, maybe someone should offer Dave a retirement package?

Charismatic

Gayle hit 215!

Charismatic

Ireland just caught the UAE with 4 balls to spare. You always seem to get your moneys worth watching the Irish play.

chocolate cake

Yeah, decent analysis, it's sad how far England have fallen in the last two years from being top or close to in both Tests and ODIs and winning 20/20 world cup. The pounding they took in last years Ashes as effected alot of them.

Two disastrous performances against Aus and NZ, wasn't so much losing but the thrashing by Australia and then the NZ game being virtually over well before the floodlights came on.
I'd just take qualifying than worry about where, as we've no chance of finishing top 2, so it likely to be SA or India, the latter we've actually beaten a couple of times last month.

I'm enjoying the tournament despite England being pants, though the teams should deffo play more often, weekdays there seems to be only a game a day which ridiculous.

For me it as to be England first in the footy and the cricket, then NZ. So we'll be backing the Kiwis on saturday against the Aussies. The rugby I couldn't care less.

Tom H

I'd fancy our chances against India. They've surprised me so far as they looked a side who's confidence has evaporated during their tour of Australia. I think they were even calling for Dhoni to leave the captaincy after their recent thrashings against Australia and Us.

But I do agree about how far English cricket has fallen. The thing is we should have seen what was happening during the tour of New Zealand in 2013/14. The signs were there during the tests when we flukely got a draw out of the Auckland match. The 3-0 victory against a slowly improving Australia didn't really give a true reflection as well. Plus I think we lost all the one day series games against Australia and New Zealand back in England (I may be wrong on that)

The 5-0 thrashing should have been the 'Houston we have a problem' but it then turned into a KP bashing scenario. I cannot remember many tests where our tail end (after the 5th wicket goes) has scored more than 50. Hence mainly why KP kept going for shots, playing McCullum style in tests and ODIs. In fact, I can't recall our tail end doing anything of serious note for ages now. Once you get through 3 or 4 English wickets, you then see yourselves batting within the hour. What do our batting coaches teach these players?

Then we have the bowling attack, which for the life of me I don't know why they've gone back to consistent bowling leg side or short pitch! How many Yorkers have we seen them bowl, two or three an innings? It's been happening for a while now, where we're bowling down the leg side or giving batsman delicious short pitched bowls to smack the boundaries with. I see our bowlers do that, and then I see the likes of Tim Southee, Mitchell Johnson and co who have gone down the Glenn McGrath route of good/full length offstump bowling, with some outswing. Both those bowlers have improved so much since 2012 - they'll never be as good as Glenn McGrath (who in my opinion is the best fast/medium swing bowler the game has seen), but they'll certainly be a similar bowler to him. Why on earth do the bowling coaches not get it back into our bowlers. Jimmy Anderson in 2010-2012 did it consistently but now he's reversed back to the short bowls. Not his game

It didn't help that we got rid of Cook 6 weeks before the World Cup, nor consistenly fannying around with Bopara at number 3 - only to drop him for Balance who is no way a one day batsman. Plus our best ODI - Alex Hales should be opening with Ali and Bell at number 3 or 4. Bell is best used to forming a partnership with a big hitter, not being an opener.

We should qualify for the 2nd stage but if we get to the semi finals - then the WC has been a success.

As for Saturday, I see a repeat of 92. I reckon the Kiwis will beat the Aussies but then will lose in the semi finals to India or South Africa (good effort for them). I still can't see anything but an Australia v South Africa final at the MCG.

By the way Blade, I thought for a side with no confidence - we played well against Scotland. Granted we should have scored higher after the excellent performance by Ali but we were never going to lose that game from scoring 300. There was more chance of Isreal destroying weapons being found in Iraq than Scotland scoring 300 against us on Monday.

Charismatic

SA just made 400 runs against W. Indies . I wonder if Chris Gale has another 200+?

There should be a rule that AB de Villiers has to hop between the wickets in a sack. SA make other teams look so lazy, if your fielding isn't world class they will run you ragged.

Charismatic

Australia look in a spot of bother now.

Charismatic

Australia are buckling!

Blade Down Under

That would have been one of the all time greatest balls up ever.

How Starc didn't get man of the match is a joke. Obviously the officials don't want to upset the locals. Just in case any are all back fans

Well played both teams.

Charismatic

Great game. Starc bowling was just awesome, he clawed Australia back into that game.

Batting? Nothing to write home about. Hopefully McCullum is OK.

LauraNotts

That was AMAZING!!!!!!! The atmosphere in the ground was brilliant I was high fiving total strangers.

Most satisfying thing...Glenn Maxwell fielding in front of our stand right before the last ball and making a choking gesture at the crowd...talk about Karma.

Charismatic

Not sure if England are good enough to beat Sri Lanka if they don't pull themselves together.