ODI World Cup.

[Donny]

7 wins on the trot. And so many records or near records.

Fantastic effort (esp. Maxwell and Finch) from the team, over those 7 wins.

[K]

Pierik & Wu:

"David Warner's "free-flowing adrenaline" has almost certainly booked his World Cup spot, but has left Usman Khawaja and Shaun Marsh facing a nervous wait."

"... added to his 85 from the Sunrisers' opening game with a brutal 69 off 37 balls against the Royals..."

[Pies4shaw]

Well, he gets Marsh's spot in a heartbeat. Khawaja stays in the team, while he keeps getting good runs.

[Pies4shaw]

Warner now has 254 from 2 completed innings in the IPL. He just made 100*. If 69 from 37 is "brutal", what's 100* from 55?

[K]

He's much more important to the ODI side right now than Smith.

[piedys]

He's much more important to the ODI side right now than Smith.

Yeah, I'm not fussed if Smith doesn't play in the WC ODIs, as long as his head is right for the Ashes series.
Good to see Warner firing with a point to prove.

[K]

(At sb) Warner is =3rd favourite for top tournament runscorer. (Does that include all matches, so finalists are advantaged?)

Virat 7.50, *** 13.00, Warner (Sharma & two more) 15.00.


Can you guess who *** is? I'm mildly surprised, but maybe he's supposed to play his team's anchor role.

[Pies4shaw]

Root, probably.

Meanwhile, Smith's form for Rajasthan is building a little. He made a 30+ overnight. He's not really a T20 batsman - getting a solid score at a bit better than a run a ball is his thing. You need a couple of those batsmen in 50 over matches and you also need a couple with decent technique who can hang in when the pitch is difficult (as he did last night - his solid, if unspectacular, hand probably got his team just enough runs to get over the line in what was a close game).

[K]

Yep, Root. I haven't looked at his figures recently, but his style is not really suited to the modern Biff and Bash enabled by ridiculously flat pitches, enormous bats and tiny grounds. One of the Biffers and Bashers, Roy, is one of the two others on the =3 line.

How have these successful ODI Biffers and Bashers gone in Test cricket?

[ronrat]

I remember some dill on Channel 9 who said ODI was a different game and players like Bradman would have found it different and struggled The late and great Richie Benaud, who rarely got off the leash, was straight on to the front foot. His reply was something like this . "I saw Bradman play, are you serious. With field restrictions, covered pitches, and the no leg side rule Bradman would have opened and been a 100 before the 15 overs were up. He rarely hit sixes in tests because he said it was risk but in shield games he did it all the time. He was also a useful bowler, a brilliant fieldsman and great tactician. He would have averaged 150 in 50 over cricket in a bad year. If he batted the 50 overs overs he would be somewhere around 250 to 300 ". That stopped that silly statement.

[K]

I sort of assumed all squads would be named at the same time, but the Kiwis have named theirs first:

Squad Kane Williamson (capt), Martin Guptill, Henry Nicholls, Ross Taylor, Tom Latham, Colin Munro, Tom Blundell, Jimmy Neesham, Colin de Grandhomme, Mitchell Santner, Ish Sodhi, Tim Southee, Matt Henry, Lockie Ferguson, Trent Boult.

[Donny]

Respect, mate.

For 21 years the NZ cricket teams have been the BLACKCAPS or the Black Caps.

Referring to them as the Kiwis is akin to Oz teams being called the Kangaroos.

[K]

But generic citizens of NZ are called "Kiwis", so at worse it would be like calling Oz teams the "Aussies" (the equivalent term for generic citizens of Oz), which is hardly a hanging crime. (I don't even think Oz cricket teams have official names, do they?)

[Donny]

Not the National teams.

The states did have names: Redbacks, Bulls etc. but I see Victoria has dropped 'Bushrangers' as part of their name. Just Victoria, now. Don't know about the other states.

Has nothing to do with NZ citizens, K, and ... Aussie is not a National bird or animal. It's perfectly fine to refer to the Oz teams as 'Aussies' because we don't have another name.

I didn't mention 'hanging crime'. It's simply a respect issue, mate. They (the NZ players) adopted 'BLACKCAPS' in '98, which was the result of a sponsor's competition.

[K]

Well, if it was just a sponsor...

I don't think whether something is a bird or not is relevant. Outside cricket teams, the question is whether NZers are happy to be called "Kiwis" (or whether USA people are happy to be called "Yankees"). I'm not aware that they are not.

That's the key question, because I cannot see how it's disrespectful for someone to call Oz football teams (Socceroos, Wallabies, Kangaroos) "the Aussies".