Tuesday, March 18, 2014

By popular demand....


Bangladesh puts Nepal in their place

among other news. So before I get to my match analysis let me just review the format of this tournament. There are 16 teams that were seeded before the tourney began. The bottom 8 teams were forced to play in a preliminary round (the top 8 given automatic berths to the second round). In this initial round the 8 teams have been divided into 2 groups A and B. they will play each team in their group - so 3 matches. They top team from each group moves on, the other 6 go home. The two teams that move on are then slotted into new groups along with 4 of the other top 8. So again we will have two groups (1 and 2 this time) that will all play each other within the group (so 4 matches this time) and the top 2 teams from each group will move on to the semifinals. So, there you have it. That's why all the best teams don't start playing until next week.

So, today Bangladesh crushed Nepal. They won by 8 wickets. Nepal batted first and put up a mere 126 to chase. Khadka and Vesawkar were able to hit the 40 mark but little else happened. They did bat for the full 20 overs, only dropping 5 wickets, so apparently the runs were coming in pretty slow. Bangladesh only needed 15.3 overs to crush Nepal's tournament dreams. The highest run total came from Anamul Haque (42).

The other group A game today was Afghanistan and Hong Kong. Afghanistan won by 7 wickets. Hong Kong were out (or is it in?) first and hit 153. Their opener went out with a duck, I of course had him on my team - lesson learned. The next three guys did most of the work and Hong Kong hung in for all 20 overs, so well done for that. On the bowling side, 2 wickets a piece to Zadran, Hotak, and Nabi. Then Afghanistan were up and their early order went to town chasing down the 153 in 18 overs losing only 3 wickets. Shahzad and Shafiqullah both hit half centuries.

Despite Afghanistnas win today it seems unlikely they will advance, that privileged will most likely go to Bangladesh.

How about us??

Missy retook the top spot from her adoring husband but Bob and Katy S are hot on her heals. Anna and James must be shy on some pivot data cause they are both around 400 points back with Moira close behind. Henry left me at the ice cream shop and is leading the laggers followed by his adoring wife and daughter in law. Michael? well lets just say he didn't drag his butt out of bed in order to make his trades, so........... he's in last.

WORM?? Yes! We need a worm. Anna? would you take over worm duty? Come on, I know you already have one started.

Tomorrow will be group B with Netherlands taking on Zimbabwe and Ireland vs. the UAE.

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