And a very Happy Birthday to You

Did you all hear the sonic boom as Bazinga soared to the top of the charts? Well done Anna and a Happy Birthday to you. First place is your gift - enjoy! Do to Birthday festivities I am going to keep this short. Anna is in the lead, Missy in the bottom - outdone by her 3 year old grandson who picked his captain because his name was highlighted in orange.

No surprises in today's games. England trounced Afghanistan knocking them out of the competition and New Zealand trounced Bangladesh. Tomorrow we have Sri Lanka v. South Africa and Australia v. West Indies. Finally my captain gets to play - lets hope he plays well.

That's all for now, Katy

Was that a game?

Or just a South African practice session? Seriously did Zimbabwe leave their players on the plane? I knew they were underdogs but really, they didn't even show up to this match. And my only Zimbabwian got me a golden duck. Lucky for me I had some Proteas to get me a few points which I sorely need since my captain has yet to play a game.

Not much changed in our little comp except Catherine seems to have had a bit of a surge. Now that we have a few data points maybe I can convince Michael to break out the worm. What do say Michael? We need a worm! I mean, we need a worm please!

Tomorrow my captain will still not be playing, but other folks will. Folks like the Kiwis and the Bangladeshis. Also the Afghans and the Brits. Good luck to all.

The Helicopter Shot

Did you see it? The helicopter shot was all the rage on the commentary in the India Afghanistan game. Personally I fell asleep without seeing much. This was not due to the cricket but rather two small helicopters that live in my house. Anyway, India did indeed beat Afghanistan but not by much. It was actually a semi close game and Afghanistan definately held their own there. As for Australia and Ireland. Australia pretty easily shut Ireland down. Apparently in a not so sportsman like fashion as the umpires had to squash the taunting more than once. But that's OK, we all know the Aussies are low class - just ask Moira.

As for our verbal lashings? Here goes: Sorry Moira but I love me the Aussies and they hit plenty of balls to the walls for me. Unfortunately some of my Indians fell short and lost a few points. Leaving me in much the same place as before. James seems to have HoGged all the points for the day while The Superheroes stopped the Balehouse Busters from doing any damage. Michael's Boomstick sounds more like a dink and the Thought Pads must still be thinking cause they didn't do much. All in all, except for James the rest of us are pretty much in the same place as yesterday. Sorry, Missy you are right, The Winners did win a few. But its early folks, really early. So, as the tourney goes on it will be critical to manage your trades. Don't spend them all to soon.

Tomorrow its just South Africa against Zimbabwe. I have high hopes for Zimbabwe, so I stacked my team with South Africans. good night.

No Mendis?

don't worry, most of us didn't pick him. But well done to Henry and Anna for doing so. I suspect Abdullah picked Mendis as well but we don't know that guy. He's an interloper who snuck in before I made our competition private. So, we can all use him as a gauge of how we are doing, the other end of the gauge will be Sean. Yes Sean has created a team. His team was named by him - any guesses what he's going to be for Halloween? And he also choose all the players himself. I did not coach him in anyway. The only thing I did was to offer him only the players who were from squads playing in matches tomorrow. I had highlighted the batsmen in yellow and the bowlers in pink. He had to choose 6 yellows and 4 pinks. It might be helpful when using Sean as a gauge to know that he choose Harbhajan Singh as his captain because I had accidentally highlighted him yellow and then went back over his name in pink - creating an orange color. Any guesses what Sean's favorite color is? So there you go.

Anyway, Sri Lanka pretty easily beat Zimbabwe by 82 runs today and obviously Mendis was the man of the match. He had like 6 wickets, 43 runs, and was not out. so there you go. Tomorrow we see two matches. Australia v. Ireland and Afghanistan v. India. Australia and India should both win comfortably but you never know when there might be an upset. Should be fun to watch no matter what. Enjoy!

Ooh by the way, Michael will be bringing out the worm just as soon as we have a few data points to make it with so don't worry. I am diligently recording our scores in an excel spreadsheet for his use later on.

The Games have begun

please return your seatbacks to the upright position and stow your trays, we are taxing down the runway and about to take off. Zimbabwe is out on the field bowling to the host nation Sri Lanka. Dilshan and Munaweera, the starters, are currently not out and doing well. I now have to decide, do I try and keep up via cricinfo or wait until I have an opportunity to catch some of the actual game? Seems it will be broadcast via ESPN 3 which we get on the xbox! And since its on the xbox you can watch live or tape delayed. Oh, how to convince Sean and Imogen that this is what they want to watch??? Anybody in the area who wants to catch a game - come on over. And definately plan on a little cricket watching party for the finals. I'm thinking bloody marys and coffee cake............

World Twenty20 2012 Begins

I just cut and pasted the first post from our last tournament. Seemed like a good place to start:


OK, so here we go again. I have updated all the links on the right so don't hesitate to use them often. And don't hesitate to post comments - that's half the fun ya know?

To get us going I will put some questions out there for you to ponder and reply to:
1. What will your team name be? Does it have any special meanings?
2. What is your strategy for this tournament?
3. Other than yourself, who would you most like to see win our competition? Who would you like to see fail? (I know that's not nice but come on, there is someone you secretly want to be on the bottom) Who do you really want to make sure you are ahead of?


Discuss........


Also, keep in mind that this is a Twenty20 tournament. So they play shorter games (20 overs) as opposed to the 50 overs of a 1 day international game like they did in the World Cup. So expect batters to be going balls to the walls (hey, that would be a good team name - I may have to change) and not holding back - this could lead to high scores or a duck.

final note: matches get underway on Tuesday the 18th with the host nation Sri Lanka taking on Zimbabwe. Don't discount Zimbabwe, I think this might be their year.

The bitter end

I hope you all have been carefully contemplating your final set of trades. This is it, one last chance to make whatever move you can. Can Anna hang onto 2nd? Bob, Me, Suresh, Catherine? Who will get the highly coveted 6th place spot? Can Michael finish in the top 10? Can Lynda fall far enough down to get the Sweaty Teddy award? One more game, one more day of excitement.

Missy came over the other day to watch the India / Pakistan semi. Kinda a boring game. India batted first and played pretty pedestrian cricket, we all thought that Pakistan would have no trouble beating them. But then Pakistan batted and looked like crap, so India it is in the finals facing off against Sri Lanka. India will have to do better if they are to take home the title. We're all set around here for our finals party. Its to bad that we are spread all over the world because it would really be fun to have ALL of us together for the excitement. Lets hope its a real nail biter.

If memory serves me, Paul won the last World Cup and earned his name on the cricket bat trophy. Now it looks like we'll need to get the trophy to James (I'm not spoiling anything by naming James winner am I?) Catherine - could you bring it with you when you come? If not this trip then maybe in August. We'll engrave James on there and he can hold it for the next four years until I claim it in 2015! Thanks all for the fun and competition.