I, a Scot, mean to have a bit of fun at the expense of one of my English friends in our English pub tonight. He never tires of telling me how awful Scotland's football team is, despite the fact that I have no interest in the game. He, on the other hand, is a fanatical cricket supporter, so my approach will be to point out that HIS cricket team and MY football team seem to be pretty much on a par these days!
Well England made a fight of it over the coin toss at least.
At some point, defeats like this might actually cause the management to take notice of the problems English ODI Cricket is suffering. We can only hope.
now come on people, please. Let's take the positives from this...
..there's losing and there's losing. Eight wickets. Count 'em.
So, to all you moaning gainsayers who just think England aren't very good, you're completely overlooking their ability to set new standards of humiliation and inject some very real life into the phrase 'national f##king disgrace.'
That aside, McCullum's a great captain with a ferociously hungry side. I really hope they storm this tournament.
And yet due to the competition format there's still all to play for. All England need to do is come 4th ahead of Scotland Afghanistan and Bangladesh and they are 3 lucky wins away from being World Champions :-)
I'm not a betting man :-)
I just hope
A) The weather in Brisbane improves before Ireland's game with UAE
B) I don't live to regret saying that (you know what I mean!)
226 balls to go... that should save on NZ's energy bill - a day-night match that didn't go on long enough to need the lights turned on.
But they guys did hit a perfect storm today - McCullum and Southee are good players but not usually that good. On the other hand, England aren't usually that bad - few teams are.
QM and his fellow Scots are right to fancy their chances.