C'mon the boys, lets do an Ireland! 

New Zealand in New Zealand are a different proposition to a West Indies side in disarray. Will be happy with a respectable score.

One amazing fact I read today is that of the 5 successful run chases of over 300 in the cricket world cup history, it has been Ireland that has achieved the target in 3 of those.

And if there is one team in the Universe that England will not wish to be beaten at cricket by on Sunday.........

 

Let's do it boys, never get a better opportunity than now!

Well, Scotland didn't do it but I think they can take enough from the game to have a realistic hope of picking up their first ever World Cup win.  England, on the other hand must now realise that they have a fight on their hands to even reach the quarter finals and are unlikely to progress beyond that.  Without Moeen Ali it might have been a very different story.  As an Englishman, I'm worried.

 

I listened to commentary early on and went to bed with England coasting at 160 without loss.  With all wickets in hand and with the pitch offerring little to the bowlers, the scene was set for the English batsmen to launch an assualt on the lowest ranked team in the competition.  But no.  Yet again the English batsmen failed and could only muster about 130 runs in the final 20 overs.  Pathetic! Still a target of over 300 was always going to be too much for Scotland and so the English bowlers were under no pressure at all and should have been able to keep things really tight,so Scotland did well to score as much as they did.  Moeen and Bell won the game in the first 30 overs.  For the rest of the match Scotland at least matched an England side who were no longer under any pressure.  They should take great heart from that.

Edited February 23, 201511 yr by DoofersDad

Very fair analysis by DD.  The opening stand turned out to be the difference between the sides.  I hope Scotland can go on and get a win or two in their remaining group games.

Although I don't follow cricket much, the first thing I did this morning was look up the result of the game!

The Afghanistan match is next for Scotland - on paper their most realistic chance of getting that elusive first win...although, like most of the 'Associate' sides, are no mugs!

I just found out that disappointingly, the next World Cup in 2019 is being reduced to not 12, but just 10 teams - what a slap-in-the-face for these developing cricket nations!

It'll probably be the 10 Test playing nations.

Surely that's a backward move if the ICC are wanting to make it a truly global sport. I'm only following this tournament because Scotland are involved, but if it was the 10 Test nations, I would barely acknowledge it!

I agree SB

 

This will hinder Scotland who have made, although at a very very slow rate, progress over the last 20 years.

 

Only competition at the highest level will will help improve our standard.

 

And if we had only bowled Moeen in the first over......... 

I believe Ireland is aiming to achieve Test status by 2020 but I dont think Scotland have any plans for such. There's just not enough interest north of the border to make such viable.

Chris Gayle 200 in 138 balls blimin ridiculous!

http://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/0/cricket/31635759

 

How on earth did Scotland manage to lose that one?  Talk about snatching defeat from the jaws of victory!

http://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/0/cricket/31635759

 

How on earth did Scotland manage to lose that one?  Talk about snatching defeat from the jaws of victory!

 

Yes DD, I woke up at 4am and checked the score. Afghanistan were 100 for 7 at that stage so I went back to sleep quite happy that our 1st World Cup victory was just an hour or so away.  I couldn't believe it when I saw the score this morning. 

Our day is coming........

..but it might not e for a very long time given the very limited scope for associated countries to qualify for the next World Cup

 

I often wonder how Ireland, with no greater cricketing tradition than Scotland and very many fewer teams and active participants, always seem to do so much better, in relative terms, in these tournaments

Possibly more funding to the sport a grass level, or still played more in schools?

http://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/0/cricket/31635759

 

How on earth did Scotland manage to lose that one?  Talk about snatching defeat from the jaws of victory!

 

I think in Scotland we should just stick to the sports that we are good at, like, erm.....

....elephant polo!

That was about 10 years ago, and has become our 1966!

Shinty...

I watched the highlights of the Scotland-Afghanistan game - as DD said, it was snatching a defeat from the jaws of victory. Even the missed opportunity to hit the wickets to run-out the batsman was painful - the cricket equivalent of Chris Iwelumo's open goal miss!

This sort of thing happens all the time - the Scotland rugby union team are often guilty of blowing chances to win matches with inconceivable dropped passes when it seemed easier to score!

What is it about the Scottish sporting psyche?! It's almost like we're too scared to win or prefer to wallow in 'glorious failure'!

Or is it that I only notice because it's Scotland!

I think I would rather be a Scottish Cricket fan today than a West Indies one.

 

All sorts of records in that game, but the one that I find is quite astonishing is that Holder, the West Indies captain, only conceded 9 runs from his first  5 overs but ended up conceding a record 104 in his 10!  That included 64 off the last 2.  Quite incredible stuff.

Beaten by a country which is a dysfunctional war zone and whose women compete in the Olympics wearing kit which is one step removed from a burkha!

Somebody said that the Scottish players were docked 10% of their match fee for that defeat. So do these guys actually get paid for being as absolutely cr@p as that?

I believe that no other country has played so many cricket world cup matches and failed to win any of them. Indeed Scotland's abject ineptitude at cricket is maybe a good reason to reduce the number of teams taking part in the World Cup so their embarrassment can be saved. And even at that, how many of these "Scottish" players are actually third rate Antipodeans or from the Indian subcontinent?

On which subject, I heard a post match interview with the Italian rugby full back who sounded decidedly Southern Hemisphere.

Strange how The Empire seem to be much better at traditional British sports than we are.

I also wonder how this latest outcome is perceived among the ranks of the Nationalists?

Gutted at Scotland losing or delighted that we don't do very well in this quintessentially English activity?

Edited February 28, 201511 yr by Charles Bannerman

 

http://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/0/cricket/31635759

 

How on earth did Scotland manage to lose that one?  Talk about snatching defeat from the jaws of victory!

 

I think in Scotland we should just stick to the sports that we are good at, like, erm.....

 

Well you can sure knock rugby off the list after than Wooden Spoon decider against Italy.

Beaten by a country which is a dysfunctional war zone and whose women compete in the Olympics wearing kit which is one step removed from a burkha!

Somebody said that the Scottish players were docked 10% of their match fee for that defeat. So do these guys actually get paid for being as absolutely cr@p as that?

I believe that no other country has played so many cricket world cup matches and failed to win any of them. Indeed Scotland's abject ineptitude at cricket is maybe a good reason to reduce the number of teams taking part in the World Cup so their embarrassment can be saved. And even at that, how many of these "Scottish" players are actually third rate Antipodeans or from the Indian subcontinent?

On which subject, I heard a post match interview with the Italian rugby full back who sounded decidedly Southern Hemisphere.

Strange how The Empire seem to be much better at traditional British sports than we are.

I also wonder how this latest outcome is perceived among the ranks of the Nationalists?

Gutted at Scotland losing or delighted that we don't do very well in this quintessentially English acti

 

Beaten by a country which is a dysfunctional war zone and whose women compete in the Olympics wearing kit which is one step removed from a burkha!

Somebody said that the Scottish players were docked 10% of their match fee for that defeat. So do these guys actually get paid for being as absolutely cr@p as that?

I believe that no other country has played so many cricket world cup matches and failed to win any of them. Indeed Scotland's abject ineptitude at cricket is maybe a good reason to reduce the number of teams taking part in the World Cup so their embarrassment can be saved. And even at that, how many of these "Scottish" players are actually third rate Antipodeans or from the Indian subcontinent?

On which subject, I heard a post match interview with the Italian rugby full back who sounded decidedly Southern Hemisphere.

Strange how The Empire seem to be much better at traditional British sports than we are.

I also wonder how this latest outcome is perceived among the ranks of the Nationalists?

Gutted at Scotland losing or delighted that we don't do very well in this quintessentially English activity?

 

If you were not so obsessed with your risible attempts at stereotyping or professing support for a party one of who's spokespeople 'only has issues with negroes' it might not have escaped your attention that there is more than one poster on this thread who has, in other fora, expressed support for independence.

 

I have encountered few if any Nationalists who are in the least narrow minded far less so warped as to take delight in failure at a quintessentially English sport which, world wide, has almost as many followers and active participants as football.

I can see no reason why nationalists would ever take pleasure from their failure at a quintessentially English sport.  On the contrary, they take great delight in doing well in such sports particularly when they do better than their neighbours South of the border.  I would have thought nationalists would see success at such sports as a reflection of the ability of Scotland to succeed politically as an independent nation.

 

But it is interesting in that sense to look at the success of the Irish Rugby side.  There, politics have been set aside and the team represents the island of Ireland despite the troubled political background.  They seem to do pretty well on it.  The West Indian nations do it in cricket.  One could argue that in turn reflects a political message of being better together, but that would be rather flippant.  In truth, it is a numbers game and it follows that if you have more people to choose from, you are more likely to have a better team. Of course, England has a much larger population and is in a better position to succeed on it's own, and it has enjoyed success.  England won the football world cup with players from England, but how much more success might a UK team have had with the likes of Best, Giggs and Dalgleish gracing the world stage as part of a top team?

 

I just wish we could keep the petty nationalism out of sport and separate sport from politics.  The sad thing for me about the way nationalism impacts on British sport is that the insistence on having separate English and Scottish teams teams etc rather than a British team actually reduces the chances of supporters throughout the UK of enjoying success at international level and denies the top players the chance of success or even of competing at the top level.  Instead of celebrating success, we are forced to wallow in a level of mediocrity and resort to mocking each other over our failures.

 

Perhaps this is where Charles is coming from.  We enter international competitions with a team structure of our own choosing which makes us less likely to be successful.  So when we fail to succeed then there is a simply inevitability about it.  It really is quite pathetic. 

 

Personally I would like to see other sports taking a lesson from golf.  After routine gubbings by the US, it was decided to open the Ryder Cup team up to European players and as a result the Ryder Cup has become one of the great events in world sport.  Just because it is not a Scottish team does not stop us from celebrating our victory.  Indeed, the fact that the team is a broader international team makes an individual nation celebrate the participation of it's own citizens at the pinnacle of international sport that much more. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Curling - A winning Scot

 

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