Never in doubt.

It is amazing that England who have played so poorly still have a chance of qualifying for the semis.

Of course, sorry, I'd forgotten that he could do no wrong. He must have been given a faulty pedalo and forced to get himself plastered ahead of a big game as part of a Michael Vaughan plan to get him out of the side!

Terribly unconvincing win, but a win against impressive opposition nonetheless. Still, it comes down to this - we have to pull out some kind of sustained performance against South Africa or we've had it, end of story.

Which is what makes me believe that this is not the end of the story. England made the Kensington Oval pitch look as though it was slowing down and making batting difficult later on - while it really still remained great for batting. I think it was a plan to mislead Graeme Smith; if he had seen yesterday's match - and he surely would have done - Smith might wrongly believe that the Kensington Oval wicket also would be hard to chase on with good total by the opposition. After allowing a 'weaker' opposition - Bangladesh - in to bat in Guyana and failing to catch-up later, Smith would naturally be wary of doing the same with England even though it was on a different wicket. England must have reasoned that if Smith won the toss against them he might consider batting first to avoid getting into a similar position as with BD. So they might have decided to 'help' him with that decision by pretending that the Bridgetown wicket also would get slow and low for the chasers. Smith then just might decide to bat if he won the toss, thus facing up to the England's pacemen on a bouncing, swinging pitch. Of course, if Vaughan won the toss, he'd put SA in with the same result.

I don't think we are that clever Nostromo.

I don't think England would do this, as every game is important. For England it would be just as effective to have beaten Bangladesh for under 100 or to have scored 300 plus(something we've yet to do in this world cup) and send the shivers down Smith's spine. Instead now he's thinking 'bring them on'

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In that case the NRR calculation is even more opaque than I thought and I do not understand the arithmetic. Bangladesh scored faster than England yesterday: how can England's NRR improve based on that?

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Nostromo, I really don't think we struggled on purpose. I'd be inclined to think that you were maybe being a little tongue-in-cheek with this post? If not then I apologise, but I really don't think we intended to collapse yesterday!

Yes, I was confused by that.

There are clearly some jolly dodgy accountants and statisticians working for the ICC. Allegedley.

How on earth can a team making 147 from 44 ish overs improve their run rate when the opposition made 143 from 38 ish?

Smacks of a pro-England bias if you ask me. Very strange. Very unusual.

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No, I am definitely not being tongue-in-cheek. Deliberate 'struggling' with an ulterior motive has been done in the World Cup before, but the admins will not allow us to quote the teams involved specifically because of legal reasons - I got told off for doing so last month. But it is my firm belief that a guy like KP would not bat like the way he did yesterday even if a gun was pointing at him - unless of course, that approach was part of a plan. Let SA think we are struggling on this pitch, let them choose their spinner Peterson, let them bat first and we'll knock them over with our pacemen; and when it is our turn to bat, we'll knock Peterson and Smith out of the park and do an adequate job against their fast men and that should be enough to get us through.......that sort of a plan.

Quite easily, it's based on the full 50 over so Bangladesh's run rate would have been less than 3, while Englands would have been over 3, thus improving their run rate. England didn't use the full 50 when chasing, as it wouldn't be fair to make a team chasing wait until the last ball in order to acheive a decent run rate. So its the run rate when they pass the total that is counted I think. If England were bowled out for 150 in 20 overs however, their run rate would have still been 3. Really isn't that hard to understand.

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