Poor ICC went into this tournament thinking in the back of their minds that WI and Afg will steamroll through the other teams but to their horror Afghanistan is almost gone from the tournament. I won't be shocked if ICC plant few matches to get both of the teams to WC
Why would ICC give a F about Afghanistan?
If they did, they wouldnt have trimmed the teams down to 10 and expose them, nor is their success lucrative and their involvement is in a way, a pain in the arse, organising tests for a war ravaged nation isnt easy.
Cricinfo profile of the 'James Bond' of cricket:
FULL NAME: Angus James Mackay
BORN: 13 June 1967, Harare
KNOWN AS: Gus Mackay
Should be 5 more games. We won't play Afghanistan or Scotland again
We win 4 of those games and we are home. Scotland shouldn't be taken lightly. Funny thing about the format is that a loss to Hong Kong would mean absolutely nothing in the grand scheme of things as they probably won't qualify. This is perfect to experiment some combinations we might need to implement as the tournament progresses.
Hong Kong are up next so I would stick PJ Cephas and Chisoro in the team and see how they play. Williams too to see if he has recovered and if he can bowl a bit. Give Ervine another proper go and hopefully he can hit some form. Switch up the order just a lil bit. Play a 8-3 to see how it goes.Give Mire some bowling responsibilities and see how he goes.
I would go with
Cephas
PJ
Hami
BT
Ervine
Williams
Raza
Mire
Chisoro
Blessing
Jarvis
I think this team would still be good enough to beat Hong Kong and it will at least give us a better picture of where some of these guys are before making tough decisions going forward. Just drop Waller completely
Or we could just stick to the usual and keep the momentum going.
Hong Kong can still possibly qualify is they beat Afg.
Cricinfo profile of the 'James Bond' of cricket:
FULL NAME: Angus James Mackay
BORN: 13 June 1967, Harare
KNOWN AS: Gus Mackay
Yeah. Serious injustice to have a 10 team world cup.. this tournament has context though. If this is what the ICC were looking for they have found it. My biggest fear is that this tournament will be so successful in terms of drama that the ICC will see it as another cash cow and fully promote it and televise by keeping it this brutal. There is no other way of describing it.its absolutely brutal. More earth shattering than being knocked out of the group stages of a world cup. So much money at stake..
I'm also now completely convinced we didn't fix the previous Afghanistan games. I guess we get such results because in 1 game you have about 14 mediocre players in the mix and 8 decent ones. Recipe for disaster
I guess I owe an apology for writing that off as a loss. What a massive turnaround. Can we institute knighthoods just for Raza please. The man is everything. The passion he showed during, and after the game. All the others were walking up to the change room and he was there with the fans. He really should be captain.
Hopefully we have learnt a lesson though from this and no longer let our mind get the better of us. We can't keep having slip ups like that. What a thing it would be if Nepal or Hong Kong were able to beat Afghanistan.
This tournament has so much drama, too bad we can't actually see most of it. To be honest a tournament like this should be held in England where most teams have large diasporas of fans.
Neil Johnson, Alistair Campbell, Murray Goodwin, Andy Flower (w), Grant Flower, Dave Houghton, Guy Whittall, Heath Streak (c), Andy Blignaut, Ray Price, Eddo Brandes
