We’ve reached the first week of six in this year’s Cricket World Cup over in India with some exciting match-ups to kick things off, such as the 2019 Final rematch opener between England v New Zealand. England didn’t do so bad for a start thanks to Joe Root (77) earlier on of 282-9 even though they couldn’t reach 300, but that big batting partnership of Opener Devon Conway (152) & No.3 Rachin Ravindra (123) has helped NZ wow the defending champions by a nine wicket win – having each recorded their own 100s.
Sounds like NZ’s attacking approach is the original birth place of Bazball where it has been adopted to England since last year by their Test coach Brendon McCullum. Although it’s safe to say that he’s not their white-ball coach (Matthew Mott is who formerly coached the Australian women’s side), despite having a similar kind of dedicated coaching staff who shares the same philosophy as him. NZ went on to beat the Netherlands two days ago by 99 runs two days ago (Monday) while England has also recorded their first win of the 2023 CWC v Bangladesh yesterday by 137 runs.
Then the tables turn on our Aussies who unfortunately didn’t get the win they wanted from Sunday v the host nation, India. It looked so promising from the start when you got Dave Warner & Steve Smith smashing 30/40s, but then the rest didn’t do so well where they ended up just above 200 before India were too good to bring it home with the winning runs by six wickets.
Their next game is tomorrow night AEDT v South Africa who got their first win from Saturday v Sri Lanka. Now the Proteas would want to treat carefully with water later on who is well known for being chokers like India – but so far, so good.
SA recently beat the Aussies at home out of a five-match ODI series last month (3-2) & that it’s something the Aussies needs to do in order to turn things around such as their batting card on such hot conditions over there. There is still some time left to play for where Australia will look to win some matches against 2-3 top teams & then hopefully put themselves into the Top 4 finals, with Sri Lanka coming after this next game on Monday.
