Nice to see that order has been restored in NZ. Very impressive by England, great in the field and all their batters looked in good nick.

Should I start a 2019 Cricket World Cup thread? Qualies start Sunday.

New finals format is absolutely ****: 10 teams only, round robin, semis, final. This means some decent sides with the chance of an upset won't qualify: a max of two from Afghanistan, Ireland, Windies, Zimbabwe can qualify. Round robin goes on for ages & means a ton of basically irrelevant matches - what incentive does a 1-5 team have in their last three matches?

Amazing fielding display

I knew this series would be close

Hopefully Williamson can come back soon and sure us up again

Not sure that there is much other cricket on at that time so maybe it doesn't need a new thread?

Odd format. I guess reducing in the minnows was partly to reduce one sided or meaningless games, but they are bound to have lots of meaningless games with this format.

I guess the games all impact on world rating, but that only matters for the next ICC Trophy which (I assume) will be two years away.

3-2 either way seems likely. (Though, when I say either way I mean for England, obviously!)

What a game this is...

OMG Santner run out the worst way possible to swing it ****

Exciting finish, stupid run out though

That run out was the key

Love these ****ty pitches!

After that Kane 6 with 2 balls left holy ****, heartbreaking at the end

de Kock has to be the biggest idiot out there starting a personal sledging match with Warner. When you have the fastest bowling line up in the world, it really just doesn't make a whole lot of sense to stir them up even more.

Do we know what de Kock said? Maybe a mention of Sonny Bill?

Without knowing the details I'd guess that Warner was being a prick as usual and is largely to blame. Even if the response was generic stuff and not really cutting, mentioning family is out of order. Still, Warner has to take a lot of the blame.

Good series though. SA's home summer seems to have gone a bit pair shaped.

From a post on reddit:

Aussies choose be the first ones to start **** 90% of the time, then get morally outraged when opposition takes it too far. The fact that DeKock was batting at the time makes it likely that he didn't start ****. Warner can't start chirping in his ear, and expect to set boundaries for what's an acceptable comeback.

De Kock better be ready for a broken ****ing arm

Warner should be proud to be SBW's sloppy seconds

Agree with format, but its all dollars in the end while keeping the good teams in the competition for longer.

If I was in charge, I would have liked to have seen 3 pools of 5. Play everyone in your pool (5 games). Top 2 teams from each pool advance to the Super Sixes, where you play teams that you didn't play in pool play (4 games).

After Super Sixes 2nd plays 3rd, with the winner of that to play 1st in the Final.

Better format in terms of keeping things always important/interesting, but the downside is the risk of India getting knocked out early and as such losing dollars (as happened in 2007 World Cup with India and Pakistan getting beaten by Bangladesh and Ireland respectively).

"Ive heard Candice loves DeKock"

Hes a flaming mongrel!

http://www.espncricinfo.com/story/_/...y-altercations

Yea he insulted Warner's wife but according to Graeme Smith Warner insulted DeKock's mom and called him a bushpig (whatever that is). So it's quite rich for him to then turn around and appear so insulted.

I'm with you there. Maybe de Kock can be criticised to some extent but sounds like Warner is mostly to blame and him getting all irate when someone mouths something back is pretty pathetic. He's always been a huge tool.

Have to admit was pulling hard for Afghan bros but this is nice to see.

Ofcourse both these teams should already be in the WC but that's a different story.

Disgraceful that they are making the WC smaller. Makes me so angry, cricket should be growing rather than just confined to the same 8/9/10 countries its always been big in.

http://cricketarchive.com/Lancashire.../57/57191.html

This.

And it probably is growing .. if one could believe the reports of the qualifying games. Tho fake news etc.

Seed India into the last 8/4 if you have to. **** it - seed China into the last 8 as well.

Ross Taylor GOAT

What a ****ing game that was!

Damn what an innings from Ross Taylor