Nepal batsmen scored 210 runs in 20 overs. And it was a great goal. And the Qatar batsmen could not meet this target and would lose the match. Nepal batsmen showed great interest in the match and scored runs with effort and struggle. My congratulations to the Nepal team for their win and may they continue to play like this and keep winning matches. And Qatar batsmen should focus on their performance so that they can perform well in the next matches.
Second win for Nepal and now they are on top of Group A. Out of the 10 participating teams, only 2 have native players representing them (apart from Nepal, the only other team is Malaysia). Other 8 teams doesn't even have a single citizen in their squad. Winner of this tournament will qualify for the 2025 Asia Cup and that is the big prize. Last time, Nepal made the cut. But this time the competition is quite tough. Also, the top-3 teams will earn a place in the 2025 ACC Emerging Teams Asia Cup. |
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Spinners once again performed well today. Keshav Maharaj was the best bowler for Rajasthan Royals, and he went for figures of 4-0-23-2. His auction price surprised me. He is the no.1 ODI bowler as per the ICC rankings, and yet Rajasthan Royals paid just ₹50 lakh to get him to their squad. The individual he replaced (Prasidh Krishna) had a price tag 20 times higher. Anyway, I was satisfied with the way Samson utilized the bowlers. Last time, he under-utilized Maharaj and Boult.
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Second round of matches have started in the County Championship. Dean Elgar and Dean Elgar managed to score centuries for Essex, Tom Lammonby did it for Somerset. Cameron Steel (a native player from United States) picked up 4 wickets for Surrey against Somerset (a few days back, the USACA had disqualified Steel from representing them). Another native US player is representing Hampshire (Ian Holland). BTW, a number of overseas players are representing different county sides this season. Nathan Lyon is representing Lancashire, while Mohammad Abbas is playing for Hampshire. Others are Migael Pretorius (Somerset), Kemar Roach (Surrey), Jason Holder (Worcestershire), Scott Boland (Durham) and Blair Tickner (Derbyshire).
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We never saw a player like Figo in Portugal but after a year they had a player like Ronaldo and he had a better performance than Figo in their team. In fact, they never had a player like Deco or Figo but instead, they got something better than these players.
Sometimes all you should do is to give some more chance to the younger players and they can see the reward. We can't expect to see a player like Ronaldo in Portugal anymore but the younger talents can take their place and help the team to get improve for the next World Cup.
Portugal is facing the same problem as Brazil is facing. Despite having a lot of talent at home, many of the emerging players leave for other countries due to the lack of a proper national football league. And those who play in EPL, La Liga or Serie A prioritizes their club instead of the national team. And as far as Portugal is concerned, this country underwent economic upheaval a few years ago, and that time a lot of younger citizens emigrated to greener pastures. This impacted their player pool, without any doubt. |
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UAE Women ODI Tri-Series has been very exciting competition. Each match had surprises and changes in who was winning. Teams played well like Papua New Guinea doing well in their first match against USA. But then they lost to Scotland in next match. And you mentioned Kathryn Bryce so I also think she did very well in batting for Scotland but it also showed that Scotland does also have many good batters. This shows that in cricket team success can depend a lot on just few players. Overall all teams showed their talent and determination in competition. So let's wait further let's see which team will perform much well.
Kathryn Bryce played for Gujarat Giants this season at the Women's Premier League, and I guess it worked to her advantage. Scotland Women won their match against Papua New Guinea Women by a big margin yesterday, and Bryce picked up 2 crucial wickets. Katherine Fraser and Saskia Horley shared 5 wickets between them. Kathryn Bryce and Saskia Horley managed to add 108 runs for the second wicket partnership for Scotland, and the single partnership was almost equal to the total scored by the Papua New Guinea Women. |
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Delhi Capitals bowlers have to be commended as they bowled well which prevented Lucknow Super Giants from setting big run targets. Lucknow Super Giants eventually set a target of 168 runs, which was an easy target for Delhi. Prithvi Shaw, Jake Fraser-McGurk, Rishabh Pant gave excellent performances which helped Delhi win easily. If Lucknow Super Giants could have made the target of 200 runs, the match would have been much more competitive. However, Delhi Capitals have managed to win 2 out of 6 matches, if they can perform well then they can do well in the next match as well.
Delhi was forced to replace Anrich Nortje with Mukesh Kumar, after the former leaked plenty of runs in the first innings. And their experiment didn't worked well, as Mukesh also went for more than 10 runs per over. Although their pacers failed, the two spinners (Kuldeep Yadav and Axar Patel) returned figures of 8-0-46-3. On the other hand, the pacers (Khaleel Ahmed, Ishant Sharma and Mukesh Kumar) went for 12-0-118-4). Pacers bowled 12 overs and went for almost 10 runs per over. On the other hand, the spinners went for less than 10 runs per over. |
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Delhi Capitals played really well in today match against Lucknow Super Giants. Even though Lucknow Super Giants had more experienced players Delhi Capitals controlled match right from beginning. Delhi Capitals aggressive style of play was too strong for Lucknow Super Giants and Delhi Capitals won match easily. As you mentioned Aush Badoni and Jake Fraser McGurk batted well, and Kuldeep Yadav and Khaleed Ahmed bowled exceptionally which helped Delhi Capitals to win. This match shows that teams like Delhi Capitals who are not expected to win can surprise everyone with their great performance.
Quite surprised with Jake Fraser McGurk. He was part of the Australia Under-19s previously. And yesterday was his debut match at the Indian Premier League. Lucknow Super Giants did well towards the end of first innings, when Ayush Badoni and Arshad Khan added quick runs. The two spinners (Axar Patel and Kuldeep Yadav) were quite economical. At this point, the match was like 50-50, but that changed when Jake Fraser-McGurk and Rishabh Pant entered the crease. Both of them added 77 runs for the third wicket. |
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Lol.. Jasprit Bumrah is simply unplayable. He ended up with figures of 4-0-21-5. One more over remain, and Royal Challengers Bengaluru can end up with a total of around 180-190, and they still have Dinesh Karthik out there. Akash Madhwal will be bowling the last over, and he has been expensive so far. Is this going to be a winning total for RCB? I really doubt that because their strength is in batting, and not with the ball. Mohammed Siraj is currently out of form, and other bowlers doesn't have a lot of experience.
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Royal Challengers Bengaluru are now back into the game thanks to the partnership between Faf du Plessis and Dinesh Karthik. When Patidar and Maxi got out quickly, they were in a spot of bother. But Karthik settled down from one end, and then du Plessis started attacking from the other. And now Gopal has bowled out his quota of overs and therefore Hardick needs to go back to some of his more expensive bowlers. Jasprit Bumrah has two more overs remaining, so he needs to worry about who will bowl the other two.
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Royal Challengers Bengaluru may end up with a total of somewhere around 180-200, despite Virat Kohli getting out quite early. The partnership between Faf du Plessis and Rajat Patidar added 82 runs for the third wicket, but then Mumbai Indians roared back into the game with two quick wickets. BTW, I am not sure why Hardick Pandya is bowling, when he is clearly out of form. He had one solitary over so far, and that went for 13 runs. Shreyas Gopal and Akash Madhwal have bowled beautifully till now.
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^^ Well tbh, before his last over it looked like it was his night. Sen was the one who brought RR back in the game and considering Boult hardly bowled in death overs this season so not going back to him wasn't a controversial decision.
Maybe Samson could have used him during the 16-17-18 overs and at that time he was slightly defensive, things could have been different if he kept attacking with their strike bowlers but sometimes these sorts of mistakes happen.
Boult can leak runs towards the end. But then, why he wasn't used during the middle overs? He is their best bowler for the last few seasons. Also, I am not happy with the fact that Maharaj wasn't allowed to complete his full quota of 4 overs. He was really good during this year's SA20. Anyway, this was a match that Rajasthan Royals could have won. Perhaps they went into celebration mode too early and the Gujarat guys made use of that opportunity. Still impressed with the batting form from Samson and Parag. These two guys are lighting up the IPL this time. |
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Date: 11/04/2024
Game number: 25
Teams playing: Mumbai Indians Vs Royal Challengers Bengaluru
1. Match Winner: Mumbai Indians
2. Highest Runs by a batter: Rohit Sharma
3. Highest Wicket by a bowler: Gerald Coetzee
4. Player of the Match: Rohit Sharma
5. Predict the Final Score of the Winning Team (within +/- 10 runs): 200+
6. Predict who will hit Maximum Sixes: Rohit Sharma
7. Predict the team that will win the toss: Mumbai Indians
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Russia will find new customers for its natural gas. Planning for Power of Siberia 2 is in final stages, and this pipeline is expected to carry 50 billion m³ of gas annually to China. And the Power of Siberia 1 is already operating with a capacity of 38 billion m³. Also another pipeline is in plans to transport natural gas from Sakhalin Island to China, and this one is expected to have a capacity of 10 billion m³. Russia has also increased it's LNG capacity and Arctic LNG project will come online in the next few months. Yamal LNG is already operating with a capacity of 18 million tonnes per year and most of the gas production goes to Europe and China.
BTW, the prices offered by China are not that bad. For the year 2023, Russian pipeline gas was sold at a rate of $297.30 per thousand cubic meters to China. Lower than the prices offered by Europe, but much higher than the combined production and transportation costs.
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I totally agree with you about this topic. Small countries have bigger issues with growing players like Ronaldo. They aren't like Brazil for example which has a population around 217 million and which is a football country also. However I agree on another thing that Portugal still have skilled players. The thing they will only need is to have a strong team effort after Ronaldo retires.  Portugal or some other national team can't just rely on one player to be carried. This is nonsense if you really want to become successful. Argentina did this by relying on Messi over the years and barely managed to become a World Cup champion. Teams that are overly reliant on one player, doesn't perform well historically. There are many examples, such as Belgium (Romelu Lukaku), Macedonia (Goran Pandeev), Wales (Gareth Bale), in addition to Portugal (Ronaldo). Look at Argentina. They have a more balanced situation. In addition to Lionel Messi, they have players such as Ángel Di María, Julián Álvarez and Lautaro Martínez. France have Olivier Giroud and Antoine Griezmann in addition to Kylian Mbappé. And such teams have performed better than the first category. |
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Final for the Senior Women Inter Zonal Multi-Day Trophy has got completed at the Maharashtra Cricket Association Stadium in Pune. East Zone Women won the match by 1 wicket, after defeating the South Zone Women. Titas Sadhu was exceptional, picking up 4 wickets in the first innings, while Deepti Sharma got 6 wickets in the second innings for EZ. For the South Zone, Kerala bowler Minnu Mani nabbed a total of 8 wickets, while Arundhati Reddy and Miriyala Durga managed half-centuries for them.
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It's not that simple, it's like finding another player of the same quality as if by magic... Cristiano Ronaldo is a legend, he's in the select group of the best players of all time, that's a rarity and maybe someone similar will appear again only in a few decades...
They don't replace him because there's no way to replace him... Only if they put an average player in his place... which isn't a good idea.
Portugal is a very small country, with a population of around 8 million. Their national football league is not as popular as the EPL or the Bundesliga. Given this, I am sure that they will face a lot of issues in replacing Ronaldo once he retires. They tried with some of the younger players during the 2022 Qatar World Cup, but it didn't worked that well. Portugal lost to Morocco and was kicked out of the competition. To be fair, they have very good players such as João Félix, Jota Silva and Rafael Leão. But these players are inconsistent. |
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Trent Boult bowled well in the first two overs. He did not get any wicket in two overs but gave only 8 runs. Boult is also a very experienced bowler. I thought Boult would probably bowl the 18th and 20th overs. But Samson used Avesh Khan and Kuldeep Sen in the last two overs. These two bowlers gave away 37 runs in the last two overs. This is why Rajasthan was defeated. I don't know why Captain Samson didn't use this bowler properly after having experienced bowlers like Boult in the squad.
Boult had figures of 2-0-8-0. This was one of the rare occasions where he didn't picked up a wicket within the first over. But I have no idea why his complete quota of 4 overs were utilized, because he is one of the best bowling options that Rajasthan Royals had. Same with Keshav Maharaj as well. These two bowlers went for 8 runs per over and everyone else went for more than 10 runs per over. And the decision to give the ball to Kuldeep Sen for 19th over was baffling. How can an inexperienced bowler handle this much pressure? Boult would have been a far better option. |
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Am observing a particular trend in this IPL 2024 season where teams usually start off slow and go crazy in the last 10 overs of their innings. It's a pretty common trend in the T20 format, but it's a lot more common in this season.
Anyway, MI vs RCB is an overhyped match since both teams are currently struggling and Rohit vs Kohli is primarily why people are excited for this one. Am expecting RCB to win this clash.
This season is generally like that. But if you remember, during last season we were witnessing a different pattern. Back then, teams would try to hit as hard as they could in the initial powerplay. Totals of 80 or even 90 were not unusual in the first 6 overs. But now things have changed, and teams have found tactics to prevent leakage of runs in the initial overs. On top of that, franchises have identified bowlers such as Trent Boult, who can be miserly in their initial overs, and at the same time capable of taking crucial wickets. |
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Well, how about each of the Pig-4 teams to allow a test series with Pakistan? Believe me, while Pakistan is not in the Pig 4, but the test matches like Australia vs Pakistan, England vs Pakistan and even India vs Pakistan (if it can ever happen) can create more hype and interest than the pig-4 playing with themselves only on a test match level.
I do not say that Pakistan will win these test series but it will create more interest and entertainment among cricket viewers worldwide.
Anyways, I will also suggest having more test matches between the weaker teams too to keep the matches competitive and also to keep the test match format alive.
I don't have an issue with pig-4 playing against Pakistan and South Africa. These two teams are actually good in test cricket, and at the same time they have a proper 4-day domestic setup. That can't be said for teams like Bangladesh and Sri Lanka, who doesn't even have a proper 4-day domestic competition. But then, India hasn't played against Pakistan in test cricket for almost two decades now. It takes away a lot of the excitement in test cricket. Hopefully the situation will change for the better. |
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We need changes in this format with few teams needed to be stopped against top teams because this is completely boring time for the fans while they are waiting for this format, but few are still expecting we can have upset like we have from the West indies in last test match of the series.
No doubt things are clearly favorable for the England at home as their pace battery is doing good with the advantage of home conditions and West Indies in on rebuild with most chances It's going to be not easy for them to have good results in every series but if we have some good work from ICC as they bring 2 tiers then we can expect better results and entertainment for the test lovers.
Once in a while, we get huge upsets, such as the win by West Indies against Australia. But nowadays, the gap between pig-4 and the rest of the teams have widened. Given this, there is no logic in organizing matches between pig-4 and weak teams such as West Indies/Bangladesh. It will further erode the popularity of test cricket. Only 5-6 teams are capable of playing test cricket at the moment. Let's limit test cricket to these teams. For others, playing 2-3 matches per year is going to be more than enough. |
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