The day before yesterday there was a meeting between Jay Shah and Moshin Naqvi and in between some ICC senior people. PCB, ICC, and BCCI were there. This meeting was held in the Colombo and it was based on the controversy that Pakistan hosts to Champions Trophy. So far, Pakistan is hosting this event and BCCI does not complain against this. They are coming in the Pakistan to play the Asia Cup.
Also, ICC told PCB the budget of the event and the BCCI also happy with this. ICC told if the Indian team would not come to play in Pakistan then Sri Lanka come in the event and would qualify for the Champions Trophy because nobody has issues playing in Pakistan except India but now they are also fully aligned.
This is just wishful thinking. I don't think that there is any chance of India traveling to Pakistan, to participate in the ICC Champions Trophy. Either the tournament will be shifted out of Pakistan, or held in hybrid mode (similar to what happened with the last edition of the Asia Cup). And your argument that Sri Lanka can replace India is childish. If Indian team is not participating in the tournament, then 80% of the revenue is gone and the ICC will have to compensate the media rights holders.
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I also really like this topic, there are always new things to read and discuss.
I still think that Di Maria made a very hasty decision, it may seem like there is a lot of time until the World Cup, but it turns out that time flies by! he would have the opportunity to win another world title...
There is also the dynamics of football, everything can change completely in a year or two, players can be good now and not so good in the future, there are injuries, transfers etc...
Ángel Di María wanted to retire after winning the Copa America tournament. And his wish got fulfilled. He has a FIFA World Cup and Copa America to his name now. If a player has nothing left to achieve, then it is always better to retire and focus more on the family. I heard that he wants to return to his club (Rosario Central), but he had to cancel the plans due to complicated security situation in the province of Santa Fe (where Rosario is located). Anyway, without Di María, Argentina will not be the same.
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No chances for the Namibia are almost ended because we are having Shoaib Khan on crease who is good batsman and can handle this situation easily currently we are having 188 for 6 after 47 overs mean 9 more runs to win with 4 wickets in hand and 18 balls left its good win for the Oman after having good performance in this game. It is always frustrating to watch a team with native players getting defeated by another team which doesn't even have one citizen in the playing XI. Namibia is one of the strongest associate nations, but they do have a reputation of being inconsistent. To be fair to them, they were without many of their regular players, such as David Wiese and Ruben Trumpelmann. But then overdependence on a few players can never do them any good in the long term. Apart from Malan Kruger, everyone else failed in the batting department for Namibia.
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Now that Kamala Harris has been confirmed as the POTUS nominee from the Democrat Party, we have numerous opinion polls measuring her chances against that of Donald Trump. Morning Consult, CNN, Economist/YouGov, NPR/PBS/Marist and Yahoo News have released their poll result in recent days. And do you know what is common with all of them? Trump is leading Kamala by a big margin. And then we have the outlier poll from Reuters/Ipsos, which shows Kamala Harris ahead by 2 points.
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On unrelated note, Thailand cloth color looks good, fitting could be better ![Tongue](https://bitcointalk.org/Smileys/default/tongue.gif) LOL... yes.. their jersey looks really good. A few years back, Thailand was being considered as one of the strongest associate teams in women's cricket. But lack of funding from the ICC has started to take it's toll. The quality of their cricket is declining and it is very much evident from their performance in this tournament. Still the situation is not entirely hopeless. ACC is providing funds to Thailand and they do arrange support in the form of training and travel. Many of their players are still in their 20s, so there is a lot of scope for improvement.
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Today earlier we saw the match between Thailand Women and Sri Lanka women, it was the 12th match of this Asia Cup which is group b match and once again there we have seen the result in the favour of the Sri Lankan team. Srilanka is one of the strongest teams and it was the one-sided match for the Sri Lanka women as well. The openers chased this target of 94 under 12 overs, such an amazing and good performance. Chamari Athapaththu was the player of the match by making 49 off 25 balls and in bowling she picked one wicket up. It was a memorable performance from Chamari Athapaththu.
This one was quite disappointing. Thailand ends the tournament with just 1 win from 3 matches. Their only win came against Malaysia. Nepal also finished at the bottom of their group with one win from 3 matches (win against United Arab Emirates). It was a poor tournament for the associate nations. None of them could defeat any of the full-member nations. There are worrying signs from this tournament that at least in the Asia region, the gap between full member nations and associate nations is widening.
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Texas Super Kings team won the match easily against Seattle Orcas. They gave a target of 178 runs and they against great pressure on opponent team and when opponent team tried to achieve target , they gained wickets and Seattle Orcas could make only 140 runs. Savage was the person who was awarded as player of the match because he gave all round performance and built 45 runs and he remained not out at the end of match. Savage also gained 2 wickets by giving only 23 runs and O. Baartman gained 3 wickets in nd one more person who has credit for that win ,the person name is Ahmad who gained important wickets at crucial . Congratulations to Texas Super Kings team due to excellent performance in this match.
Texas Super Kings lost the wickets of Devon Conway and Joshua Tromp early on, but then Faf du Plessis and Milind Kumar managed to rebuild the innings. And towards the end there were some fireworks from Calvin Savage and Cameron Stevenson, which enabled them to post a decent total. Seattle Orcas were on the backfoot from the first ball itself, when they lost Ryan Rickelton. None of their batsmen got a score of more than 30, as Ottneil Baartman and Calvin Savage ripped through their batting order.
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Group phase is completed for Major League Cricket 2024. LAKR and Seattle Orcas are out of the tournament and the other four teams will proceed to the knockout phase. One thing I liked about the tournament this time is that there were considerable numbers of native players - such as Joshua Tromp, Ian Holland and Ruben Clinton. I hope they perform better next season, but it would have been a great learning experience for them. MLC has the potential to become the second largest franchise T20 league, after the IPL.
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India found it very difficult to meet the target in today's match in Nepal, due to which they lost the match by a huge margin of 82 runs. India women team played a great game in today's tournament, Nepal women team tried hard enough to make the team reach the winning stage. Nepal Women's team struggled to meet the target of 178 runs in today's match, especially as they lost wickets quickly due to which they lost the match. Anyway today's match as India women's team played with their maximum strength and got the win, moreover they won today's tenth match and moved to the top position in the points table. India women's team is at the top position with 6 points in the points table, followed by Pakistan women's team at second position and Nepal women's team at third position.
Nepal women did as much as they could. But it is simply not possible to compete against giants like India, with hardly any support from the ACC. Nepal has only a handful of experienced players in their squad, such as Sita Rana Magar and Sabnam Rai. Most of the other players were either in their teens or early 20s. And although their tried their best, there were a lot of misfields (cost a lot of runs, as well as wickets). And then, the minnow killer Shafali Verma was blasting the bowlers from one end. It was a tough outing for them.
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I don't agree with these odds. As I have said before, all the gambling sites seems to be underestimating Trump. With less than 4 months to go, he is leading even in blue states such as New Mexico and Virginia. This election is going to be a landslide in favor of Trump. In Michigan, Trump is leading by a massive 7 points according to Detroit Free Press/EPIC-MRA. Can you believe this? And then we have odds of 1.53. I would rather say that the real odds are more like 1.20 or 1.25.
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I think Messi is not tired yet, and if everything goes well like this for this player we can see even Messi playing in the 2026 World Cup for Argentina and this won't be surprising for us because he helped his team a lot in the last World Cup when won the title of this tournament. I think regardless of age, Messi is a true leader for Argentina and he can even start helping the younger players and this can be another advantage of having Messi in the team for Argentina. I have posted this previously. Will post again - Messi has a lot to lose, and nothing to gain if he takes part in the 2026 FIFA World Cup as a player. And recently he suffered a serious ankle injury during the Copa America final (while playing against Colombia). Although Argentina won that match (as a result of a goal from Lautaro Martínez during extra time), Messi was forced out due to injury. I am not sure whether his health and fitness will allow him to play for another two years.
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I won't blame Nepal or any associate much as they hardly play any cricket against top teams. I was shocked that it was their 2nd match under the lights, you can imagine how inexperienced they are and need more support or game time.
No matter how hard they try, it is just impossible to make up for the shortfall in funds. The BCCI receives $230 million per year from the ICC (and they don't even need that, as they get majority of their revenue from the IPL). Compared to this Nepal receives less than 0.1% of this amount as annual allocation from the ICC. Being the richest sports body in the region, at least the BCCI could organize a few A or U23 tours to Nepal. But that is not possible due to mixing politics in sports. The BCCI meanwhile provided all the possible support to ACB in the last 10-15 years, enabling them to become a full member.
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By looking at the first test match I was not expecting a good performance by West Indies but they perform really well in the first inning. And they had a led of 41 runs. And this that was a good luck of them. But in the second inning their batting was not good. And I also appreciate the bowling of Shoaib Bashir only he is the one who destroyed the West Indies team. He collected some crucial wickets which made a lot of pressure of West Indies team. They have another match and I hope West Indies will do better in upcoming match. One off performances doesn't matter much. West Indies imploded during the second innings. And it was not just Shoaib Bashir who did the damage. Chris Woakes was the one who got both the openers, and then Gus Atkinson also nabbed a few crucial wickets. And from the other end, Mark Wood was constantly terrorizing the batsmen with his 90+ mph deliveries. I was a bit concerned for the England bowling after Jimmy Anderson retired, but those concerns are pretty much gone now.
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Yes that was an amazing match. Especially the bowling of the Scotland team. And if we will talk about the bowling of the Scotland so there will be a prominent name Charlie Cassell who collected 7 wickets. Just due to him Scotland won that match. Oman made only 91 runs. Which Scotland chased in 17 overs. Scotland also lost 2 wickets in this small target. Congratulations to Scotland team. The biggest joke is that Charlie Cassell was a last minute replacement. He was included in the playing XI only because Chris Sole withdrew due to personal reasons. Anyway, there is no doubt that Scotland is the strongest associate team at this point. In reality, they are much stronger than second division full member nations such as Ireland and Zimbabwe. Time has come to give them full member status, as they have been performing consistently over the years (and that too with native players).
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Charlie Cassel made the debut for Scotland today, and immediately entered his name in the record books. His figures from today's match were 5.4-1-21-7. This is the best ever performance by a debutant bowler in ODI cricket. The previous record was held by Kagiso Rabada of South Africa, who returned 8-3-16-6 against Bangladesh during his debut. Cassell played this match only because pacer Chris Sole withdrew from the squad as a result of personal reasons. And at one point Cassell had unbelievable figures of 1.3-1-0-4.
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Shoaib Bashir is promising talent for the England as he takes his second 5 wickets haul in 5 matches with this performance we can expect good future for this spinner in this country and this could be also huge motivation for the Asian origin players as well.
Joe Root is surely one of the best batsman which England produce in last few years, and now he is going to lead in many ways with his total runs and consistency which is amazing he is just 33, and I am expecting he will be on good way like James Anderson for having many records in front of his name in coming years.
West Indian collapse is surely nothing new because we all know about Pakistan and West Indies these countries can produce performance like this with one day they are hero and just second day they are going down like crap this is beauty of their quality and game with having end of this match like this is not good but still test cricket was at his best. No matter how good Shoaib Bashir is, I don't think he will be able to perform well in sub-continental pitches against teams such as India and Pakistan. England really needs someone who can be effective in Indian pitches. Jack Leach doesn't have that quality and the same goes for both Shoaib Bashir and Rehan Ahmed. But then I don't want to deny the fact that Bashir and Ahmed are both young and there is a lot of scope for improvement. Bashir is 20, while Rehan is just 19 years old.
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Feeling sad for Thailand. They did as much as they can, but lost yet another match today. Thai women could manage a total of only 96/9 in 20 overs. Nattaya Boochatham was the only one who looked comfortable out there against the Bangladeshi bowlers. But others struggled against Sabikun Nahar Jesmin and Rabeya Khan. When Bangladeshi women came out to bat, Murshida Khatun destroyed the Thailand women bowlers and gifted easy 2 points to Bangladesh. Still impressive performance from the Thailand women.
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