Test Cricket Prediction and Discussion Thread [self - mod]

[WatChe]

With every innings, the Zimbabwe batting is getting more worse than any good. In the first innings, they were all out at 125 runs, and now in the 2nd innings, they got all out at 117 runs. No improvement is observed in their batting, and it shows that they aren't committed to improving their performance. Nick Welch made 47 runs and therefore you can imagine the rest of the batsmen could score anything worth for the team.

The match finished too early only in the 3rd day and New Zealand won it by an innings 359 runs. Nothing surprising and thanks god this one sided series comes to an end.

This test series doesn't make any sense. Zimbabwe cricket is not improving rather it's continuously going down. We saw Zimbabwe losing test series to south Africa earlier and now against New Zealand their performance has gone down even more. The New Zealand declared their innings at 601 runs, if they kept batting they might have scored 1000 runs. Sikandar Raza who is one of main player of Zimbabwe was able to score 16 runs in four innings of this series. ICC must not give Zimbabwe more test matches unless they improve their cricket.   

[Bitcoin_people]

New Zealand's Test matches against Zimbabwe will be one star, you will not get so much joy watching these matches. We saw that the New Zealand team scored 601 runs on the first day, they lost three wickets to make this huge score, moreover, the bowling performance of the Zimbabwe team is not very good. The batting performance of the New Zealand team was very good, everyone showed their best game, but the runs that the New Zealand team scored are impossible for Zimbabwe to collect even in 2 innings. In this match, the New Zealand team won by a huge margin of 359 runs, a huge victory for New Zealand after playing just one innings. The batting and bowling performance of the New Zealand team was very good, they easily defeated the Zimbabwe team and won.

[Farhan99]

New Zealand's Test matches against Zimbabwe will be one star, you will not get so much joy watching these matches. We saw that the New Zealand team scored 601 runs on the first day, they lost three wickets to make this huge score, moreover, the bowling performance of the Zimbabwe team is not very good. The batting performance of the New Zealand team was very good, everyone showed their best game, but the runs that the New Zealand team scored are impossible for Zimbabwe to collect even in 2 innings. In this match, the New Zealand team won by a huge margin of 359 runs, a huge victory for New Zealand after playing just one innings. The batting and bowling performance of the New Zealand team was very good, they easily defeated the Zimbabwe team and won.

Yeah In the 2nd test game, Zimbabwe lost the game by 359 runs even after playing two innings but their opponent with just a single innings won the game. Zimbabwe's batting lineup was quite depressed from the start when wicket loss started from 1 run and it kept on losing at short intervals. New Zealand bowlers knocked out Zimbabwe's whole battting lineup at just 125 runs.
New Zealand ppayed its innings with a tremendous partnership of 162 runs then the second wicket down at 235 runs. The opener Devon scored 153 runs that's why the score was that big. New Zealand's middle oder player contributed 315 runs together so after the discussion of empires New Zealand's innings was ended at 601 runs just after three wickets down.

In the second innings, Zimbabwe got another chance to make some difference but the performance was similar. Batting lineup failed to face the hard bowling of New Zealand so they lost wickets at short intervals. Zimbabwe got knocked out at 117 runs which was 359 runs away from the target in this way New Zealand got a remarkable victory.

[Fuso.hp]

New Zealand team scored 601 runs, it is impossible for Zimbabwe team to meet the target. Because Zimbabwe team lost one wicket for zero runs, such a messy team like Zimbabwe team should never be compared with strong teams. Brian Bennett entered the field as an opening batsman and got out without scoring any runs.
It is definitely a threat for the next batsmen, because this is a test match, more pressure has been put on the players of Zimbabwe team. But till now 476 runs have to be scored. The match has started at the moment, let's see how long the batsmen of Zimbabwe team can survive at the crease.

New Zealand had scored 601 runs in the first innings for the loss of just three wickets and declared their innings with this score. After finishing the first innings badly, the Zimbabwe batting lineup also performed badly in the second innings and they were all out for just 117 runs in the second innings against New Zealand, as a result of which New Zealand won the second Test match against Zimbabwe by a huge margin of innings and 359 runs. In Test cricket, it is usually not fun to watch a game unless there are two strong teams, and seeing that Zimbabwe lost to New Zealand by such a huge margin, it did not take long for this match to end. And when a big team plays against a small team, we are not interested in watching that game because we already know the result.

Ofcourse a disappointing performance from Zimbabwe. No one realistically expected them to beat New Zealand, but atleast some fight was needed. They collapsed far too easily in both innings, and it felt like the match was over before it even got going. Sometimes, teams improve only by facing stronger opponents, so these games are still important for their growth. If Zimbabwe can treat this as a lesson rather than just a loss, they might come back stronger in future matches.

I am disappointed to see Zimbabwe's performance and I don't know why and it seems to me that Zimbabwe will soon disappear from cricket. Earlier, Zimbabwe was a very strong team and they regularly played series with big teams and competed hard with big teams but with the change of time, the condition of this team has gradually started deteriorating due to the apathy of the Zimbabwe Cricket Board towards Zimbabwean cricket and not providing adequate facilities to the players. Earlier, Zimbabwe used to organize several bilateral series every year, now Zimbabwe is seen organizing only a few series every year where they are not successful at all. If the Cricket Board does not try to take cricket to a better level and if the cricketers are not given facilities, then no good quality cricketers will come from their country and represent Zimbabwe.

[Sithara007]

I don't like this declaration either and not a big fan of goody goody - feel good factor with moral sermons around this topic.

ICC will notice such things only when such fixtures are ridiculed on cricketing field, followed by scrutiny in media etc. they should have batted till 4th day, just to prove a point. It will also force Zimbabwe to pull up their pants and work hard in test cricket.

In loopsided fixtures, statpadding will happen but for some reason scoring daddy 100s are looked down but taking wickets with single digit SR is not frowned upon.

LOL.. you sure about this? The ICC is a bunch of old school morons. Even Jay Shah is facing a tough time in changing the status quo. It took 20 years of effort to get cricket included in the Olympic Games (even then, they were successful in reducing it to a 6-team event and also managed to get rid of the qualifiers). And they want to make the United States the next full member, despite the fact that their team is 100% consisted of foreigners. These two facts tells us a lot about ICC.

[LDL]

This test series doesn't make any sense. Zimbabwe cricket is not improving rather it's continuously going down. We saw Zimbabwe losing test series to south Africa earlier and now against New Zealand their performance has gone down even more. The New Zealand declared their innings at 601 runs, if they kept batting they might have scored 1000 runs. Sikandar Raza who is one of main player of Zimbabwe was able to score 16 runs in four innings of this series. ICC must not give Zimbabwe more test matches unless they improve their cricket.   

However, if only strong teams are given a chance in cricket and weak teams are not given a chance, then there will never be any joy in cricket; cricket will just become boring. Even if the weak teams play poorly, the weak teams need to manage matches with the good teams and schedule them, otherwise the weak teams will slowly move away from cricket. Kenya was once in a very good position but by not evaluating Kenyan cricket, Kenya has now moved to a position where it seems like Kenya has never played cricket before. So of course if the ICC does not evaluate the weak, then there will never be diversity in cricket.

[noormcs5]

This test series doesn't make any sense. Zimbabwe cricket is not improving rather it's continuously going down. We saw Zimbabwe losing test series to south Africa earlier and now against New Zealand their performance has gone down even more. The New Zealand declared their innings at 601 runs, if they kept batting they might have scored 1000 runs. Sikandar Raza who is one of main player of Zimbabwe was able to score 16 runs in four innings of this series. ICC must not give Zimbabwe more test matches unless they improve their cricket.  

Don't know if it make sense for the Zimbabwe, New Zealand or even  to the spectators to watch these one sided test matches but for the New Zealand, they must be happy to beat the weakest Zimbabwe team however these test matches doesn't count towards the World Test Championship as Zimbabwe isn't included in the list.

The New Zealand team has yet to open their account in WTC and they will be playing three test matches against the West Indies. It would be another easy win for NZ as West Indies also aren't good team either, they lost three test matches against Australia recently.

[doomloop]

I don't like this declaration either and not a big fan of goody goody - feel good factor with moral sermons around this topic.

ICC will notice such things only when such fixtures are ridiculed on cricketing field, followed by scrutiny in media etc. they should have batted till 4th day, just to prove a point. It will also force Zimbabwe to pull up their pants and work hard in test cricket.

In loopsided fixtures, statpadding will happen but for some reason scoring daddy 100s are looked down but taking wickets with single digit SR is not frowned upon.

Everyone must be having own perspective for love of cricket and just because of this I feel now you love torture in cricket, and I am against this because when I watch New Zealand already scored 600 runs I was expecting huge defeat for minor Zimbabwe, so declaration was right decision by New Zealand.

In reply Zimbabwe scored only 117 runs and faced humiliating defeat of an inning and 359 runs which was shameful in terms of spirit of game . New Zealand bundled out them and now heading for celebrations but from here now it's ICC who is responsible for this humiliation. Yeah, something needed to be done against this kind of cricket so that will bring some soft policies which lead for balance and give us good cricket to watch and bet.

[JSRAW]

^^ no issues on having a different opinion but problem comes when one takes a moral high ground with bizarre "spirit of game" argument. Ngl many fans just go with the popular argument because of feel good factor and in some case they skip the nuances.

I don't like this declaration either and not a big fan of goody goody - feel good factor with moral sermons around this topic.

ICC will notice such things only when such fixtures are ridiculed on cricketing field, followed by scrutiny in media etc. they should have batted till 4th day, just to prove a point. It will also force Zimbabwe to pull up their pants and work hard in test cricket.

In loopsided fixtures, statpadding will happen but for some reason scoring daddy 100s are looked down but taking wickets with single digit SR is not frowned upon.

LOL.. you sure about this? The ICC is a bunch of old school morons. Even Jay Shah is facing a tough time in changing the status quo. It took 20 years of effort to get cricket included in the Olympic Games (even then, they were successful in reducing it to a 6-team event and also managed to get rid of the qualifiers). And they want to make the United States the next full member, despite the fact that their team is 100% consisted of foreigners. These two facts tells us a lot about ICC.

To become full member they have to setup first class cricket ( it's a must) including women's ecosystem ( not sure if they have any atm).

So I'd be very surprise if ICC grant them membership without ticking these boxes.

[Tipstar]

^^ no issues on having a different opinion but problem comes when one takes a moral high ground with bizarre "spirit of game" argument. Ngl many fans just go with the popular argument because of feel good factor and in some case they skip the nuances.

To become full member they have to setup first class cricket ( it's a must) including women's ecosystem ( not sure if they have any atm).

So I'd be very surprise if ICC grant them membership without ticking these boxes.

ICC hasn't been as conservative as people like to believe. They have and are changing rules in order to accommodate more teams and making Cricket a global sports. They have increased the number of ODI teams from 10 to 20 with 8 spots for grabs by any associate teams with a long league with promotions and relegations. T20 are more generous with International status provided to all teams. So, T20 and ODI are already a merit based format. Test is a more traditional format that still needs change. The less interest in changing the test status might also be due to it being the least popular among the three formats and it takes days for a match to complete. Yet, they might extend the Test world championship to a top level league and crate a lower league that accommodates all ODI teams in the future.

[JSRAW]

^^ no issues on having a different opinion but problem comes when one takes a moral high ground with bizarre "spirit of game" argument. Ngl many fans just go with the popular argument because of feel good factor and in some case they skip the nuances.

To become full member they have to setup first class cricket ( it's a must) including women's ecosystem ( not sure if they have any atm).

So I'd be very surprise if ICC grant them membership without ticking these boxes.

ICC hasn't been as conservative as people like to believe. They have and are changing rules in order to accommodate more teams and making Cricket a global sports. They have increased the number of ODI teams from 10 to 20 with 8 spots for grabs by any associate teams with a long league with promotions and relegations. T20 are more generous with International status provided to all teams. So, T20 and ODI are already a merit based format. Test is a more traditional format that still needs change. The less interest in changing the test status might also be due to it being the least popular among the three formats and it takes days for a match to complete. Yet, they might extend the Test world championship to a top level league and crate a lower league that accommodates all ODI teams in the future.

Limited overs cricket is different from 5 days cricket and full member status depends on the later, it directly related to ICC funding. As of now it goes like this.

Full test nations (12) gets a bigger slice of a pie, atm 85%-90% goes to full nation (test playing countries).

Then comes the associate nations (90+), they gets around 10-ish%. No strict restriction here, like domestic setup (age group , women cricket) etc.

[Rustam Meraj]

ICC hasn't been as conservative as people like to believe. They have and are changing rules in order to accommodate more teams and making Cricket a global sports. They have increased the number of ODI teams from 10 to 20 with 8 spots for grabs by any associate teams with a long league with promotions and relegations. T20 are more generous with International status provided to all teams. So, T20 and ODI are already a merit based format. Test is a more traditional format that still needs change. The less interest in changing the test status might also be due to it being the least popular among the three formats and it takes days for a match to complete. Yet, they might extend the Test world championship to a top level league and crate a lower league that accommodates all ODI teams in the future.

ICC is changing cricket rules to make sport global especially in ODI and T20 formats which are now more open to many nations. Idea of merit based system like in football is great way for smaller teams to rise to top. Test cricket is harder to change because it is so long and traditional as we know its take 5 days. However adding lower league to Test Championship will give more teams chance to play and make format more popular.

[Compromise me]

However, if only strong teams are given a chance in cricket and weak teams are not given a chance, then there will never be any joy in cricket; cricket will just become boring. Even if the weak teams play poorly, the weak teams need to manage matches with the good teams and schedule them, otherwise the weak teams will slowly move away from cricket. Kenya was once in a very good position but by not evaluating Kenyan cricket, Kenya has now moved to a position where it seems like Kenya has never played cricket before. So of course if the ICC does not evaluate the weak, then there will never be diversity in cricket.

We are watching performance of Kenya cricket team which is in last match as that team won the match against Nigeria Cricket team which could not give good target in this match. Nigeria cricket team could make only 113 runs in the last match and after that we saw bang bang performance by Kenya team because they chased the target in last over with fall of only 4 wickets. 3 bowlers took 2, 2 wickets which was excellent effort by that team and Kenya batters performance was also good in this match as Sachin Gill  made 35 runs in this match and 2 other players made 30 plus runs in this match and helped the team to chase the target of that match.Kenya Cricket team need future improvement which will make them better team in the future.

[Fuso.hp]

ICC hasn't been as conservative as people like to believe. They have and are changing rules in order to accommodate more teams and making Cricket a global sports. They have increased the number of ODI teams from 10 to 20 with 8 spots for grabs by any associate teams with a long league with promotions and relegations. T20 are more generous with International status provided to all teams. So, T20 and ODI are already a merit based format. Test is a more traditional format that still needs change. The less interest in changing the test status might also be due to it being the least popular among the three formats and it takes days for a match to complete. Yet, they might extend the Test world championship to a top level league and crate a lower league that accommodates all ODI teams in the future.

ICC is changing cricket rules to make sport global especially in ODI and T20 formats which are now more open to many nations. Idea of merit based system like in football is great way for smaller teams to rise to top. Test cricket is harder to change because it is so long and traditional as we know its take 5 days. However adding lower league to Test Championship will give more teams chance to play and make format more popular.

ICC will change the rules but I think ICC should take some steps to spread the spread of cricket globally. In every world cup we see some known teams playing whereas in football world cup we see some teams qualify for the main stage and football craze is there all over the world. The reason why cricket is less popular is because there is less discussion about cricket and people don't know much about cricket. The main reason for this may be that cricket is a long time game and European and American countries don't know about cricket in advance due to which their interest in it is always less. I heard that cricket will be included in the upcoming Olympics this is a good thing for cricket because we will see many new teams in the Olympics and hopefully some of them will join the cricket series.

[Sithara007]

To become full member they have to setup first class cricket ( it's a must) including women's ecosystem ( not sure if they have any atm).

So I'd be very surprise if ICC grant them membership without ticking these boxes.

Rules are being bent, as per the whims and fancies of the ICC guys. Rules also insist that in order to become a full member, any country should have a proper first-class setup for the women. Afghanistan has been granted full member status without a single female player in that country. ICC cares about money and nothing else. If they really wanted to promote the game, then either they could have made Nepal the next full member (as cricket is the most popular sport in that country), or they could have considered the strong teams such as Scotland or Netherlands for that honor.

[CryptoYar]

[...]

Yes length of game especially Test matches has been major obstacle for new fans in Europe and Americas which is why ICC is focusing on shorter T20 format for global growth. Inclusion of T20 cricket in 2028 Los Angeles Olympics is huge step to attract new audiences especially in U.S. and is expected to encourage more countries to start playing. On top of that ICC is expanding number of teams in World Cups to give more nations chance to compete all with goal of making cricket truly global sport like football.

[JSRAW]

To become full member they have to setup first class cricket ( it's a must) including women's ecosystem ( not sure if they have any atm).

So I'd be very surprise if ICC grant them membership without ticking these boxes.

Rules are being bent, as per the whims and fancies of the ICC guys. Rules also insist that in order to become a full member, any country should have a proper first-class setup for the women. Afghanistan has been granted full member status without a single female player in that country. ICC cares about money and nothing else. If they really wanted to promote the game, then either they could have made Nepal the next full member (as cricket is the most popular sport in that country), or they could have considered the strong teams such as Scotland or Netherlands for that honor.

They had white ball cricket going on their way and were knocking the doors by making significant progress in the ODI and T20. Subcontinent boards also gave a green signal for their full nation status, especially BCCI.

Meanwhile, USA cricket board is facing malpractice allegations with their limited funds. Like i said all this is about funding and when someone is making right noise with performance, they will get the nod.

[Fuso.hp]

[...]

Yes length of game especially Test matches has been major obstacle for new fans in Europe and Americas which is why ICC is focusing on shorter T20 format for global growth. Inclusion of T20 cricket in 2028 Los Angeles Olympics is huge step to attract new audiences especially in U.S. and is expected to encourage more countries to start playing. On top of that ICC is expanding number of teams in World Cups to give more nations chance to compete all with goal of making cricket truly global sport like football.

Many countries are organizing T10 leagues to bring cricket to a smaller scale, but I think those T10 leagues are not getting much popularity. I think the T20 format is fine because it takes about four hours to complete the game and there is excitement and attraction in this game that is not present in other formats. Maybe it is difficult for new countries to do well in the T20 format quickly, but if a country tries and works on cricket, then they will definitely be able to become a good team in a few years. Since there is a rule in cricket that cricketers from one country can go to another country and become citizens of that country and play for that country, so if a developed country spends enough money on cricketers, then cricketers from India, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka or other countries can play for all those countries.

[Bitcoin Smith]

Since there is a rule in cricket that cricketers from one country can go to another country and become citizens of that country and play for that country, so if a developed country spends enough money on cricketers, then cricketers from India, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka or other countries can play for all those countries.

Anyone in the world can go to other country and became a citizen if they met all the requirement to become eligible so it's not something specific for cricketers alone.

And that is how USA participated in the champions trophy with the players origin from India and other countries but played for USA which will not work in the long run because even they these player got talents they got other careers and chose cricket for a month or two but in the hardcore cricketing nations the players who will just live their life as cricketer by 24/7 effort to become a better player so an occasional player can't match that level from someone who spend years to reach the same.

[Crypto Library]

Anyone in the world can go to other country and became a citizen if they met all the requirement to become eligible so it's not something specific for cricketers alone.

And that is how USA participated in the champions trophy with the players origin from India and other countries but played for USA which will not work in the long run because even they these player got talents they got other careers and chose cricket for a month or two but in the hardcore cricketing nations the players who will just live their life as cricketer by 24/7 effort to become a better player so an occasional player can't match that level from someone who spend years to reach the same.

And even though those countries can indirectly take players from countries like India and Bangladesh, in most of the cases, those players do not have top level players. And that is why you will see that even though Even USA fulfills their squad by many Indian players, they are not known as a very strong cricket team.
And I think that the career of those players who try to build a career in my own Origin is better if we see that Rashed Khan in Afghanistan has created his career very well by playing in the Afghan squad that I think I could not play for another team.