Beyond the Boundary!

Comment from Tom Mather
Time: November 30, 2008, 8:29 am

Does anyone know if there’s a site with up to date scores from this tournament? When you think that the Asian U17 tournament in Thailand were putting up the results straight away it does seem odd that I still can’t find the big USA Canada score from yesterday.

A Bermuda site has details of their 146 run defeat of Argentina, with Glenn Blakeney scoring a century.

http://www.islandstats.com/sport.asp?sport=17&assoc=1&newsid=10043

What has happened to Argentina? They almost surprise Canada and then suffer 3 heavy defeats. Perhaps they’re overdependent on Hamish Barton, who wasn’t playing again, but that still doesn’t explain it. Things don’t look well for their WCL Division 3 campaign.

BTW Rizwan Cheema has apparently now joined the Canadian team in Florida so that should improve their chances of winning.

Comment from Andrew Nixon
Time: November 30, 2008, 9:35 am

Tom - Dreamcricket.com has occasional updates from the USA’s matches.

It’s looking like a USA win, only a big defeat for them against the Caymans and a big win for either Canada or Bermuda in their match can stop them.

Comment from Laksh
Time: November 30, 2008, 2:53 pm

Looks like WCL Div 3 in Jan is gonna be all about Afghanistan, Hong Kong & Uganda if Argentina & Cayman Islands wont imp soon. This way both the american nation could end up at the bottom of Div 3!

Comment from Rich B
Time: December 1, 2008, 1:18 am

I think Laksh is right - before this tournament I’d have predicted Bermuda to finish near the bottom of the World Cup Qualifier, but it looks like they’re still a league ahead of Caymans and Argentina.

I know Nepal and USA blew their chance of progressing in the WCL competition, but I’d still fancy their chances against at least a third of the teams above them in the league.

Comment from Rodrigo
Time: December 1, 2008, 5:21 am

Tom - Argentina has not had a strong batting lineup in quite a while, and had no realistic chance of winning this tournament coming into it. If we beat Suriname and don’t get thrashed by the other teams we’ll be happy, and it’ll be good preparation. To be honest, I was quite surprised we came so close to beating Canada, especially if you consider that our bowling, usually quite disciplined and most definitely our strenght, was rather generous with the extras and could not clean up the tailenders. Therefore I wouldn’t say we are in that bad a position looking towards January’s Div 3 tournament, and hopefully home advantage will balance things our way a bit. Oh, and just as a reminder, Hamish Barton was not part of the squad that managed to emerge as runners-up of Division 3 two years ago, and he has only recently earned his first cap for our country.

Laksh - Afghanistan are incredibly inconsistent, and they only made it out of Div 5 through a bit of a hand from the ICC. They should have lost their spot to Singapore.
Hong Kong (or rather the team of people who may know someone who once heard of Hong Kong) were highly rated coming into Div 3 in Darwin two years ago, and they choked in grand style. Meanwhile, us Argies were supposed to be the whipping boys in said tournament, and yet somehow earnt promotion. I think that the biggest threat to our possibilities will come from Uganda, the Caymans and PNG. And to be honest I wouldn’t be surprised if some of the Afghani players had visa issues getting into our country, although I honestly hope that isn’t the case.
And a final point, even if we were to get smashed in every single game in WCL 3, the national team selection pool consists of, at most, 20 players. That’s if nobody’s injured, and if everyone can get time off work or Uni. I think that we have more than enough to be proud of already, and anything else is a plus and a massive gain of experience and exposure.

Comment from ray
Time: December 1, 2008, 1:51 pm

Argentina are much improved with their New Zealander, Hamish Barton. He put on very respectable scores against Canada and the USA. However, when he was out of the squad, Argentina were less convincing.

Congrats to the USA. Under the right circumstances they could be a force in Associate cricket. A pity that the team has been held back by their USACA leaders.

Comment from Azam Khan
Time: December 2, 2008, 1:20 am

Being the champion of WCL Div 5 & 4 how can one say that there is inconsistency in Afghanistan`s successes! Sometimes even Bangladish beats Australia so it be unrealistic to say that Bangladish is a better side tha Australia! We have already toured England in summer 2006 so it be a shocking news if we are denied visas for Argentina. Afghan is a proud nation so plz refrain from such insulting and offensive comments! Forget about visas the people of Argentina should be happy that we are coming to their country and will become their guests for a few days!

Comment from Andrew Nixon
Time: December 2, 2008, 6:55 am

Azam - Just look at Afghanistan in Division Five. They fluked their way through the tournament and were reliant on a ridiculous playing condition to get through to the semi-finals. The team was pretty crap, with only a couple of very good players getting them through.

They improved a hell of a lot in Division Four, but any rational judge has to admit that they didn’t deserve to be there.

Comment from dr gulkhan
Time: December 2, 2008, 11:01 am

Home advantage is a big thing, Jersey had qualified for div 4 cuz of home advantage and finished and got relgated.
If Afghanistan had gone to div 4 and did not belong there, they whould not have gone through UNDEFEATED.
New coach and more match experience is helping them improve every game. I think they will thrash the div 3 teams too.
Hong Kong are asian champions (defeated UAE),
They are a very improved side compared to last time

Comment from Rich B
Time: December 2, 2008, 1:48 pm

I’d agree that Afghanistan and Hong Kong look good for next month’s tournament, but the big question mark for me is Uganda. Like the Afghans they have a new coach, and if he can bring about the same improvement that Afganistan did in Div 4 they’ll definitely get promoted.

PNG is the total unknown quantity here as they haven’t played any of their peers since May 2007.

Comment from Azam Khan
Time: December 3, 2008, 1:55 am

In 1992 World Cup pakistan lost many of their matches at the beginning of the tournament and a moment came when they were relying on Australia v West Indies match. In that match Australia beat West Indies and which gave Pakistan a chance to play in the semi-final and thus won the World Cup, so we can not say that Pakistan did not deserve that victory!

Comment from Laksh
Time: December 3, 2008, 6:21 am

I agree with Azam Khan, Afganistan truely deserve a place in Higher level compitations. The way they imp since 2006 is tremendus. Not only WCL divs they also played very well in ACC Trophy consistently where they also defeated UAE. U are saying USA are good depending on one tournament & not accepting Afghanistan who won 2 major tournaments & reached the semis of most competitive ACC Elite Trophy twice & won ACC Twenty20 Trophy? (All within 2 years)

Comment from Andrew Nixon
Time: December 3, 2008, 6:40 am

Nobody is saying Afghanistan aren’t a good side or that they haven’t improved greatly in recent years. What we are saying is that they were lucky to progress through Division Five, where most of their players played awful, and it was only a silly rain rule that got them through to the semis.

Nothing wrong with being a fan of a team, but it shouldn’t make you blind to their inadequacies. If you can’t accept that Afghanistan didn’t play well in Division Five, you’re denying reality.

Comment from Laksh
Time: December 3, 2008, 8:26 am

I never mentioned that Afghanistan played well in Div 5. I just said they are winning consistently. If u say Afghanistan played bad in Div 5? Wat about the other teams, Y couldn’t they beat the team who were playing so bad?

Comment from Andrew D
Time: December 3, 2008, 12:50 pm

Afghanistan only lost one game in Division 5. How can 5 wins, 1 loss and 1 no result be called crap? No other team had less defeats or more wins.

Comment from Andrew Nixon
Time: December 3, 2008, 1:40 pm

As anyone knows, winning a game does not automatically mean that you played well. Look at the scorecards of Afghanistan’s matches in WCL5. Look at how many times their batting order imploded. Look at how they were reliant on a silly rain rule to get through to the semis.

Comment from dr gulkhan
Time: December 3, 2008, 3:18 pm

If ther was a team which did not deserve to get promoted it was Jersey. In there place it should have been USA or Nepal. They went through cuz of homeadvantage. Afghanistan proved in div 4 that they fully deserved that spot.
And if they olayed bad in div 5 still they were better than other sides in div 5 as they won the tournament.

Comment from Laksh
Time: December 3, 2008, 3:48 pm

Nixon I just don’t wanna argue for the sake of it. “Team well played” dosen’t mean only when they batted well, If any team scores even below 200 & could defend it, that means they played well. If Afghanistan couldn’t score they defended, that’s enough to say they played well…

Comment from roland ilube
Time: December 3, 2008, 3:57 pm

Sometimes you need a bit of luck in a tournament, and maybe Afghanistan got that in div 5, but they made the most of it in div 4. As Azam points out, this is not the first time that such a thing has happened. One thing I would say about Afghanistan, they keep us interested…

Comment from fromefrog
Time: December 3, 2008, 5:47 pm

i think it was Bill Davis owner of the Oakland Raiders who had the maxim “Just win baby”.
Afganistan won. end of.

Comment from bob
Time: December 3, 2008, 9:28 pm

Yes, but you have to admit that Singapore got shafted at the WCL Div 5 tournament, so that the ICC could sell the story of an “Afghan team rising from a war torn country in order to make good on the cricket arena”. Great publicity!

Comment from dr gulkhan
Time: December 3, 2008, 10:36 pm

tell how singapore got shafted?
Were the rules changed drinng the tournament?
Answer is no…they were just unlucky!

Comment from Rodrigo
Time: December 3, 2008, 10:51 pm

Arrgh, for crying out loud, nobody said Afghanistan aren’t good, all we are saying is that they didn’t play at their best in the Division 5 tournament and only made it out of it thanks to the ICC, which - like Bob pointed out - really wanted them to get promoted in order to make the WCL more relevant to the media. In fact, we’d be stupid not to use the fact that Afghanistan are playing to promote the Div 3 tournament here in Buenos Aires, the newspapers would certainly be quite interested. As for the visa comment, Azam, I did not mean it in a racist or offensive way, I was just stating a fact. Have a look at the Argentine Foreign Office’s website if you do not believe me. Besides, it would probably be easier to get a visa to play cricket in England than to play cricket here, because the goverment has no knowledge whatsoever of what cricket is. If you have a better look at my previous comment though, you’ll see that I clearly said I hope the Afghan players have no problem getting into our country. That’s because, if they did, and they failed to make it to the World Cup Qualifier, we’d never ever hear the end of it.
As for Hong Kong I sincerely hope they don’t make it anywhere near the WCQ. It’s teams like Hong Kong and Italy that give Associate cricket a bad name. I honestly don’t know how much longer it’ll be until the ICC implement stricter rules on foreign born players.

Comment from Ian MacQuillin
Time: December 4, 2008, 8:58 am

Why don’t we all just wait a couple of months and see what the outcome of division 3 is? Eh?

Comment from Laksh
Time: December 4, 2008, 9:25 am

K friends, lets end this. Wat about Africa’s Div 1? Is it still on & with whoz partispation?

Comment from bob
Time: December 4, 2008, 1:06 pm

Regarding Africa, I was surprised to find that there is no organized cricket being played in northern Africa, especially in Egypt. Is this really true?
Also, can somebody confirm whether the development criteria for player eligibility in the WCQ has been removed, and if so, - what could be the consequences??

Comment from Andrew Nixon
Time: December 4, 2008, 2:09 pm

bob - There is some cricket in Northern Africa, mainly in Morocco. Egypt, which did once have a national side before World War II, has been trying to get cricket going again, and are making slow headway.

The development criteria haven’t been removed for the WCQ, because they were never there in the first place.

Remember that associate ODIs don’t have development criteria and that 11 matches in the WCQ will be ODIs, so it would be silly to have different eligibility rules for different matches in the same tournament, though the European Championship does exactly that!

Comment from bob
Time: December 4, 2008, 2:35 pm

Yes, but this could mean that some teams, once qualifying for the WCQ, could turn up with a much stronger squad than first expected - remembering that only a few top quality cricketers can make all the difference - and a lot is at stake here.

Comment from Andrew Nixon
Time: December 4, 2008, 3:12 pm

bob - The rules are the same for everybody, so what’s the problem?

Besides, the only players that will be playing who don’t meet the development criteria will be people born in the country (eg. Navdeep Poonia) or people who are nationals of the country, (eg, Dirk Nannes) who, it could be argued, should not have to meet any further criteria anyway.

Comment from Laksh
Time: December 4, 2008, 6:09 pm

Nixon is Africa’s Div 1 still on? Who all partispating?

Comment from Andrew Nixon
Time: December 4, 2008, 11:31 pm

I’m not going to believe anything I read about Africa Division One until I see players walking out onto the field.

Comment from Azam Khan
Time: December 6, 2008, 2:08 am

Afghanistan does not get a VIP treatment from ICC, ACC or any other cricket organisation. In fact what we achieved in the cricket arena is only because of the hard work of the players, their love and passion for the game and patriotic fervour! We are not even getting the appropriate funds from ICC, etc. to make proper cricket infrastructure in the country! ICC or ACC, etc. had not made any rules

Comment from Azam Khan
Time: December 6, 2008, 2:25 am

ICC or ACC, etc. had not made any rules only to get Afghanistan promoted in the WCL, etc. or had had introduced new rules during the tournament which were in Afghanistan`s favour, etc. It might be a good cricket publicity while Afghanistan is still there in the run for World Cup 2011,which the ICC,ACC and everyone wants to happen [Many of them would be selling our stories, etc.] but we as a nation had not cashed anything [financially] out of this publicity, etc. [Afghanistan deserves much more than only publicity,etc. We have proved our capabi

Comment from Azam Khan
Time: December 6, 2008, 2:27 am

We have proved our abilities while fighting empty handed once we are well-equipped than Inshallah the world will see how great fighters we are!

Comment from bob
Time: December 6, 2008, 10:37 am

Azam, I don’t doubt Afghanistan’s ability at all. In fact in my opinion, if it wasn’t for 30 years of war and conflict, they would at least be on par with Bangladesh today.
All I wanted to say is that I felt that Singapore were hard done by in WCL Div5 (in what seemed to be a very subjective interpretation of the playing conditions regarding rained out matches), remembering that they beat Afghanistan by 69 runs having bowled them out for only 76!

Comment from Chris
Time: December 14, 2008, 5:47 pm

“Azam, I don’t doubt Afghanistan’s ability at all. In fact in my opinion, if it wasn’t for 30 years of war and conflict, they would at least be on par with Bangladesh today.”

But bob, if Afghanistan didn’t suffer through those horrible years of war, would cricket have even taken off there? My impression was that cricket took off in Afghanistan because of the Afghan refugees in Pakistan who were exposed to cricket.

Comment from Andrew Nixon
Time: December 14, 2008, 6:00 pm

Chris is right here. Had there been no war in Afghanistan it is quite likely that cricket would not be anywhere near the standard it is now.

The history of cricket in Afghanistan involves some matches played by British troops in the mid 19th century, then nothing until the Afghanistan Cricket Federation was formed (in Pakistan!) in 1995.

Comment from bob
Time: December 14, 2008, 7:57 pm

I’m not so sure. Yes, the current success of the Afghan team is due to guys growing up and playing in neighboring Pakistan, but despite what Wisden might tell you, cricket was definitely played at a grass roots level in Afghanistan, at least to a certain extent in the regions close to the Pakistan border (I’ve played with some of them)- remembering the historic ties which the land had with Pakistan and even India in the past.
I may be wrong though and I hope somebody from the region sheds some light on the issue.

Comment from Fabian
Time: December 16, 2008, 7:25 am

Surinam got there ass kicked by the other countries. Those countries were supplied with pro’s and semi-pro’s.
For WCL 7 in Guernsey hopefully everything will be right on track.

Comment from Andrew Nixon
Time: December 16, 2008, 4:35 pm

Supplied with pros and semi pros? You mean picking the best side available to them right? In actual fact, only Bermuda and the USA had a professional cricketer in their teams. Suriname got thrashed because they weren’t good enough.

Comment from Chris
Time: December 16, 2008, 4:45 pm

But bob, what was the extent to which cricket was being played at a grass roots level in Afghanistan and what time period was this? Remember Afghanistan has basically been in a continuous state of civil conflict since 1978 (with outside powers intervening at various times). That’s 30 years - and remember that refugees would have begun going to Pakistan since that time. Are you saying that before 1978 cricket was being played at a grass roots level in Afghanistan? And if so, do you know to what degree?

I wouldn’t doubt that before 1978 cricket was played in the areas bordering Pakistan, but would it be possible for Afghanistan to be on par with Bangladesh today by only being able to draw on such a (relatively) small pool of cricketers as compared to the present situation where they can draw on players and fans who went to Pakistan from the interior areas where cricket may previously have been unknown until they became refugees? And some of those refugees may well have spent their entire childhood (and thus formative years) in Pakistan since it is quite possible that some may have left with their parents in the late 1970s/early 1980s and not returned until the late 1990s/early 2000s. Had folks like those not been displaced to Afghanistan, they may never have been introduced to cricket I would think.

Comment from Chris
Time: December 16, 2008, 4:46 pm

As for Suriname, I’m sure the fact that most of their first team was denied visas played a role in their thrashing.

Comment from Sudip
Time: December 22, 2008, 4:18 am

ACC U19 women’s tournament making no news in your site? Strange!

Comment from Andrew Nixon
Time: December 22, 2008, 6:54 am

I’ll be writing a report on CricketEurope once its finished, and will be mentioning it on here. I do have a full-time job outside of the two sites I write for!