I’m forced to be off on Fridays for a while, so we are moving this thing!
Pakistan completed the 2-0 sweep of Zimbabwe in Harare with an innings win. Hasan Ali (seen above hugging it out with his teammate Shaheen Shah Afridi) took a 5-fer in the first innings to secure Player of the Series honors.
The Counties were half rained out last week. Notts, Gloucs, Northants, and Somerset all got wins while everyone else drew, except for Durham and Derbyshire, who did not play. Rain is affecting three of the five matches this week. England’s mountains don’t get green by themselves, as William Blake would tell you.
The ICC is contemplating a move to 20 teams for the T20 World Cup in 2024. None of that statement may ever happen, but it’s nice to think about. There is some talk of that WC being played in the US, and with the US having the 19th ranked ODI team at the moment, it would give us the incentive to climb up the T20 rankings to a similar position so we wouldn’t need to get in through a host exemption. All a dream so far, but we’ll see.
There was an amazing story of a T20 tournament in Sri Lanka in 2020 that was actually played in India 1,600 miles away, with made-up player’s names and other players being advertised as playing who had never heard of it. It was all to generate some gambling action during the heart of the pandemic when no games were being played. As someone on Twitter said, big deal, the US has at least five fake T20 tournaments every year.
