Sunday is going to be the under 19 world cup final of the cricket world cup
It will be between India and Pakistan – in the quarter finals, India beat England convincingly on Wednesday and on Friday Pakistan beat Australia
Australia, England, Pakistan and India are arguably the top 4 countries so it is only fitting that they are the four countries to make the semi finals
It is even more interesting that it will be an India vs Pakistan final – the two countries that were previously one that have become such huge rivals to the point where they could not even play each other in their own countries
On initial inspection, Pakistan appear to have the better bowling attack, while India appear to have more in the batting lineup. That has been what India and Pakistan have had as their advantages in the past, but as always there is scope for variation.
These are the players of the future, maybe not of the next year, maybe not two years but perhaps in 5 years time – some may have a big part to play in world cups of the future. I for one will be watching the U-19 Final on Sunday and looking forward to how they progress.
Who’s going to win, you think? Ready to make a prediction? 😀
[Off Topic]
WOW! ResEx is still down! I think Scott is having heavy duty problems with the software upgrade. Either that or he is very busy in his personal life…
[/Off Topic]
Not gonna make any predictions yet
Too close to call, and you just never know what’s gonna happen when big rivals play each other. Pakistan won in 2004, so probably have the upper hand and i think if i was gonna go with one side it would be them. They have some fantastic players coming through at the moment and are probably better equipped to win.
But you can’t rule out india – this is the best under 19 team out of a country of nearly 1 billion people – that’s a lot to choose from!
Who knows – we will wait and see
As for resex, i just dropped scott an email to see if there’s any news
One billion! Wow! Yeah, I agree, lots to choose from.
India has an estimated population of 1,080,264,380
Obviously, only half of them will be eligible to play men’s cricket and in this competition only those under 19 are eligible. But i’d say it would be a pretty safe guess that they have substantially more to choose from than any other country in the competition – that is until china starts playing cricket but if/when that happens it is thought that India would have a higher population than china too!
Yeah but just look at what China can do when it really wants to practise a sport like short-track speed skating or 10-meter dive for instance. Looks like once they set their mind to it, it takes them about 10-15 years to dominate a sport.
So… Who won?
Completely forgot to post in here what happened – it was a fascinating match
Pakistan’s batting collapsed to Indian spin bowling and all seemed to have been decided at he halfway stage – Pakistan all out for 109 runs
but then the Pakistan bowlers pulled off the most dramatic half an hour spell of bowling and the indian batsmen collapsed and at 9 for 6 at the lunch break were out of the game. A couple of batsmen allowed for a mini recovery but they were bowled out for 71 – Pakistan won by 25 runs. Bear in mind that an average score is 240-300 runs in these sort of matches
View the scorecard on cricinfo here and the match bulletin
I watched it all live and it was comical at times watching the collapse
Pakistan retained the U-19 World Cup
The scores sound outrageously high to someone used to hockey scores. Basketball scores look the same to me. I do admit the game of cricket escapes my knowledge completely.