**Official** South Africa in England 2012

[BeeGee]

Congrats to England on their newly acquired No.1 status.

This has been such a great series for position jockeying at the top of the rankings.

 

[grecian]

Congrats to England on their newly acquired No.1 status.

This has been such a great series for position jockeying at the top of the rankings.

Thank's it been a long arduous journey of masochistic pain to get it back, but enough about Trott's innings...

 

[Senile Sentry]

Loving the fuss about no.1 rankings in ODIs. Nobody gave it much attention before and general consensus is that all ODIs are nothing but preparatory games for World Cup, which is and what should matter imho in the ODI world.

 

[BoyBrumby]

Loving the fuss about no.1 rankings in ODIs. Nobody gave it much attention before and general consensus is that all ODIs are nothing but preparatory games for World Cup, which is and what should matter imho in the ODI world.

Quite. Ditto the T20 rankings. As there are extant world cups for both formats they're just window dressing.

Seems counter intuitive that in the format in which England actually are world champions they aren't ranked #1, but in the one where they copped a thorough arseholing in the WC QF they are.

 

[GIMH]

I remember Burgey made a thread after the WC about India not being #1 and how ridiculous it was

 

[wpdavid]

Not convinced actually - I could list 2 or 3 WC winners who weren't unquestionably the best one-day sides in the world, so it doesn't bother me that India's win in home surroundings hasn't catapulted them to top position.

Not that I give a rat's arse about where we stand in these rankings of course.

 

[Spark]

ODI team selection and strategy is so heavily weighted towards the next WC nowadays that it seems a bit farcical not to have the top ranked side be the winner, though.

 

[Prince EWS]

ODI team selection and strategy is so heavily weighted towards the next WC nowadays that it seems a bit farcical not to have the top ranked side be the winner, though.

I suppose you could look at it the other way - that the ranking system weights matches so evenly that it seems a bit farcical to weight team selection so heavily towards WCs.

Team, players, everyone pretty much care more about the World Cup than the ODI rankings, but that's fine. They don't have to be the same thing; they can be used as different ways to measure different types of quality.

 

[wpdavid]

ODI team selection and strategy is so heavily weighted towards the next WC nowadays that it seems a bit farcical not to have the top ranked side be the winner, though.

Yes, that's entirely fair. Perhaps the weightings given to results in major tournaments such as the WC and ICC thing should be tweaked to reflect that to a greater extent. In so far as it matters.

 

[uvelocity]

nah they should just reduce the amount of bilateral useless odi series

I'm sure everybody would swap all these odi's for one more test

 

[flibbertyjibber]

Not seen any of the first 2 completed matches as been away, wouldn't be surprised if the series ended 2-2.

 

[BoyBrumby]

Looks a good toss to win. Distinctly grey hue to the London skyline.

England unchanged; McLaren in for Morkel for the Saffers.

 

[The_roc]

Looks like a good toss to win

 

[BoyBrumby]

Urgh. Tredwell. It's bad enough he looks like he should be in a special needs class without actually ctaching like he belongs there too.

Dropping Amla's worked well for us this tour.

 

[Dan]

Needs more Chris Woakes, less Dernbach and Tredwell.

 

[BoyBrumby]

Needs more Chris Woakes, less Dernbach and Tredwell.

Be a tough call to leave Dernbach out after his last game. However Woakes for Tredwell wouldn't have been the worst call in these conditions. Have Sammy for the spin option, after all.

 

[BoyBrumby]

Jesus, that looked stone dead to me. & Hawkeye confirms it. Big in-swing from Ravi.

Shame Cook let Finn talk him into wasting the review on one that was always going over.

 

[Neil Pickup]

Botham right for once. Why is Kieswetter stood back?

 

[BoyBrumby]

Botham right for once. Why is Kieswetter stood back?

Sounds like a trick question to me.

I'm going to say it's the gashness?

 

[Neil Pickup]

Sounds like a trick question to me.

I'm going to say it's the gashness?

It's the only satisfactory answer I can think of... Amla is stood a yard out of his ground and we're just saying "okay, mate, go ahead..."

Frightening stat from Botham... Amla has scored 519 runs after being dropped.

Also, shut up Knight, that wasn't good from Kieswetter, it was easy, slow and pointless.