Im watching what could possibly be the biggest shock in cricket history, as it looks like HOLLAND could end up beating England

CURRENT SCORE:
England 162-5 (20 overs)
Holland 142-5 (17 overs)

Also its light rain at the moment and the dutch are ahead on the D/L method

And its happened England lose by 4 wickets

How embarassing.

I shouldn't laugh though. We were pathetic after Bopara got out, though Netherlands were superb then to be fair.

haha what was broad doing throwing the ball when he could have just held it, haha nice one holland

He had to throw it cos the Dutch had to go for the win, just a shame his throw was that shit.

Overall though they got what the deserved, average batting (despite Wright's 71) poor bowling and a shocking standard of fielding

I'm not a bit interested in cricket but I just had to watch the highlights. Even my local cricket team would have fielded better than that.

So you're a Holland fan then?

Oh well, in other news West Indies pretty much thrashed Australia - Gayle smashing 88 off 50 balls.

Well after thumping Pakistan its back to normal thanks to South Africa, a 7 wicket beating

pretty pathetic batting performance by the sounds of things! unsurprising really.

Good the sooner this blight is removed from the Cricket scene the better. At the end of the day it's just not cricket

I'm afraid I disagree. It's great that cricket is diversifying, and while I'll always prefer Test cricket, Twenty20 is a great alternative. A lot of people say it's 'mindless slogging', but if it's that easy how do batsmen manage to get big scores off very few deliveries? There's a lot of tactics involved that makes it far from easy but it just so happens that England's rubbish at it.

Test cricket's much better of course.

Great game. England win by 3 runs.

India out!

I managed to catch the end of the game, what a thrilling finish. but looking at the highlights now, its clear we didnt play that well at all, India made a catalogue of cock-ups that contributed to their downfall but most of all, lazy fielding and bowling in their final 3 overs was the big flaw in their gameplan, fair play to us though didnt play well mostly but we did enough to take advantage of their problems.

It all means now its "winner takes all" against the West Indies tomorrow night, the winners play either New Zealand or Pakistan in the semis

And the Ashes starts soon

I only watch 20/20 when england are playing - out of patriotism only - it does nothing for me

Indeed, can't wait for the Ashes. Shame I don't have Sky.

Pakistan through to the Semi's well done Umar Gul, Shahid Afridi and Kamran Akmal. Onward and upwards.

My days this is a good game..... going to be very close.

Last over... Windies need 3 from 6 balls.

All over.

Colly had a mare as captain. His fault!

Windies win by 5 wickets D/L method, England are out

A shame really, as i thought 161 was a good total from us

Semis now look like this

South Africa v New Zealand/Sri Lanka/Pakistan
Sri Lanka/Pakistan v West Indies

Wasn't D/L. Reduced to a 9 over match, with Windies being set 80 from 9 overs to win.

If it was a full 20 over match we probably would of won.

Still part of the D/L rule.

Shame England lost - I also thought we'd win if it were 161 West Indies needed. Should have scored more runs though towards the end of the innings.

My bad. I'm sure I'm not the only who doesn't have a clue about D/L.

true, why not make it simple and say you have to beat a total equivalent of the opposing teams runrate,

EXAMPLE, England got 161 from their 20 overs today, that is a rate 8.05 an over, multiply that by the amount of overs to be played (in this case 9 overs) and that equals 72.45, any remainder (no matter how small) and round that up , this would have given the West Indies a target of 74 to win

I don't understand most of the D/L and it probably has its flaws, but that rule wouldn't work either. The smaller the number of overs for the team batting second, the more unfair it is on the team that batted first, as they won't hav to worry as much about wickets and will therefore bat in a more aggressive mentality. That's why a "revised target" is needed, though quite how they work that out I'm not sure...

But is aggresive batting not the whole point of 20-20 anyway?

Yes, but smashing the ball for fours and sixes isn't the only way to bat - you'll need to bat sensibly to get big totals. The fewer overs, the more risks. Either way, that rule wouldn't be fair I'm afraid. Say if West Indies only had 6 overs (the minimum number iirc) to get 49 with 10 wickets in hand - that would be too easy. It's contraversial whichever way you do it though.

Even Messrs. D&L aren't that sure

D/L is actually a fairly simple algorithm but it is based on "available resources" at any given point in an innings i.e. Wickets remaining and balls remaining which are used to calculate the probability of achiving any given score. The big flaw is that it was built on data from one day matches - and is remarkably accurate if a bit bewildering and counter intuitive in that form of the game.

It is however a waste of time and space for 20/20 as no data from this form of the game has been included in the data modelling. A 20/20 version of D/L is due to be built next year when sufficient data as been accumulated

Messrs Duckworth & Lewis are flicking through their wisden almanacks as we speak

South Africa are OUT, Pakistan win by 7 runs

OVER THE MOON. BRING ON THE FINAL.

Pakistani coach still alive then...