[deshprem]

Originally Posted by Ian Pont
And you will discover I said our aim was to beat the weaker teams in our group (no shock there) and get the eight points we needed to outright qualify from the middle four matches without having to beat India or SA. Even someone with NO KNOWLEDGE of cricket strategy can work that one out. This is not a 'secret'. hahahhaha

Do you REALLY think those four teams (Ireland, WI, England, NL) were going to say "Guess what.. I think Bangladesh are trying to beat us?" Get realistic! Everyone targets the weaker teams as 'banker' points.

Plus, we had already lost to India badly.. so that match had gone... and the SA match, if we won the 4 matches in the middle, wouldn't be important so we could discount it. That was why I spoke about the India and SA matches the way I did. (and not ENGLAND match, as the poster of this thread claimed, and what he claimed was said on that TV programme).

There is far too much rubbish being spoken at the moment by media people and poor reporting and interpretation of cricket understanding. Please guys, don't get sucked in by TV pundits who have never coached and some of whom have never been involved in a World Cup before. Let alone planned for one. This is my THIRD world cup as a coach.

We have a game to win on Friday against England. The boys are practicing hard and we feel we can win it. We also plan to carry that on to beat the Dutch. This would give us 6 points and all come down to run rates and the points against SA. If we can rescue our run rate with some big wins then we may not have to beat SA. Results by others become important, too.

But the fact still remains that if we win 4 matches in our group, we will be in the QF. That has always been the case. We saw that SA are beatable, and we have seen England are too. No coach would ever say we cannot beat a team. We might be unlikely to win a certain match (against all odds) but that doesn't mean we cannot win every match we play. Ireland has the same approach. So does the West Indies.

I am the MOST POSITIVE COACH when it comes to belief in what we are capable of. The 58 all out hasn't shaken my resolve and belief in the players we have. Everyone is preparing for a win against England. And then we take each match as it comes.

Trusted you all along Ian. Thanks for everything .

Posted via BC Mobile Edition (Android)