World Cricket League Division 5

[Xavier]

The tournament has started today in Nepal.

In the first day easy wins for the host team, the USA and Singapore. Nepal have a chance to prove they deserve more than their current position in the associates ranking. Tomorrow a crucial match Nepal v Singapore (coached by Marvan Atapattu!).

Tournament home on cricinfo:
http://www.cricinfo.com/wcldiv5/cont...es/442686.html

first two teams will be promoted to WCLD4, to be held in Italy in June.

[Eshen]

Singapore could not chase down 180! Why Atapattu ruining his reputation coaching this team?!

Congrats to Nepal and USA on their second consecutive win, and Jersey on their first win in the tournament.

[al Furqaan]

Xavier, any plans on attending the Division 4 matches in your backyard?

will they be taking place in Rome or some other venue? whats the makeup of the Italian team? mostly brown ex-pats of Indian-Pakistani origin, or actual Italians?

anyways, good luck to Italy in the D4 tournament!

[Xavier]

I don't think the matches will be played in Rome, because there are not decent cricket grounds... if it's so I don't think I could have a chance to see the matches. And I'm afraid there will not be any kind of coverage for cricket by the media, as usual, which is stg really upsetting me, as also american sports like baseball and american football have some kind of coverage... most of italians don't know anything about cricket, they mistake it with croquet, the game played in parks, and when I say it's the 2nd sport in the world by number of fans they think I am joking...

You could have a look at wikipedia page on italian national team:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Italy_n...l_cricket_team

it's mostly based on expats, with few italians, and the team has been declining after the retirement of italo-australian Joe Scuderi, who formerly played first class cricket in Australia and England.

Back to division 5, Nepal and USA win again and now lead the table and look comfortably going to qualify for division 4.
I do also think that they could win division 4 too, as the teams playing there (Argentina, Cayman, Italy and Tanzania) all look weaker then Nepal and USA.

[Xavier]

Current division 5 table

Team .............P W L T NR Points NRR
United States ...2 2 0 0 0 4 +3.040
Nepal ............2 2 0 0 0 4 +0.665
Singapore .......2 1 1 0 0 2 +1.100
Jersey ...........2 1 1 0 0 2 +0.826
Bahrain ..........2 0 2 0 0 0 −1.450
Fiji ...............2 0 2 0 0 0 −4.852

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2010_IC..._Division_Five

[Xavier]

Originally Posted by al Furqaan
Xavier, any plans on attending the Division 4 matches in your backyard?

will they be taking place in Rome or some other venue?

I have just found matches will be played in Pianoro, near Bologna, north-centre Italy, and here you can see the "ground"
http://cricketitalia.blogspot.com/search/label/campi

...if this is the best cricket ground in Italy you can argue how poor the game is here...

[Eshen]

Sanjam Regmi celebrates a wicket with teammates. Photo by NepalSportsPhoto.com

[Xavier]

Article by Nepal captain Paras Khadka about crucial win on Singapore:
http://blogs.cricinfo.com/btw/archiv..._advantage.php

[Xavier]

Round 3:

USA beat Jersey by 66 runs
Nepal beat Bahrain by 8 wickets
Singapore beat Fiji by 2 wickets

Nepal had some trouble being 7/2 chasing 115 but captain Paras Khadka scored 71* and they won quite easily in the end.

Now Nepal and USA look almost certain of promotion but still there are two day of matches left. I read comments of growing enthusiasm by nepalese supporters, dreaming of chasing same Afghanistan path from division 5 to the highest level of the associates... way to go!

[Xavier]

A twist in the tale!

While Nepal easily won on Fiji by 193 runs as it was expected, the USA lost to Atapattu's Singapore by 99 runs and now it all goes down to the last day of play, february 26. This is the table:

Nepal 8 +1.919
USA 6 +1.355
Singapore 6 +1.114

Singapore is playing to Jersey on the last match, so they could win, while Nepal play to the USA, and if the americans win all 3 teams will be at 8 points in the final table and it will be the NRR to decide teams qualifying to Division 4.

[cleazer]

Singapore annihilated Jersey today (in only 26 overs), and because of that I think they are guaranteed of having one of the top 2 run rates.

In the big Nepal-US match, Nepal put up a score of 162/9 in their 50 overs. The US is currently 150/5 after 32 overs, apparently on their way to an easy victory. If the US can win in the next few overs, it looks like Nepal will finish out in 3rd place in run rate! After dominating the first 4 days of the tournament and being all alone in first place heading into the final day, it looks like Nepal are now in serious danger of not advancing.

That would be awful luck for Nepal. The crowd seem to have realized this too, as cricinfo currently reports:

Match State: Delay due to crowd trouble

As near as I can tell, if the scores ended right as they are right now, the run rates would be:
US +1.40
Singapore +1.35
Nepal +1.30

[Xavier]

Last day drama!

Nepal are beaten by the USA in the last match, and the nepalese supporters cause troubles, which leads to the US innings being reduced to 46 overs... and this helps Nepal to keep a 0.004 (!!!) NRR advantage on Singapore and get promotion to Division 3!

The final table is:
USA ...............Points 8 - NRR +1.371
Nepal..............Points 8 - NRR +1.351
Singapore.........Points 8 - NRR +1.347

I'm expecting an appeal by Singapore board, because if there had not been crowd trouble Nepal NRR would have been worse and Singapore would have qualified, but on the other hand that would have been unfair to Nepal who have proven to be the best team in the tournament and also missed promotion from Division 5 in 2008 by losing the semifinal to Afghanistan.

Tomorrow the final of the tournament between Nepal and USA, Bahrain and Singapore stay in Division 5, while Jersey and Fiji relegate to Division 6.

[cleazer]

Wow, what a remarkable turn of events. When I went to sleep last night, I had calculated that there was absolutely no way possible for Nepal to make the top two.

Cricinfo just posted an interesting story on exactly how the calculations changed when the overs were reduced. Check it out, its a fascinating read:

http://www.cricinfo.com/wcl/content/story/450161.html

That said, personally I'm glad that US and Nepal got promoted. They are both much better than the Division 5 level, and frankly I'd expect both to be promoted from Division 4 later this year.

Associate level cricket benefits GREATLY from both the US and Nepal. Nepal brings an amazing level of fan support, and can probably draw bigger crowds that all other non-Division 1 teams added together! The US of course brings much potential money and huge potential for growth.

Singapore, on the other hand, can definitely feel like they got screwed. At the very least, the ICC should allow them to host the next Division 5 tournament.

Or is it possible that the ICC might make an exception and allow all 3 teams to be promoted to Division 4 in Italy? Adding a seventh team to that tournament shouldn't be a huge burden. It would extend the tournament by a mere 2 days, which shouldn't be too much of an inconvenience to anyone.

[Xavier]

That article was really interesting... so a 6 instead of a 4 would have made the difference and giving promotion to Singapore instead of Nepal... the crowd trouble really made the difference, but i don't think the nepalese fans were aware of this, maybe they were just angry at the outcome of the match...
I do agree that in the end the best two teams were promoted, but if I were a Singapore fan I would really be upset now!

So Division 4 will be played in August in Italy with:
Host team Italy,
Tanzania
Argentina
Cayman
USA
Nepal

It looks like USA and Nepal could go through, but the asians will have to improve their batting if they don't want to stop their rise in the world league!

[al Furqaan]

Originally Posted by Xavier
I have just found matches will be played in Pianoro, near Bologna, north-centre Italy, and here you can see the "ground"
http://cricketitalia.blogspot.com/search/label/campi

...if this is the best cricket ground in Italy you can argue how poor the game is here...

if u googled the Mirpur stadium 4 years back, you'd see the same thing...actually worse, SBNS had no pitch!

that ground looks quite nice for a football-crazed land like Italy. if i could find a ground like that to play on in America, i'd be pleased.

[Xavier]

Well the apparent total lack of facilities struck me in a negative way...

Here is a video about Nepal cricket and Division 5 tournament, nice view!
http://icc-cricket.yahoo.net/media_i...p?mediaId=1169