What the? World Cup starts tomorrow?
Two people have said it now, first KP and now Micheal Vaughan:
The World Cup starts on Wednesday (against Sri Lanka)
Huh? I don’t understand that. Apparently, the World Cup, for England, starts, tomorrow (Wednesday). What does that even mean? There was me thinking that the World Cup started a few weeks ago (which, need I remind, was with a loss to New Zealand). So in the 3 games since… what? They were only warming up? It sounds to me that the mindset in the England camp is totally wrong if they honestly believe that their World Cup starts against Sri Lanka.
My feeling is that actually what they’re doing is hiding the real state of affairs behind the usual PR spin nonsense. If I was to translate, it might actually say:
We know we’ve been rubbish and unconvincing so far, and we also know that if we lose to Sri Lanka tomorrow, then actually that signifies the end of our World Cup.
Why not do the decent thing and admit the truth? Stop, for want of a better expression, bullshitting us? It’s blatantly obvious that England haven’t got a scratch on Australia, New Zealand or South Africa. We know it, they know it. So why pretend like it’s not true?
What’s frustrating is that we know England are on paper, capable of beating Sri Lanka. They’ve got some top players in Murali, Vaas and Malinga, but then so have we. This ought, really, to be about the most evenly matched contest for England in this competition to date. England winning this match will more than likely be the difference between whether Sri Lanka or England progress to the semi finals.
This comment really bothered me, as well. It’s typical of the “off the cuff” strategy that England produce in ODI. And yes, I agree, they are lying to us.
On the meaning, though, I cannot, for the life of me, think why the World Cup would start now and not when we played New Zealand in the Group Stage.