In Which Marsh Writes Some More Funny Shiz (Pool A, Suckaz) Yet Still Passes Tayla The Task Of Coming Up With A Title Because She Didn't Learn Her Lesson Last Time (+ The Pool B’ers she missed last time)
By Marshi with Zero Contribution From Tayla
(and MOAR photoshop’n realnezz by Tayla)
(by ‘real’, Marsh just means really bad)
Now that I lost the ice cream money I put on Sri Lanka and the whole country is in mourning because our biggest OTP/Bromance won’t diss Kohli’s new ads over crab soup in the dressing rooms anymore and Bangladesh broke our hearts because India did not spontaneously combust (though Rubel and Mortaza looked like they were seriously close to it at all times), let’s wrap this review up with Group A because they are the bestest, fabuloustest, most good-looking bunch ever. Seriously, have you seen the Scottish uniforms? Plaid is back and it’s here to stay.
UAE were one of my favourite flavours of ice cream. Yeah, they didn’t win anything, but the support group for losers is bigger than the one for winners so you gain more friends that way, right? Anyway, these guys are just the sweetest. None of them are full-time professional cricketers but they gave a solid performance and I hope that’s not patronising because I sure as hell don’t mean it to be. They were determined, and they were competitive, especially Shaiman Anwar, who batted like he’d eaten a scoop of chilli ice cream just before each of his innings (except that last one, shh). The matches against Zim and Ire were killer good, and none of the big guns got to stream roll them.
Zimmers started off well, winning against Sri Lanka in a warm-up match. They then proceeded to scare every single team they went up against, most notably India, but they only managed to beat UAE. If Anwar was licking chilli ice cream, Zimbabwe was on frozen wasabi – streamlined, disciplined, and only consumable in the small doses. Let’s hope they serve us a huge scoop in the future. Brendan Taylor was the Big Damn Hero, scoring 433 runs altogether - putting him behind only Sanga in this WC. Losing him will be tough, but Sean Williams was pretty cool too. They can go home holding their ice cream high.
This is New Zealand’s year. Their ice-cream scoop has plopped off their cone and fallen onto the sidewalk many, many times but this time they are going to stuff their faces. Twice, however, they’ve been reduced to lurking warily, shielding their cone with one hand as
Australia and Bangladesh laugh and poke them, leering at the way their batting collapses when BB and Williamson don’t smash every ball out of the park. Their bowling, however, is as solid as a bolted coffin that hasn’t gone South yet (Tayla’s pun was way better). Speaking of Boult, in 2008 he made the interesting move of leaving his career in music (he was the lead singer of Linkin Park) and joining cricket full time. Chris Martin has since retired but it doesn’t change the fact that NZ are literal rockstars.
They play West Indies in the QF and it shouldn’t be much of a problem. Balls of cheese, mate. Balls of cheese.
More Mitchells than bails, as many Mitchells as stumps and almost as many Mitchells as stumps and bails together, this Aussie team is cooler than a crateful of iced milo on a hot day. That NZ/Aus match was dubbed ‘Best Game Ever’ by my cat, and it had the electricity and excitement of a final.
This team is not entirely dominant, though. They’re prone to collapsing (NO WE AREN'T, MARSH. That was one time. [I don't know why you let me edit these]) and Watto literally melts sometimes (because he’s made of butter). But they’re a bunch of fighters who can’t be beaten until the very last ball. Starc and Marsh have two of the best bowling figures and Starc has the second highest number of wickets in the tournament, (currently - top bowler fluctuates like crazy) so Aussie’s bowling attack is as on point as Xavier’s hair (seriously, that wins Best Gelled Hair of the tournament).
They play Pakistan and let’s be honest, that can be as unpredictable as a street fight between Superman and a burger that may or may not have a shard of kryptonite stuck in it.
(UPDATE: OMG THAT GAME.)
Bangladesh deserves to be here. Is it a fluke or an upset that they beat England? Absolutely not. Bangladesh may have lost to India (because Rohit invested in fire-proof batting gear) but that doesn’t discount their trail to the quarter finals. ALSO, THEY DISMISSED KOHLI FOR 3 OR SUMTHIN ASDFGHJKL. They chased 318 against Scotland, solidly beat Afghanistan, kicked the Poms out of the stadium (and the tournament L O L), and veered dangerously close to pushing NZ’s ice cream out of its cone. Mahmudullah’s hundreds were wicked awesome, and Shakib Al Hasan, Mushy and Rubel being pretty cool as well. Rock on, Tigers.
Because you all need to look at this some more.
No, really.
Okay, fine. Bad-terrible-worst-ever-very-not-good management, Eoin’s face is heart-breaking, half the members of that team did not deserve that and we sure don’t want another Ashes in 2019 and the ECB is Voldemort.
If you want more in-depth analysis, check out KP’s tweets. (And Piers Morgan's. If you're not an English fan.)
[Tayla tried to do a thing but she couldn’t find the data on funny jokes, sorry.]
First off, they gave cricket a meaning again, playing with a passion that reached out to their many fans. Second, that one win over Scotland was the most exciting match since NZ/Aus and Ire/UAE, which just goes to show that if we didn’t have our new flavours of ice cream, the multitude of one-sided matches would’ve jaded us into non-shiny territory. Afghanistan helped keep things shiny. Shenwari is definitely a Big Damn Hero, and Zadran chipped in with his scalps. Can someone make a movie about them, please? I’d give up watching England for the next three years if someone did this. Please?
#don’t question me on this one
Despite Davey’s dashing good looks - er, I mean wickets, Scotland just weren’t as compelling as they could have been. There were some good individual performances from Berrington, Wardlaw, Machan and Coetzer but they never moved into ice cream-grabbing mode. The WC was still richer because of them. Best uniforms by far!!!
In conclusion, my predictions are that NZ will beat Aus in the final (India will have spontaneously combusted by then because Kohli really is the seventh horcrux), Watson will have written and performed a song about it (with Brett Lee obvs), and Tayla will be on her way to destroying VoldECBmort.
