The Silver Fern

Stick a fork in them, they're done. Desperation review is always a sign that a team knows they're cooked.

Yeah first half hour or so will be crucial. Batters will be readjusting to today's conditions, and any nerves will be the highest at the start of the innings. Once they get through a few overs all that will ease.

That said, this is an epic choke if South Africa lose from here. As a stats nerd, I have a formula for the 'life' left in a chase, which is runs remaining divided by wickets remaining minus two. If that's 10 or less, then it's game over. More than that the batting team might be the favourites, but the bowling team have a chance. Right now it's 11.5, but 9 more runs gets it below 10.

Is lords in June really the best time for this game? Still, I'd take 14 wickets over 400/2 on the first day.

I think that makes Fox the second kiwi (male) after Bob Charles to win 2 PGA tour events. I know the earlier one was a second tier event, but still a neat achievement.

I wonder if the extra security will help him to play more freely or if the pressure helped him to play his best.

Be interesting to see where Ange lands now - surely another decent size club will take a chance on him after winning a trophy.

It's kind of remarkable that NZC didn't try to line this up with the coaching appointment.

Yeah feels like Alonso timed his jump to perfection.

I thought Bond was fantastic during his brief spell as our bowling coach, and he's one of the few commentators that actually come across as having a real deep insight of what's happening rather than reacting after the fact, so I'm hopeful that he'd be a success.

Good to see the F1 principals pushing for some track updates. I'd assumed it wouldn't be possible on a street circuit in an old city, but maybe there are some possibilities.

Yeah everyone loves Monaco but the racing is terrible. It'll never get canned because of other factors, but if a new circuit was that bad it would get dropped instantly.

@KiwiPie said in EPL 2024/2025:

@African-Monkey said in EPL 2024/2025:

Do we give any of the promoted sides a chance of staying up?

No. Unless one of the current 17 self-destructs, they all have way too much quality and depth. This season, the 3 promoted teams played a total of 102 games against those 17 and won just 8. One single team will have to win 8 of their 34 games to stand any chance of staying up.

Shocking goal difference too - each of the bottom 3 teams was as bad as all the other teams (with a negative goal diff) combined.

Feels weird to say this, but I love what the Browns did. Travis Hunter is a great prospect, but to get Mason Graham, plus an extra 2nd this year and at extra 1st next year is fantastic.

@dogmeat said in EPL 2024/2025:

Except three seasons ago Fulham, Bournemouth and Forest were the promoted sides. All have stayed up, consolidated and are pushing for Europe. Helped by several of the 'powerhouse clubs' having shat the bed.

Fulham and Bournemouth had both been up and down a bit before that, while Forest only just scraped through to 38 points.

I wonder if making a promotion stick is about having a couple of cracks to benefit from the extra cash and boosting your squad so that at the 2nd or 3rd attempt you can stick the landing.

Will be interesting to see if Burnley can stay up after their latest yo-yo.

PSG vs Arsenal! Two perennial champions league chokers finally guaranteed a final.

I didn't realise that PSG were managed by Luis Enrique. If Villa had pulled it off, that would have been a kind of revenge for Emery - he managed PSG when they lost that crazy tie against Luis Enrique's Barcelona, where Barcelona won despite being 3 goals behind after 88 minutes.

Stead feels like a test batter with an average in the mid 40s. Clearly a good player, with a bunch of impressive innings but prone to inexplicable failures and not 100% reliable in the toughest of moments.

Honestly, a decade from now he'll be remembered as our greatest ever coach, the conservative selections, odd horrible series and influence of Hesson will be forgotten, but the finals, titles and series sweep in India will all be remembered.

An artificial limit on the number of 3s is stupid.

I'm not a big time basketball fan, so I don't have a strong opinion on whether it's good or bad but I find these questions reolly interesting. If it really is a problem, the obvious solution to me is pushing the line back so they're harder to make. If shooting lots of 3s is a winning strategy, that suggests that a 3 point shot has a higher expected points than a 2p shot. Making it harder to sink a 3 reduces the expected points and will make other scoring methods more attractive.

Hay now has a 49 and a 99 in only 4 innings.

Yeah I feel like we're in more trouble than it looks on the scorecard, since Abbas (or another part timer) has to bowl about a quarter of the remaining overs.

I don't know what the selectors are thinking - maybe he bowled more in the one day or plunket shield, but when I watched him play T20 his bowling was very much handy 6th option rather than core bowler.

@MN5

Difference of 14 (27 vs 41) in T20 though, that must be where I got the idea.