Sandpiper

Astonishing stuff. To follow up a 67 with the 10th highest chase ever is just insanity. And for the neutral 1 all, 2 to play. Great stuff.

Its omious amd Ive seen enough! ABs 2.2 England 9 Wales 11 Ireland 10 Boks 6 Wallabies 12 France 24 Scotland 50 Argies 50

Denley's 12 the lowest top score ever !

Some appalling cricket played first session today. There's 4 days left for fecks sake. Barring a miracle after lunch England will have to skittle Aussie for 100 or so to save the ashes!

Setting up nicely this one. Aussies in it a bit more than the market would suggest (Eng 1.3) imo, England bat last and having to bat twice yet in any case is more of a curse than a blessing for either of these teams. Set fair for a bit of sun now, fascinating first session coming up tonight, be a big boost for whoever can come out on top of it.

They love a good melbourne cup talking horse over there dont they. From looking at various interviews it seems Jamie Lovett has never touched anything less than G1 quality!

Yes there wasnt a whole heap to fear on display Eng v Wales on Sunday.

How would you price it up Hesi? Currently it is ABs 2.6 England 7 Wales 10 Ireland 10 Boks 6.2 Wallabies 15 France 40 Scotland 65 Argies 50 I might even up the top 6, perhaps something like ABs 3.4 England 7 Wales 8 Ireland 8 Boks 8 Wallabies 10

It wouldn't be a World Cup year without a loss or two this time of year! Shaping up scarily similar to 2015 especially with the final Bledislow match to follow at Eden Park. The northern hemisphere lot are leaving their warmups late, Wales have 2 x England and 2 x Ireland warmups still to play. I gather the Wales Ireland games may be more of a squad fixture. Not ideal imo .. prefer the southern hemisphere warmup of a hard Rugby Championship followed by (in the AB's case) a single match v Tonga.

Replacing some bedsheets with sandpaper would be a very enjoyable way to get fired from a central London hotel job this summer

It wouldnt be fair at all! And it could well happen (except mine is now 4 and not from Karaka!). Its a change in the right direction and given the speed of reaction Ill give them the benefit of the doubt and expect further changes toward the ideal if the opportunity arises.

Not ideal but good on them for making a change. They should have made it top 3 in the Karaka race to give parity with the other leadups not top 5. And preferably a proper exemption not prize money based but I understand there are reasons for that. The fact is that the Karaka race is drawing quality horses currently so until that changes an effective exemption seems reasonable. We all want the best horses in the Derby. A situation where Karara 3yo winners might not be qualified for the Derby helps no-one.

By including all runners in the analysis the author has not proven that this is a relevant factor for winners and placegetters. If all the betting was match betting it would be an ideal analysis. Thats not how it works tho. Lets say in an average race there are 5 horses drawn inside and 5 horses drawn outside. These 10 are the non triers. If its natural for the outside 5 to tend to finish behind the inside 5 (after being trapped wide) then this could account for the authors results, and winners/placegetters might not be underbet at all. They may even be overbet.

Unless you want to ban racing why shouldn't a horse that enjoys racing (and some love a few hurdles in the way too) be sent around by owners who enjoy racing him? Unless he was being sent round unfit to race then it's all good, no?

Yup, and thanks to the those ausses and their long term issues with etiquette there were no pearollers in the super over...! Shame the Ashes are in UK this time not Aussie, we are all geared up for cricket now.

Thats a sticky wicket that laws change. Problem is that the current etiquette is just that. It would become absurd when players play against that etiquette and start running. Maybe its not absurd, maybe its just like waiting for a ball to run dead in rugby - thats what fielders would have to do. Give it a sly kick along the way to boot. Personally I wish players of all sports would play hard to to rules and give up the etiquette. Someones backing up? Thanks for the wicket. Someone hurt their wittle ankle in football and wants the game to stop? Harden up lad and pick the ball out of the net!!

what a ridiculous match! Archer in the super over was a fun call, he was totally bricking it!

Yeah its not so much a team game Steve, stick to rugby

Ferguson to take another first over wicket at 8.00 is ok. His strike rate is one every 30 balls. Top 20 all-time.

Perhaps. Against India he came in at 70-4 after 20, massive pressure on them created by the strike bowlers and not helped at all by Dhoni (who faced 40% of Santners balls). He only bowled 3 overs against Aus. Against England he went for 65 and took 1 wicket. India was rained off. He's 36th in the ICC rankings, Rashid is 29th and that's about right for me. Is Santner good enough to get out batters trying to smack him around too much? Certainly. Flattered recently? Yes also.

All this stuff about the semi final curse and first major world cup final since 66 is such nonsense isn't it, theres only about 6 decent teams in word cricket!!

Hello cricket fans. What a great tournament this has been and the somewhat un-english pitches have really added to it. The toss being a big factor is hardly new and I'd take that variance over T20 roads for 100 overs any day. NZ - IND It's a curious thing about cricket how batters continually have to weigh up risk / reward on pain of not being able to contribute further. India seem to have an overabundance of caution when batting, quite the opposite to England and Australia. They play less % of attacking shots and attempt less 4s compared to 6s. NZ are somewhere in between. In the recent series here in NZ India's chases felt needlessly laboured as if they felt a cricket game should always go to the 46th+ over. Could they have gone harder safely or were they wise to stay in 4th gear? Thats the million dollar question in cricket. I thought they idled a little too long versus NZ this week and Dhonis personal batting style after NZ made headway gave them a little too much to do. You would think immortal Dhoni should be able to adjust (certainly from listening to some of the comms!) but he has actually been returning a negative value in runs for his team (in terms of game scenario) for a number of years now after being the opposite in his earlier career. ENG - AUS Virtually England's best ever start to a ODI, and Australia's worst. The link with the NZ IND game is a ket batters inability to change their personal batting style, in this case Maxi. He can't help himself just like Dhoni, at different ends of the spectrum, and the look on Smith's face after Maxwell threw his wicket away was priceless and cost Australia dozens of runs given the wickets/overs scenario. The new pitch held up better than most in the past 2 weeks making Englands chase like shooting fish after seeing off the new ball shine. A slaughter made possible by better use of the new ball and the cricketing gods smiling - remember the ENG AUS group game when half chance after half chance when the wrong way for England, quite the opposite last night. NZ - ENG No one wants to face Boult. And when Boult is there, no one wants to be forced to make hay off Henry and Ferguson. NZ have the problem though of trying to hide 20 overs of relative dross besides those 3. If the gods smile on NZ and England are 3 or 4 down by the time CdG and Neesham are bowling then we have a game, otherwise there likely isn't the peril around to get close to bowling England out and stop them getting at minimum a run a ball off the last 30 overs. In the other innings when NZ bat it is all about the openers. The stats say form is a mirage for batters: from match to match they make scores at random intervals and at almost any time after the first few deliveries of an innings they will continue to have an even chance of going on to score their average. Try telling that to anyone who just watched walking wickets Guptil and Nicholls though. NZ's strike rate lower down is poor compared to England. 3.8 is a big price on paper for sure but I think there is value in waiting to see if the NZ openers are waving it around trying to defend imaginary 6 foot by 4 wickets first.

Nice idea, some thoughts - Picking a 6.00 shot that starts at 2.00 is a lot more impressive than picking a 50.00 shot that starts at 40.00. Somehow the book % of overlay needs to be used as the reward. - How about a bank with limits on stake ($100 bank $1 min $5 max for example) to allow for weighting according to perceived value. - How about ignoring the race results? Pretty easy to miss a 15.00 or 20.00 shot 28 weeks in a row. - How about allowing more selections per raceday? If you're going to lose $$ when your selection starts at a higher price this should naturally whittle down to a fairly small number of selections. - FF prices at start time are harder to dig up so just using Tote for the start price would be fine imo. It's the same barometer.

Top effort lads I had a win / place / place with PoS and Go Nicholas.... @ 137/1 ... sooo close!

Cheers lads I like those. A possible 3000/1 treble now we are talking!