stevegrant

Predictable big 8th wicket partnership lets them off the hook...

They'll be good fun to watch next season for car-crash viewing reasons. Florentino Perez has very clearly learnt precisely nothing since his last spell as president. Signing every big-name attacking player under the sun for over-inflated transfer fees doesn't tend to work too well when you've got a defence made of biscuits.

:lol: :lol:

Given that safety is a rather big issue, particularly with public transport - and even more so with the tube in it's rather "remote" setting, I would say completely disregarding safety procedures would probably come under gross misconduct which is generally a sackable offence in any line of work.

I'm hoping to have the master copy of the DVD some time next week, so should be sent to everyone the week after that.

The starting salary for a tube driver is, as has already been mentioned, somewhere in the region of £35k, which rises to £42k-ish. For this, they get a 37-hour week (although I'm sure I read somewhere that tube drivers have similar restrictions as coach/bus/HGV drivers in that they can only be driving for a certain number of hours at a time - 5 hours was the time I saw, which then makes it a 25-hour week) and 43 days' paid leave. I'm yet to speak to anybody in London who has any sympathy for them over this. Also, apparently they were quite close to striking some sort of a deal (although quite why TfL were willing to listen to them in the first place is a bit bizarre) until Crowe decided that he'd throw in one extra demand, which was the reinstatement of two of his members who had been sacked - one for an alleged theft, the other for ignoring safety procedures. Their main motive for striking was for a 5% pay rise (up to £2k) and a guarantee that there would be no compulsory redundancies. Now I don't quite know what bizarre little world they live in at the RMT, but there's a global recession going on where thousands of people are losing their jobs on a pretty regular basis. Why should they be immune to that, if that's what is required? Credit to those from the rival union who thought it was all ******** and went to work anyway, and particularly to those RMT members who also thought the same and broke the picket line. I managed to get to Wembley on the Jubilee line without any problems last night as a result - in fact, it was the easiest journey to Wembley I've had since it was rebuilt.

"Premier League TV" - I think I might just throw up.

Me too, but I'll be disappointed to lose the Bundesliga coverage more than the Premier League stuff. While it was very "rough around the edges" and tended to have pundits who would actually say what they thought rather than try to kiss arse all the time, the picture quality was dreadful, solely due to their idea to skimp on the costs by broadcasting via the Eurobird satellite when every other broadcaster in the country uses Astra 2 (the end result being that you can't line your Sky dish up to both satellites perfectly, and clearly the Astra 2 one is the one you're going to use more often than not).

The Sutton to Milton Keynes train (goes via Clapham Junction and Watford) stops at Wembley Central usually, which was going to be my alternative plan for tomorrow. Now that's been scuppered, I'm not bothering.

Administrators will be called in tomorrow

Now 49/4 off 9

Not looking good at the moment, 47/3 off 8.4 overs... really need to put their foot on the pedal.

Rumour is that none of the overground trains are stopping at Wembley tomorrow, which seems completely mental to me

Apparently the Premier League and FA have clauses written into their respective contracts with Setanta that all of the money is guaranteed by their investors (one of whom is Goldman Sachs, can't remember the others), so unlike the ITV Digital situation, that money will probably still be handed over, although expect it to go through the courts first. The SPL and Blue Square Premier don't have the same clauses, so their clubs could be well and truly screwed.

"Experts" seem to be predicting that the value of the packages currently owned by Setanta would re-sell for a fraction of the initial bid. They've now stopped accepting new subscribers, which appears to be under a similar sort of non-cover-up as Saints' "we're not selling season tickets because we don't know what division we'll be in yet" claim a few months back... http://tinyurl.com/kk9bw6

Lolstralia, etc. It's not that much of a surprise, to be honest - they've been rubbish at Twenty20 for a while.

I'd wait and see what happens in their first innings - could be a batsman's graveyard.

Correct on all counts. But apparently Broad losing his head and not thinking about the bigger picture is him "showing that he's a winner", according to Atherton...

Basically a one over per side slogfest.

Words cannot suitably describe how much of a farce that was. Rain forecast for Sunday so probably won't even get a chance to beat Pakistan, let alone actually do it.

The Oranjes win the toss and will bowl first. Looks very murky, but should be the same for both sides. Probably a low-scoring game in prospect with the conditions, I suspect.

It does make sense on the basis that the whole tournament is condensed into a few weeks, with the Super Eight stage starting the day after the first group stage finishes, so for logistics it makes sense to know which grounds each team will be playing on and when, so they can sell tickets accordingly. It would be a bit pointless if people assumed England were going to play Australia at the Oval but England then win the group and the tickets for that day at the Oval are then relatively wasted when they could have gone to fans of Pakistan instead.

Apparently Rashid in for Swann as well. What could possibly go wrong?

England should do ok, but assuming we get through to the Super Eight stage, we've got a ***** of a draw, with games against South Africa, Australia and India. Any team qualifying for the semi-finals from that group will fancy their chances of winning the tournament. Bangladesh, Pakistan, Sri Lanka and New Zealand looks a much weaker second group, IMO. I like the look of South Africa at the moment, although India will rightly start as favourites.

FIRST ROUND Group A India, Bangladesh, Ireland Group B Pakistan, England, Netherlands Group C Australia, Sri Lanka, West Indies Group D New Zealand, South Africa, Scotland 5 June Group B - England v Netherlands, Lord's (17.30) Netherlands (163/6 20ov - de Groot 49; Anderson 3/23) beat England (162/5 20ov - Wright 71, Bopara 46; ten Doeschate 2/35) by 4 wickets Scorecard 6 June Group D - New Zealand v Scotland, The Oval (10.00) New Zealand (90/3 6ov - Ryder 31; Watson 1/4) beat Scotland (89/4 7ov - Coetzer 33; Butler 3/19) by 7 wickets Scorecard Group C - Australia v West Indies, The Oval (14.00) West Indies (172/3 15.5ov - Gayle 88, Fletcher 53; Johnson 2/36) beat Australia (169/7 20ov - Warner 63; Bravo 2/31, Taylor 2/33, Edwards 2/34) by 7 wickets Scorecard Group A - India v Bangladesh, Trent Bridge (18.00) India (180/5 20ov - Gambhir 50, Yuvraj Singh 41; Naeem Islam 2/32) beat Bangladesh (155/8 20ov - Junaid Siddique 41; Ojha 4/21) by 25 runs Scorecard 7 June Group D - South Africa v Scotland, The Oval (13.30) South Africa (211/5 20ov - de Villiers 79, Kallis 48; Haq 2/25, Drummond 2/40) beat Scotland (81 15.4ov - Coetzer 42; Morkel 2/15, van der Merwe 2/17, Botha 2/17, Steyn 2/21) by 130 runs Scorecard Group B - England v Pakistan, The Oval (17.30) England (185/5 20ov - Pietersen 58, Wright 34; Saeed Ajmal 2/23, Umar Gul 2/37) beat Pakistan (137/7 20ov - Younus Khan 46*; Broad 3/17) by 48 runs Scorecard 8 June Group A - Ireland v Bangladesh, Trent Bridge (13.30) Ireland (138/4 18.2ov - N O'Brien 40, K O'Brien 39*; Mashrafe Mortaza 2/30) beat Bangladesh (137/8 20ov - Mashrafe Mortaza 33*; Johnston 3/20) by 6 wickets Scorecard Group C - Australia v Sri Lanka, Trent Bridge (17.30) Sri Lanka (160/4 19ov - Sangakkara 55*, Dilshan 53; Lee 2/39) beat Australia (159/9 20ov - Johnson 28*, D Hussey 28; Mendis 3/20, Malinga 3/36, Udana 2/47) by 6 wickets Scorecard 9 June Group B - Pakistan v Netherlands, Lord's (13.30) Pakistan (175/5 20ov - Kamran Akmal 41; Seelaar 2/36) beat Netherlands (93 17.3ov - Kervezee 21; Shahid Afridi 4/11) by 82 runs Scorecard Group D - New Zealand v South Africa, Lord's (17.30) South Africa (128/7 20ov - Smith 33; Butler 2/13) beat New Zealand (127/5 20ov - McCullum 57; van der Merwe 2/14) by 1 run Scorecard 10 June Group C - Sri Lanka v West Indies, Trent Bridge (13.30) Sri Lanka (192/5 20ov - Jayasuriya 81, Dilshan 74; Simmons 4/19) beat West Indies (177/5 20ov - Bravo 51; Mendis 2/25, Malinga 2/45) by 15 runs Scorecard Group A - India v Ireland, Trent Bridge (17.30) India (113/2 15.3ov - Rohit Sharma 52*, Gambhir 37) beat Ireland (112/8 18ov - White 29; Zaheer Khan 4/19, Ojha 2/18) by 8 wickets Scorecard GROUP TABLES Group A 1. India 4 +1.227 Q 2. Ireland 2 -0.162 Q 3. Bangladesh 0 -0.966 Group B 1. England 2 +1.175 Q 2. Pakistan 2 +0.85 Q 3. Netherlands 2 -2.025 Group C 1. Sri Lanka 4 +0.626 Q 2. West Indies 2 +0.715 Q 3. Australia 2 -1.331 Group D 1. South Africa 4 +3.275 Q 2. New Zealand 2 +0.309 Q 3. Scotland 0 -5.281 SUPER EIGHT STAGE Group E India, England, West Indies, South Africa Group F Ireland, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, New Zealand 11 June Group F - New Zealand v Ireland, Trent Bridge (13.30) New Zealand (198/5 20ov - Redmond 65, Guptill 45*, Styris 42; McCallan 2/33, Cusack 2/43) beat Ireland (115 16.4ov - Botha 28; N McCullum 3/15, Mills 2/12) by 83 runs. Scorecard Group E - England v South Africa, Trent Bridge (17.30) South Africa (114/3 18.2ov - Kallis 57*, Gibbs 30) beat England (111 19.5ov - Shah 38; Parnell 3/14, Kallis 2/20, van der Merwe 2/32) by 7 wickets. Scorecard 12 June Group F - Pakistan v Sri Lanka, Lord's (13.30) Sri Lanka (150/7 20ov - Dilshan 46; Shahid Afridi 2/23, Saeed Ajmal 2/26, Umar Gul 2/34) beat Pakistan (131/9 20ov - Younis Khan 50; Malinga 3/17, Muralitharan 2/28) by 19 runs. Scorecard Group E - India v West Indies, Lord's (17.30) West Indies (156/3 18.4ov - Bravo 66*, Simmons 44) India (153/7 20ov - Yuvraj Singh 67, Yusuf Pathan 31; Bravo 4/38, Edwards 3/24) by 7 wickets. Scorecard 13 June Group E - West Indies v South Africa, The Oval (13.30) South Africa (183/7 20ov - Gibbs 55, Kallis 45, Smith 31; Taylor 3/30) beat West Indies (163/9 20ov - Simmons 77; Parnell 4/13, van der Merwe 2/30, Steyn 2/30) by 20 runs. Scorecard Group F - New Zealand v Pakistan, The Oval (17.30) Pakistan (100/4 13.1ov - Shahzaib Hasan 35; Vettori 2/20) beat New Zealand (99 18.3ov - Styris 22; Gul 5/6, Abdul Razzaq 2/17) by 6 wickets. Scorecard 14 June Group F - Ireland v Sri Lanka, Lord's (13.30) Sri Lanka (144/9 20ov - Jayawardene 78; Cusack 4/18, Rankin 2/27, McCallan 2/33) beat Ireland (135/7 20ov - Mooney 31*, Porterfield 31, N O'Brien 31; Malinga 2/19, Mendis 2/22) by 9 runs. Scorecard Group E - India v England, Lord's (17.30) England (153/7 20ov - Pietersen 46, Bopara 37; Harbhajan Singh 3/30, Jadeja 2/26) beat India (150/5 20ov - Yusuf Pathan 33*, Dhoni 30*; Swann 2/28, Sidebottom 2/31) Scorecard 15 June Group F - Pakistan v Ireland, The Oval (13.30) Pakistan (159/5 20ov - Kamran Akmal 57; McCallan 2/26) beat Ireland (120/9 20ov - Porterfield 40; Saeed Ajmal 4/19, Umar Gul 2/19) by 39 runs. Scorecard Group E - England v West Indies, The Oval (17.30) West Indies (82/5 8.2ov - Sarwan 19*, Bravo 18) beat England (161/6 20ov - Bopara 51, Pietersen 33; Bravo 2/30) by 5 wickets (D/L target: 80 in 9ov) Scorecard 16 June Group F - New Zealand v Sri Lanka, Trent Bridge (13.30) Group E - South Africa v India, Trent Bridge (17.30)