South Africa v England: second ODI delayed by rain – live!

A lovely return of serve here from Lev Everage. “Can all the people still whinging about England’s World Cup win confirm that they also believe Australia didn’t win in 1999? They progressed from their tied semi with South Africa because of a superior net run rate in the preceding round, which might even be lamer than most boundaries scored.”

Oh, my sweet spot! I spent two months researching the 1999 World Cup last year (an essay that lives in The Nightwatchman) and NRR, I strongly agree, is a dreadful way to sort out a tournament where points are skewed to end up level. They actually fixed this for the 2003 comp – by far the best format yet. Sigh!

As a (proud) Australian living in London covering the game around the world, my assessment is that there’s no doubt that Aussie fans were far angrier about the 2019 tie-breaker than New Zealanders. There’s probably an essay in that, too.

Ground inspection coming up in 15 minutes. We are seeing pictures of the outfield covers coming off the ground with the pitch now clear (very green!). Nick Knight says they understand it will be at least an hour before we’re ready to roll. Progress!

The Sky coverage is turning into an excellent chat with Jimmy, specifically about maintaining fitness over his marathon career. He really is in absurd nick.

“Gidday Adam.” Good morning, Ailstair Connor. “As a dual French-NZ national, may I the first to draw the obvious analogy between the Cape Town ODI and the Six Nations game in Paris? World champions fail to turn up in Cape Town, vice world champions absent in Paris? (Though England are only co-world-champions really : match drawn, super over drawn, end of story).”

Despite coming from Melbourne, even this rugby chat I can (vaguely) understand. It’s a tough little period of ODI cricket for England given all their white-ball focus on the T20 World Cup in October. This is a point Andy Zaltzman made on the BBC Cricket Social when I was on there the other week: why don’t we have more World Cups? His argment is that short-form cricket is defined by tournaments, so hold them every other year. We don’t need to follow the Olympics/football/rugby. Fair?

If you’re looking for something to listen to while we wait… Geoff Lemon and I had England World Cup champion Ebony Rainford-Brent on The Final Word this week. She is one of the most impressive people in cricket and her message one of the most inspiring. At Surrey, the work they are doing to integrate black cricketers back into the club is quite outstanding. Well worth a listen, if I do say so myself.

Aleem Dar is talking to the ground staff… and he’s looking at his watch. That’s the best sign yet that we might have some toss/start times coming our way shortly.

Make of this what you will, but they are moving the car tyres off the covers at Kingsmead. This suggests they might come off soon. Or they’ll trolling us.

Jimmy Anderson is on Sky Cricket’s coverage and it will be of interest to many of you that he has declared himself fit for England’s Test tour of Sri Lanka in March.

“Steady rain” overnight according to TV. “Better news,” though, says Ian Ward. “It is looking a lot brighter and more encouraging.” The shortest game would need to be a T20 starting by 6:30pm local. That’s six (count ‘em) six hours from now.