Day 9 - Lanka Blushes and Peacock Crushes!

MSD likes Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde I think. And he also likes to script it differently I think. So he decided to unleash Mr Hyde during the tri-series and firstly lull England into false sense of achievement and all others (except Australia of course!) to feel that India is a spent-force. And now the doctor is out - surgically cutting two key opponents to pieces!

Pop-gun attack, tooth-less attack, prodigal bowlers, spinners-can't-spin, pacers-can't-bowl-fast - those were some of the civilized criticisms on the Indian attack. Guess what? For the second time in a row, the Indian attack has scored remarkably well - at times more than the famed batting line-up.

No, SA did not choke. They just showed that they are over-reliant on ABdV and Faf. India matched SA dive-for-dive, save-for-save, run-out-for-run-out. And did not match them on the drops and the mis-fields. Guys, one simple request. Don't peak too fast and too early pliss!

Dhawan said that he cleaned his swimming pool during the tri-series break. It seems all teams are sending their out-of-formers to clean swimming pools in the various ANZ cities now!

Meanwhile at Dunedin, Mahela managed that elusive century to shut Afghan leopards out. Not before the Lankans were shown the devil's face more than once during the second half of the game. 

And I am counting... for the third day in a row, a game between the super-8s ended in an one-sided manner and guess what? a game involving an associate went almost full distance. Haiyo ICC!

G-Section:

Welcome to Cacofonix and ManiacG for the G-Section. Five people in the black. Nice.

Tomorrow's game:

Yet another test for England after that shellacking by the Kiwis. This time  Scottish Bravehearts are out to pull a fast one. Good luck folks.

England vs Scotland @ Christchurch by 0530 SGT

Q-Section:

As usual, AngelAsh, Raghav & Guru got the right answer. Then Peruri came in with the right answer too. There were some interesting responses too. Bob's took the cake. (Poor him, blame it on Russell Peters!)

Looked hard at it. I thought it could mean that this is the spot where bags are loaded, or the spot where the ladies coach stops. It also looks like a hand with a cuff touching something...
My final answer: Committing suicide on the tracks is prohibited.

Then he asked for changing his 'final' answer. On my consent he came up with the following: Genius!

Ok that's the spot where lanterns are hung at night - to let the train know  that it's the end of the line!

But the real answer is:

The sign-board indicates the token exchange at railway tracks - A sign signalling the exchange of token required to pass a particular section of the track - typically single section track. The most common one is called Neale's Ball Token exchange. Those railway engineers 150 years ago were really ingenious, weren't they?

Now for today's question:

Sana told me, "These five can kill you!" How so? [5 points]

Answers and guesses to the usual place.

(The usual place is my email address/FB PM/Whatsapp; details of rules/ranges etc., are at http://sribees.blogspot.sg/2015/02/gq-15-here-we-come.html)

Day 8 - PAcKed with WInd!

For the second day running, a match between the so-called 'top-8s' failed to reach the full quota. Pakistan never recovered from those lolly-drops, Russell's typhoon and of course the Taylor-triple at the top of their innings!

I am sure, someone somewhere is keeping a tab of these 'one-sided' games and will come with an analysis to give us a % of 'meaningless' games that involved the full member teams.

Windies showed much more intent today. One telling stat was that their score today is the highest ODI score with the lowest 'highest individual' score. If that did not confuse you first time around, then my writing is good ;-)

As the cliche goes, Pakistan has to do a lot of soul-searching. Forget SA. Must win against UAE, Ireland and Zimbabwe. Two potential banana-peels there anyway! Currently they are like a potato-chips packet. Lot of wind and very less stuff...

At the Gabba, Bangladesh escapes with a lucky point. Makes their game against Eng as a virtual round-of-16. Provided Scotland and Afghanistan don't play to their potential :D

G-Section:

Nobody gets penalized for the AUS vs BAN game abandonment.

For the PAK vs WI, the bravehearts don't reap that much because of their bowling choices. You think that PAK will get more wickets but WI will win the game. A bit of a low  % choice, me thinks.

A few of you are very close to going black. Keep at it. You will reach it soon!

Tomorrow's games:

South Africa vs India @ MCG by 11:00 SGT

Sri Lanka vs Afghanistan @ Dunedin by 05:30 SGT

Which blood is going to flow at MCG - blue or green? 
I guess India will be happy to lose narrowly :Q

Q-Section:

Sorry for the red-herring of a half-volley.

Any self-respecting googler would have found that the demo happened at Poznan, Poland. But our Q-section is nothing if not for the establishment of links. So here it goes.

Asteroid 2889 was discovered in 1981 (908 years earlier) and was named as Brno Asteroid 2889. Now Brno is a nice, old city in Czech Republic but is a twin city (Gemini?!) of Poznan. So...

Raghav, AngelAsh get the full link while Guru, Shanky and Bhuvana get a point for getting Poznan right.

If you are going to send any mail-weapons based on the above...

Now for today's question:

No links. No associations. No nothing.

Just explain what the blue sign-board indicates in the photo below. [4 points]
Thanks to the lovely lady for the question!

Answers and guesses to the usual place.

(The usual place is my email address/FB PM/Whatsapp; details of rules/ranges etc., are at http://sribees.blogspot.sg/2015/02/gq-15-here-we-come.html)

Day 7 - England goes Southeeee!

England, siiiigh!

They said that England is ready for the Kiwi challenge. Eoin Morgan even got his name changed cunningly to hit some form. Scotland helped by showing the underbelly of Kiwi batting. Then Southee happened... again!

If someone gets his pitch map, it will be crowded near that small area around full length on or just 3 inches outside the off stump. England were sleepwalking with their pads - both on and off! Then Brendon McC smashed all the sixes in the game to celebrate the ESPNCricinfo test innings award!

At the innings break, there were no sixes in the game. And in seven overs, he had sent the ball seven times over the boundary including 'that' dent on the Man-of-the-Match car that went to Southee. Our G-section friends have so much to thank him. Oh, the small matter of saving electricity as the game got finished well before the Wellington dusk :-)

Thorough annihilation. Ignominy. Psychological destruction. Yeah, bring on all the sobriquets and adjectives. But the truth is England will be in the quarters in spite of this most-one-sided-game-of-the-world-cup! More questions for ICC to handle!

G-Section:

Pity that people expected a 50-50 chance for the game today. But only one side turned up.

For a change Bob could not clean up the kitty today ;-)

Welcome to Vishal to the G-section.

Thanks to Raghav and Shanky to have pointed out a small error in yesterday's details. Corrected. Did not change the winner though - just made Bob to get all his guesses right y'day. First for this world-cup!

Guesses for tomorrow's games are welcome!

Pakistan vs West Indies @ Christchurch by 0530 SGT

Australia vs Bangladesh @ Brisbane by 1100 SGT

Q-Section:

I have to share this explanation from AngelAsh before giving the correct answer...

The goat in the picture has a beard.. So, it's a billy goat. The pictures inside his stomach.. well, at first I tried to spell out the word, goat. Didn't work. This might be the connection -
Asparagus - the "Royal vegetable"
pug - a royal dog, Queen Victoria owned one. She was also gifted a royal goat.
Town crier - makes proclamations of important events in the royal family.
A was way too confusing.. then I realised that it was written in "red". So, it probably stood for "red-letter" day, which again put the town crier 's proclamations into picture.
There was a billy goat that misbehaved at the Queen's birthday (which is considered a red-letter day), and that was William Windsor or Billy the billy goat.
The pictures in his stomach point to (a) Billy goat, ergo , he could say that he ate himself.
Now, it took a lot more than five minutes and an insanely long coffee-break to come up with this. If the answer is right, don't disqualify me :) 

And when I told her that this was not the answer, she came back with the right one but with the following caveat...

Hell, I'm ROFLing at that absurdity myself. True testament to the fact that most of what researchers say is pure poppycock. :P 

After all, life is all about such interesting discoveries, ain't it??

Any way, the goat ate: A, ASPARAGUS, CRIER, CHUG. Anagraming those four words, you get the zoological name of goat which is CAPRA AEGAGRUS HIRCUS

AngelAsh, Raghav got it right. Bhuvana got half of them right...

Now for today's half-volley:

As the asteroid tore the skies 908 years earlier, in which Gemini city did the demonstrations happen?(3 points)

Answers and guesses to the usual place.

(The usual place is my email address/FB PM/Whatsapp; details of rules/ranges etc., are at http://sribees.blogspot.sg/2015/02/gq-15-here-we-come.html)

Day 6 - ZimbabUAEd!

UAE consists of seven Emirates or kingdoms if you want to call them so. Dubai, Abu Dhabi, Sharjah - we know them well and the not so famous, Ajman, Fujairah, Ras-al-Khaimah and Umm-al-Quwain. When one checks the current UAE playing-11 in Cricinfo, you have two people who are marked as born in Dubai (?) and one of them not listed as born anywhere (!). Rest are from such exotic places as India, Pakistan and Sri Lanka. In reality, many of the associates have a similar problem. The lack of indigenous talent is glaring and sooner than later, the cupboard becomes bare and that is that. Bermuda is a classic example; after having played WC in 2007, they played such a (poor) brand of cricket last October in World Cricket League Division 3 in Malaysia, that people were left to shake their heads in despair. Living on borrowed talent is dangerous to say the least. How can we make it a bigger game and a better game?

Ok, that is the gloomy message for the day.

UAE were in it for 75% of the game. Thereafter, Zim's experience took over. As a grey-haired gentleman (me, me, me!) , if I don't support experience who would ;-) ? Actually, Zim are turning out well. West Indies are waiting to be picked - again! Pakistan is busy fighting with fielding coaches. Ireland is saying that they are not here to create upsets but to win matches. Why is it that the Indian Pool is always more hypertensive?

Q-Section:

I am thinking of disqualifying AngelAsh. She has this bad habit of giving answers - that too correct ones, in less than five minutes from the time of posting! Raghav, MurthyLN, Bhuvana & Guru score full 4 points. Yuva got Campbell Scott but forgot the link and tiger's name (sacrilege!) - 2 points.

And the answer is:

Campbell Scott (The Amazing Spider-man) and the tiger (Life of Pi)  have acted in movies with the same character name: Richard Parker. By the way, Pete Parker (Spider-Man) is Richard Parker's son ;-)


Current quiz position below. Neck to neck at the top.

Now for today's toughie:

When I asked the goat what it has eaten, it said, "I have eaten myself!" How so? (6 points)

G-Section:

Bob is on a hot streak. He got the margin down to the T and is leading the pack.

Tomorrow is a very good game! Wear your guessing dress on!

England vs New Zealand @ Wellington by 0930 SGT

Answers and guesses to the usual place.

(The usual place is my email address/FB PM/Whatsapp; details of rules/ranges etc., are at http://sribees.blogspot.sg/2015/02/gq-15-here-we-come.html)

Day 5 - Bang! Bang!

The romantics wanted Afghans to win today. From ICC World Cricket League Division 5 to ODI status to World Cup is a real far cry. That Asia Cup win against Bangladesh in Fatullah was always in the background. But some inexperience in referrals and while batting showed them up. How much was that Shenwari's bowling suspension a cause for their deterioration, you never know.

Their discipline was there for about 30 overs. Then they slept for an hour. That was enough for the tigers to come back strongly. It is a different matter that Bangladesh cricket team is the most under-achieving sporting team that I have ever watched. Even Liverpool FC shows some quicksilver form off and on! They live another day to fight another battle.

G-Section:

The usual suspects booked in. Guru was brave enough to support Afg.
Chugging along.

Tomorrow's game is going to be another cracker! Happens to be played at the town where the Irish killed the Windies... Another upset anyone?

Pool B - Zimbabwe vs UAE @ Nelson by 5:30 am SGT

Q-Section:

If the tree falls to the right, it gives the 'join-the-dot' representation of the World Cup match venues. Of course the brown line is for Australia and the green line represents New Zealand.

AngelAsh and Raghav got the five points. Their speed was scary.

And for today's question:

An easy one to welcome the Chinese New Year! Let us see how many of you crack it.

What is the connection? [4 points]

Answers and guesses to the usual place.

(The usual place is my email address/FB PM/Whatsapp; details of rules/ranges etc., are at http://sribees.blogspot.sg/2015/02/gq-15-here-we-come.html)

Day 4 - Scotch-drunk Kiwi batting!

Trent Boult and Tim Southee are proving to be too much for established batsmen - what could poor Scots do in front of such accurate bowling? With the abundant county experience in the team, the Scots did manage to stretch it a bit. But 140+ was going to stretch nobody except if the batsmen were batting wrong-handed, which most of the Kiwis tried to do anyways!!

Pool A is a set pool - I don't see any upsets for the big-4, in spite of the presence of Afghanistan, Bangladesh and Scotland. There, I have said it!

Can't say the same about Pool B though!

G-Section:

Everybody said New Zealand. They all thought that they will bat first and they thought that the swing in the air will make them lose around half the side. Alas! NZL had different plans.

As a result, nobody won anything!

Situation remains the same.

Tomorrow's game is the best of associates (horror! I am rating Bangladesh as an associate still!)

Afghanistan vs Bangladesh ~ Canberra ~ by 11:00 am SGT

Q-Section:

The hint worked only for Guru. (5 points) who joins AngelAsh (8 points) to have cracked the question.

And the answer is: 

The eight items on the collage are: silk, bamboo,  wood, stone, metal, clay, gourd and hide. These represent Chinese musical instruments which are traditionally classified into 8 categories known as bayin.

And today's question is:

Another picture:

If the above tree falls to the right, what CWC 2015 connection do you see?

Answers and guesses to the usual place.

(The usual place is my email address/FB PM/Whatsapp; details of rules/ranges etc., are at http://sribees.blogspot.sg/2015/02/gq-15-here-we-come.html)

Day 3 - Leprechauns' Calypso Trick!

Four years ago, when the Irish vanquished the English, I wrote this.

This time around, I don't think such exhortations are necessary. It is only par for the course that the men from Shamrock nation would have a couple of important scalps in their kit bag before they leave the coasts of ANZ.

@Clive_Lloyd, on what basis are you going to select the next 15? Performance? Pchaa!#*

Anyone betting for Ireland to reach quarters?

Talking of beting, I am making a very important change to the G-section.

You are NOT restricted to 1000 points per 50 bucks. You can guess for all the  group-stage games for 50 bucks. So go ahead, let your guesses flow for every game hereafter!

That is what feedback is for!! 

G-Section:

(Corrected to include RMahesK's SA vs Zim and Ind vs Pak entries. Apologies my mistake)

Naturally, people did not expect the greenies to win over the maroons!

Tomorrow's game is:

New Zealand vs Scotland @ Dunedin by 5:30 am SGT

Q-Section:

AngelAsh, a new lady entrant to our GQ cracked it. 8 full points to her. However, I am leaving the question open for one more day, as it seems to be stumping some seasoned pros. 

And here is the hint: The eight things in the collage collectively represent something musically in a particular culture. 

For five points, go figure.

Answers and guesses to the usual place.

(The usual place is my email address/FB PM/Whatsapp; details of rules/ranges etc., are at http://sribees.blogspot.sg/2015/02/gq-15-here-we-come.html)

Day 2 - 300 psi does it!

(c) Roger Federer timeline

Phew. 

Pakistan handled the pressure much better... in the warm-up game against England. 

However the pressure of 300 on the board in the #matchthatmatters #matchofcwc15 #nothingelsematters got to them finally. (fyi: standard atmospheric pressure is about 15 psi) 

Oh, don't start me on the Umar Akmal dismissal; the ball's seam position changed as it crossed the bat. Ergo definite nick.

Now we have even converted Federer to love cricket ;-) And please stop quoting that tennis score line and of course, I will get mad if you say anything about crackers ;-)

On the other side of the pond, Zimbabwe held the cards for 50% of both the innings; but imploded so badly that it was a bit too much to catch up in the end.

Ervine's catch to dismiss ABdV is so far the catch of the tournament. Just beat Steven Smith's flyer to dismiss Buttler yesterday.

G-Section:

Bob got in today and harvested a good amount of credits in both the games. Beginner's luck? Perhaps!

(The above does not include RMaheshK's entries from below. Pls check Day3 blog for correct values)

(The above table has the corrected values for RMaheshK's entries)

Tomorrow's game is:

                                             Ireland vs West Indies @ Nelson 05:30 SGT

West Indies is ripe for the picking in my opinion as shown by Scotland in the warm-up. Let us see.

Q-Section:

I thought that the question was a tough one. Then life throws Gurus at you. In ten minutes, I get the correct answer. Followed by Raghav. Then Shanky and Bob took some help (so one point less for them) to come up with the right answer, which is....Net Ball.

You had CSK; you had DADA; you had 2W and you had 4G. Jumbling them up, you get the playing positions of Net Ball. Google them up!

For today's question: 

Another pictorial.

These eight seemingly disparate things will join together to take you on a musical journey. Explain.

8 points.

Answers and guesses to the usual place.

(The usual place is my email address/FB PM/Whatsapp; details of rules/ranges etc., are at http://sribees.blogspot.sg/2015/02/gq-15-here-we-come.html)

Day 1 - #MissingBalls

(c) Prantik Mazumdar

A rousing start to the world cup, if you are from ANZAC, that is!

Sri Lanka did not flatter; they just continued from where they left in their Kiwi tour.
England did flatter with those quick braces and Finn's hat-trick.

But both of them were taken to cleaners by two exciting talents - Corey Anderson and Aaron Finch; but in the end were left to search for the articles mentioned in the hashtag above!

If this is what is in store for the rest of the tournament, then dear bowlers, take cover! (No, the Mitches don't count!)

There was a nice comment on Cricinfo: "...New Zealand will score 400 against India!" And the good old wag was saying, 'Why New Zealand? Ireland can do it!' Such is the plight of the bowlers.

The Kiwis beat SL for the first time in a WC. (They did beat them in 1992 - thanks Yadavalli) Will the other bogey also fall tomorrow?

G-Section:

A quiet start to the guess exercise:
Here is the current consolidated position:

Q-Section:

Raghav came back pretty fast - probably because he is in the States; said that he went around heavy-metal music bands etc. But finally arrived at the answer. Guru as usual, was business-like and the answer was spot on. Muthiah and Shanky were quite close I think. Next one folks.

The thread that connects those five pictures is: Today's date - February 14th.
[Arizona, Lawrencium, YouTube, Oregon, Bhopal/Union Carbide Tragedy]. Go figure the connection.

Now for today's question.

Another pictorial puzzle. Shuffled amongst these four pictures are acronyms of seven playing positions of a ball sport. Which sport?

What do you need to do now?

Entries for tomorrow's matches:

South Africa vs Zimbabwe @ Hamilton 09:00 SGT

India vs Pakistan @ Adelaide 11:30 SGT

Answers and guesses to the usual place.

Then start praying all the gods for a humdinger tomorrow. Yes, I am talking about the SA vs Zim game ;-)


(The usual place is my email address/FB PM/Whatsapp; details of rules/ranges etc., are at http://sribees.blogspot.sg/2015/02/gq-15-here-we-come.html)

Day 0 - And the Quiz Starts :-)

Thanks for the enthusiastic replies. Let us see how many last the distance :-)

G-Section:

Please send in your guesses for the following matches:

Game 1: New Zealand vs Sri Lanka  (by 5:30 am SGT 14th Feb 2015)

Game 2: Australia vs England (by 10:30 am SGT 14th Feb 2015)

On a bit of retrospection, I have decided to extend the deadline for the QF line-up submission till Feb 28th 23:59 hours. Those of you who have already sent in your entries, fret not! You can change it until the new deadline.

Q-Section:

Here is the first question of the series:

The following collage of 5 pictures is related by one fact. What is it?

5 points.

Answers and guesses to the usual place. 

(The usual place is my email address/FB PM/Whatsapp; details of rules/ranges etc., are at http://sribees.blogspot.sg/2015/02/gq-15-here-we-come.html)

GQ '15 - Won't Give It Up!

(c) Guardian

Welcome to GQ '15!

First things first: GQ is the acronym for Guess & Quiz.

Rules are pretty much same as our past events. Still worth a while for you to go through.

Guess Portion:

For each guess, be it the outcome of a game or a quarter-final line up, you will spend a certain number of credits.

You can buy points from the banker (me, me, me!)

Cost of the first 1000 credits: SGD 50. If you run out of credits, then you can buy more from the banker (me, me, me!) in multiples of 500 credits at the cost of further SGD 25.

Cost of the credits for the entire pool-stage games is SGD 50.
This includes one QF Line-up guess per pool.
To be submitted by 3rd March 2015 1100 SGT.

Now the guesses would cost as follows:

- Possible Group A Quarter-Final Line up (in the exact order that they will end up) 100 credits

- Possible Group B Quarter-Final Line up (in the exact order that they will end up) 100 credits

- Guesses for the group stage games 50 credits

*** For the following, watch out for the comms on deadline dates & the cost ***

- Possible Semi-Final Line up 100 credits 
- Guesses for the quarter-final games 75 credits

- Guesses for the semi-final games 100 credits

- Guesses for the final games 150 credits

Would appreciate if at least 10 get involved in the G-part; That kinda gives me the joy-quotient!!

One important change this year is that all the money collected will go towards charity! Readers may remember that the winners donated their earnings to SINDA, Red Cross etc. in the past.

Framework:

0. Send in:

• Quarter-finals line-up for each group. [in the exact order that you think that they will end up]
• Guesses for the first game New Zealand vs Sri Lanka

To be sent in by 5:30 AM SGT, Saturday 14th Feb 2015.

1. There are five things that you need to respond for each game: 
Winning team (2 points), Winning Run Margin (4 points), Winning Wicket Margin (4 points), Max number of wickets by which team (2 points), Number of Sixers in the match (2 points)

** If you are reading this, then you are reading the fine-print. The winning margin points will accrue only if your winning team is correct; getting the margin right is just not enough. You have got to get the winning team AND the winning margin to get 6 points

2. Please send in all your entries at least 30 minutes before the game starts everyday to lnspatta@gmail.com

3. Please ensure that you give both the winning ranges: run-margin & wicket-margin

4. Please do not invent your own margins; stick to the published ranges shown below

5. If you are using Excel to track your guesses, when you cut-and-paste, please use Rich Text for pasting; the PCX format is painful from gmail.

Run Margin Ranges:

• Between 1 to 30 runs (both inclusive)
• Between 31 to 60 runs (both inclusive)
• Between 61 to 90 runs (both inclusive)
• Above 91 runs (91 and Infinity inclusive)

Wicket Margin Ranges:

• By 1 to 3 wickets (both inclusive)
• By 4 to 5 wickets (both inclusive)
• By 6 to 8 wickets (both inclusive)
• By 9 to 10 wickets (both inclusive)

Which team will take the most number of wickets in the match?

• Either of the team names OR Same

Number of Sixers in the MATCH:

• 0-3 (both inclusive) 
• 4-7 (both inclusive)
• 8-11 (both inclusive)
• 12++

So what do you get?

• Three book prizes for cracking the Q(uiz) portion
• Three book prizes for cracking the G(uess) portion
• Joy of following the game that we all love with something riding on each game!
• The pain of having to answer my daily quiz question during the tournament
• And of course, the satisfaction of contributing to a charity while having fun! 

Oh, don't worry, the Semis line up can be sent by February 28th 23:59 SGT.

***Next update on Friday 13th Feb 2015 with the first Q of GQ '15