Let’s start in order of games played, firstly the Cricket World Cup where England were beaten by New Zealand. The Kiwi’s knocked up the required 210 runs in 41 overs with Scott Styris top scoring with 87 runs and took the two crucial wickets of Collingwood and Dalrymple. Kevin Pietersen top scored for England knocking up 60 runs for the cause, things could have been much worse if Liam Plunkett and Paul Nixon didn’t steady the good ship England. England lost four wickets in 21 balls before Plunkett and Nixon steered England to the end of the 50 overs adding 71 to the final score. New Zealand were too strong for the English, let’s hope for better luck today against Canada, if we lose to Canada, they might as well pack up and come home, not only because of having zero points on the board, also for the embarrassment factor; I don’t see England doing much this World Cup!
Football next; Plymouth Argyle are back to winning ways narrowly beating Crystal Palace by a single goal in a highly contested game with Chelsea loan signing Scott Sinclair weaving some more footballing magic. Sinclair latched onto a long ball from Plymouth Keeper Luke McCormick and ran with it neatly tucking the ball away into the top right of goal. Palace piled on the pressure in the second half with Luke McCormick having to make two excellent blocks to Palace’s Shefki Kuqi. It was a hard earned three points, but it’s what Argyle needed after going out of the FA Cup and being humiliated by Barnsley at Home Park midweek! Argyle remain in 13th in the league after this result with Sheffield Wednesday drawing 2 – 2 at Hillsborough, so Argyle has closed to one points now. Stoke City lost their game against Norwich at Carrow Road, so my new target for the season is to finish higher than Stoke City in the league, a play-off place is now dead in the water with only eight games left to play this season, technically Argyle can still get a play-off place, but it’s unlikely as we would need to win all our games and others would need to lose a number of games, which is unlikely at best given Argyle’s indifferent form this season, but we’ll damn sure give it our best shot!
Yesterday wasn’t a good day for English rugby being beat 27 – 18 at The Millennium Stadium in Cardiff. England have no excuses whatsoever, Wales were the better team on the day, making more of their posession with James Hook scoring 22 of Wales 27 points scoring one try, one conversion, one drop goal and four penalties. France has taken the Six Nations title with Ireland finishing in second, with England finishing a distant third. Now what can England take from this defeat against Wales and poor performance in general in the Six Nations, not a lot I would say. If we can’t even beat the Home nations, what chance do we have against the likes of Australia, New Zealand and South Africa? Don’t get me wrong I want England to do well in the World Cup later in the year, but I am a realist, there is no point in believing something that will only end up in disappointment and heartbreak!
Finally we get to Formula One and the race pretty much went the way of the form book, Kimi Raikkonen leading the race from pole, occasionally letting rookie Lewis Hamilton look after the lead for a few laps. I have to say I am impressed with Hamilton, he’s fast looking like Britains great white hope in F1 now. The Englishman drove an excellent race matching the much more experienced double world champion Fernando Alonso for much of the race. Eventually Alonso finished ahead of the Englishman, after Hamilton made a few minor mistakes pushing the limits of the car. BMW had a strong race with Nick Heidfeld finishing in 4th and would have had another points finisher in Robert Kubica if he didn’t have a gearbox failure 36 laps into the race. Renault’s Giancarlo Fisichella narrowly held off the hard charging Felipe Massa to finish fifth. Nico Rosberg and Ralf Schumacher rounded off the points paying finishers. It was a disappointing day for the Brits in general, Jenson Button finished a lowly 15th after suffering from understeer the whole race, Anthony Davidson finished just behind Jenson in 16th after starting the race from 11th spot. Finally David Coulthard failed to finish the race after tangling with Alexander Wurz on lap 48, Coulthard made a silly lunge up the inside of Wurz only for Wurz to close the door on him and the Red Bull went flying over the top of the Williams resulting in retirement for both drivers. But Coulthard put his hands up and confessed to it being his fault, it was a move that wasn’t really on, he out-braked himself and had nowhere to go when Wurz closed the door! My initial impression of the new season is that Ferrari will run away with the Championship and everyone else will be playing catch up. I really hope that this is not the situation, I hope that the McLaren’s can take it to Ferrari in the next few flyaway races. It’ll be good to see world champions Renault closing the gap on their rivals as well, I would love to see Honda in the mix as well, but going by their Australia performance, they will be fighting with the mid-field teams this season, unless that can catch up very quickly; I’m certain hoping so!