A bit of Cricket News for those who do not know

What is concerning is how pathetic our U19 side is. They got thrashed by England in the two tests and 5-0 in the ODI's  

 Don't know what happened there.  The Under 19 side won the Under 19 WC T20 compeition this year.  Some of the top players must have been missing from the side.

 smurfs-ex always looking on the bright side hahahaha!

 This was a totally different SA u19 side to the one that thumped everyon e in the JWC

 Great batting display by SA. Begrudging congratulations given.

 Say Sapp, weren't you telling us Faf was a waste of space....I enjoyed watching him today, even if only in extended highlights

 I did not wanbt to say it clearly - but by 2011 our main handicaps in ODI's were Graeme Smith and Jacques Kallis at 1 and 3 in the batting line up.   The removal of those 2 caused the batting to keep up with the required pace of run scoring in ODI's and we have since October last year won 14 ODI's and lost 4.
The losses were all in cases where either Smith or Kallis or both were in the batting  line up of the SA team and where they failed to score adequate runs at the required rate.   Smith was ruled out of ODI's after the second loss against Pakistan  locally in December 2013 and Kallis persisted until the recent series against SriLanka - where he failed repeatedly and then announced his retirement from all forms of cricket on national level.
Great cricketers in the past - but due to advancing age their hand-eye co-ordinattion slipped badly and especially in the shorter version of the game they could not compete anymore.     There replacements certainly were a vast improvement on their performances over the last three years.   
Ve it as it may - we are now only 1 point behind Australia on the international rating scale for ODI's and if we win the final next week - we will ebcome the highest rated ODI team in the world - from 6 to 1 in less than a year will be nice going.
   

 A great display apart from letting Oz get 327. Need Amla to fire regulary.