troll3y
Active Member
With Ireland having secured top spot -- and 2015 World Cup qualification -- with two games in hand, the last remaining team to automatically qualify has come down to a nail-biting finish between the Netherlands, Afghanistan, Scotland, and the United Arab Emirates. (The teams that don't qualify directly can qualify by finishing in the top two of a ten-team qualifying tournament held in New Zealand next year.) With the exception of the Canada-Netherlands games, all of the final-round WCLC games can be streamed on the ICC website (though sometimes a link to the stream is hard to find on the site).
I had previously said that Canada's current form, even at home, puts a gallant Netherlands in the box seat to comfortably win both games. This was before the Intercontinental Cup (four-day) game between the two sides, however, in which Canada won comfortably. The ODIs will most likely come down to NRR, though, and I would argue that Afghanistan are better at aggression than the Netherlands. That said, Kenya can do very well to counter that aggression, whereas Canada might not be.
Kenya play pretty well in the Emirates, so I would say that Afghanistan has a slightly harder job than the Netherlands in the final round. I like Scotland, but while they'll put up a valiant effort in the last games, I don't see them winning *both* games against Ireland to qualify. The UAE will probably finish ahead of Scotland, but that one extra loss will hurt them in their race for second. If I had to choose, I'd say the Netherland's "easier" fixtures will get them scraping through, but I can easily see Afghanistan's flare blazing them through on NRR.
It is very tough to predict a final result, which makes this upcoming last round of fixtures highly enticing and entertaining. I truly hope more of the world will pay attention to it.
