Minnow Bashing

Yesterday there were two very convincing performances from New Zealand and Sri Lanka against Kenya and Canada respectively.

However both teams have a history of convincing wins over non-test nations (New Zealand, Sri Lanka and South Africa are the only teams to have never lost an ODI against a non-test playing team). I pulled the stats of all teams against the 4 "minnow" nations at this world cup, to see which matches were most likely to provide an upset.

Here is the runs per over while batting and bowling against Kenya, Canada, Ireland and Netherlands over the last 5 years for the 8 premier teams.

Team	Batting R/R	Bowling R/R	Difference
New Zealand	6.43	3.67	2.76
India	6.29	3.63	2.66
South Africa	6.39	3.78	2.61
Sri Lanka	6.31	3.94	2.37
Australia	6.05	3.78	2.27
West Indies	5.33	3.79	1.54
England	4.99	4.31	0.68
Pakistan	4.12	3.58	0.54

This suggests that the results on day 2 are not particularly surprising. If an early game is to bring about an upset, it's most likely to be England Netherlands or Pakistan Kenya, although both are still highly unlikely.