Anglophiles/Englishmen?

Gatyr wrote: I know a few pedophiles. Does that count?

Arguably, they are the same.

Nope.  I have adopted Sri Lanka for the occasion.  Fun team to watch, like the West Indies teams of yore.  Australia has been destroying everybody, though, and will probably win the whole thing.

Expect more bandwidth-wasting cricket updates tomorrow.

Good enough.  Care for a small informal wager?

All right - game on.

Quick cricket refresher for World Cup rules:

Each team bats once, and bats until they are all out (10 outs, or "wickets"), or until 50 overs have passed (1 over = 6 balls/pitches).  Going all out is fairly rair.

England won the toss, and elected to bowl (pitch), so Sri Lanka is batting first; after they are done, England will have to beat SL's total to win.

For a 50-over match, 250+ is a "good" score, and less than 200 is a "bad" score.  Australia routinely scores 300+, which is why they are killing everybody these days. 

England is pretty much an all-round team, with one of the all-time greats (Andrew Flintoff, all-rounder - he is a bowler who also bats well), and one of the leading bowlers (Monty Panesar).  They tend to score middle-high, and keep their opponents middle-low.  Obviously the original cricket dynasty, but their current coach has not had great success.

Sri Lanka is a low-scoring bowling team, with the best bowler in the world (Muttiah Muralitharan, named cricketer of the year for 2006), and several other greats, including veteran Sanith Jayasuriya, who played on the 1996 world championship team.  Because of their focus on bowling, their games tend to be low-scoring affairs.  They usually score in the low 200s, and frequently keep their opponents well below 200.

I am getting my updates at this site, complete with snarky British commentary:  http://sport.guardian.co.uk/cricket/overbyover/story/0,,2049 759,00.html

I will update periodically with scores, whether you like it or not.