U19 World Cup | South Africa | Jan-Feb 2024

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Seletswane digging SA u19 a huge hole, 24 off 70, and he's smiling and joking and thinks he's doing well.

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Why try and catch him?
Hes single handedly winning the game for India

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That is basically the pool you need if you want any sort of sustained success. There is some scope within those numbers. For example Bangladesh, where the average height of a man is 5'2 and are a country who have literally never produced a medal winning athlete in the history of the olympics will need a lot higher pool to produce athletes to compete internationally, as compared to countries that more readily produce athletes like Jamaica and Australia.

Very true. Well almost . Slight correction, the average height of a Bangladeshi man in my father's generation (of famine, malnutrition, and extreme poverty) was 5'4". My own cohort of US born/raised guys and the average height improved significantly to 5'8". In height, Bangladeshis tend to be clustered around the median...very little deviation either way, and even then 95% of people seem to be 1 standard deviation above or below the median/mean. Which is statistically odd, because in a normally distributed (aka bell curve), only 68% of the data falls in 1 standard deviation +/1. Of course it just mean in Bangladesh the standard deviation is probably just very small - we're *all* basically the same height!

Although, the present day Bangladesh national team probably has a mean or median height of around 5'9", and more important almost all of the seamers are above 6 feet. The thing that stands out is that we don't have any giants that almost every other team has like Jansen, Jamieson, Muzurabani, Shaheen, Holder. But the average height isn't too bad anymore if we look at the currently contracted and capped players in descending order:

Rishad Hossain - 6'4"
Shoriful Islam - 6'3"
Khaled Ahmed - 6'2"
Taskin Ahmed - 6'2"
Ebadat Hossain - 6'1"
Mahmudullah - 5'11"
Najmul Shanto - 5'10"
Tamim Iqbal - 5'10"
Soumya Sarkar - 5'10"
Shakib al Hasan - 5'9"
Tanzim Hasan Sakib - 5'9"
Liton Das - 5'8"
Taijul Islam - 5'5"
Mehidy Miraz - 5'4"
Mushfiqur Rahim - 5'3"
Mominul Haque - 5'3"

Not sure of a couple of the newer guys like Towhid Hridhoy and Tanzid Hasan Tamim...I'm fairly sure they are 5'8" or shorter as they look like pretty short guys.

The other thing is, Bangladeshis are naturally very lean. No fat on us. A little gym time and we can get shredded. Most of the guys listed have 6 packs, even if they don't appear to be body-builders. Very few dad bods or beer bellies. A lot of the guys have good raw athleticism as well.

So if you eat more you get taller?
5 ft 8 in high heels maybe.

[zimfan1]

Seletswane digging SA u19 a huge hole, 24 off 70, and he's smiling and joking and thinks he's doing well.

I don't think 240 is enough on this wicket. A very strange knock

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He actually ended up with a 50 and thanked the crowd when he was walking off like he'd scored 200.
Not too bad in hindsight. They've got a defendable total.

I'd love to see India get beaten here.

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Hard to understand SA preparing these absolutely shite wickets. Plays right into the sub continent team's hands.

[secretzimbo]

Hard to understand SA preparing these absolutely shite wickets. Plays right into the sub continent team's hands.

Same as any ICC tournament. ICC flies in a curator who instructs the local grounds men.
No wonder the pitches favour India….

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I'd have bet my house on SA winning this. They had India 30/4.
Saharan and Dhas have batted beautifully.

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This game is gone unless SA bring on their openers. Can't they see that???

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This ended up being a great game. SA bottled that.