You can't have the cue ball come off the table to bounce it over an intervening ball (you can in pool) but if balls start bouncing after impact that's not by itself a foul.

If balls don't end up on the table or in a pocket it's always a foul though.

They definitely need Zimbabwe to not beat India but they can benefit from a Bangladesh win as long as it's by an absurdly large Net Run Rate.

Oh, but on checking Netherlands coming top 4 in their group today would still allow them to skip the qualification stage.

They certainly do want to automatically be in those 20 teams.

So many crazy upsets in this tournament but I think this is the biggest and most consequential one.

And it wasn't even close.

If a few other matches today go the right way the Netherlands will automatically qualify for the round of 12 in the next world cup! It will be interesting to see what they would do with the ability to plan for that.

Edit: oh, next world cup has a round of 20 not a round of 12.

It's better to put your worst bowler last.

Imagine they're chasing 24 from the last 2 and you bowl the crap bowler first and they tonk him for 20. Now your good bowler is defending 4 runs and he can't do shit.

Contrast to bowling the good bowler first, the batsmen will definitely try to score more than 4 runs and maybe they'll get out, making the shit bowler have a worse batsmen at the crease and maybe now he won't leak so many!

I think this is broadly true for the whole innings, not withstanding fielding restriction (powerplay) specialists and specific batsmen match ups (spinner against a batsmen bad against spin). You'd prefer to bowl your best bowler in the 1st, 3rd, 5th, and 7th over.

The best case scenario is that your best 3 bowlers finish the job, taking 10 wickets lol. Then they never even get to look at your 2 worst bowlers!