Was England’s loss to Afghanistan the biggest upset in English sporting history.

Without doubt the 1950 WC defeat to USA in Belo Horizonte is acknowledged to be our biggest shock. First of all we were ranked in the top 5 teams in the world at the time and were playing a team of amateurs including a postman, funeral director and flour mill worker. Defeats against fellow professionals like the Afghanistan cricket team are not comparable to that 1950 shock.

And if you cite the heat as a mitigating reason then in 1950 so you could argue the conditions in Delhi when the dew settled on the pitch and aided the very good Afghan spinners.
 
Cardiffdaffs said:
Without doubt the 1950 WC defeat to USA in Belo Horizonte is acknowledged to be our biggest shock. First of all we were ranked in the top 5 teams in the world at the time and were playing a team of amateurs including a postman, funeral director and flour mill worker. Defeats against fellow professionals like the Afghanistan cricket team are not comparable to that 1950 shock.

And if you cite the heat as a mitigating reason then in 1950 so you could argue the conditions in Delhi when the dew settled on the pitch and aided the very good Afghan spinners.
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True but I think the difference heat wise is England cricketers know all about Indian conditions whereas in 1950 the team
Inc our own dear wilf had never faced anything like it.

Don’t forget it was our first World Cup as well.
 
Jedi boro said:
True but I think the difference heat wise is England cricketers know all about Indian conditions whereas in 1950 the team
Inc our own dear wilf had never faced anything like it.

Don’t forget it was our first World Cup as well.
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Yes but we are taking the standard of the opposition into account. The standard of Afghan ODI cricket ( ranked 9th best in the world) is much higher than the football that USA played then.
 
1950 USA for me, i think the afgan win is up there with ireland as we are the current champions , when ireland beat us we were a poor team that had not evolved
 
jam69 said:
1950 USA for me, i think the afgan win is up there with ireland as we are the current champions , when ireland beat us we were a poor team that had not evolved
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Didn’t eoin Morgan play that day and we poached him after it. ?
 
I think Afghanistan were about 9/1 with the bookies. That’s about the same as most teams who play Man City.

The bookies gave them a chance, so did I. England are on a downward trend as stated above.
 
Heine_Otto said:
I think Afghanistan were about 9/1 with the bookies. That’s about the same as most teams who play Man City.

The bookies gave them a chance, so did I. England are on a downward trend as stated above.
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Yes that’s a good point. A major shock would be something like a 100-1: winner like Leicester winning the title or Foinavon winning the National. I wonder what price USA beating England in 1950 would have been.
 
It felt like a similar kind of defeat to the Ireland one in 2011. It’s up there with biggest cricket shocks in my lifetime. Rashid Khan is a superstar though. The first Aussie victory over England was probably a big one!

Don’t think anyone has mentioned Scotland’s ODI victory in 2018? That was big! Less than a year before we won the World Cup.

Losing that match in 1950 always seems like it must have been massive as England “should” have been easily the best in the world at the time. But none of us can remember it so it’s hard to really give an opinion.

There was a very good “Storyville” about the Afghanistan side a few years ago. Always had a soft spot for them since then.
 
atypical_boro said:
Scotland’s ODI victory in 2018? That was big!
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I watched that and seeing the team sat on patio furniture in the make shift set up waiting to go in showed they weren’t exactly taking it as seriously as they prob might think this will be easy and Scotland capitalised on our off day and complacency.
 
Cardiffdaffs said:
Yes that’s a good point. A major shock would be something like a 100-1: winner like Leicester winning the title or Foinavon winning the National. I wonder what price USA beating England in 1950 would have been.
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Not 100-1. In any two horse race no one is gonna be that long unless they’re totally different levels. Afghanistan are a competent ODI side relatively speaking.
 
atypical_boro said:
Not 100-1. In any two horse race no one is gonna be that long unless they’re totally different levels. Afghanistan are a competent ODI side relatively speaking.
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That’s the point. They were on two very different levels. Such was the 1950 shock nobody could have even contemplated USA beating the mighty England. Maybe not 100-1 as you say it was a one on one but I reckon the odds would have been large.
 
Cardiffdaffs said:
That’s the point. They were on two very different levels. Such was the 1950 shock nobody could have even contemplated USA beating the mighty England. Maybe not 100-1 as you say it was a one on one but I reckon the odds would have been large.
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Yes they will have been large. But you’ll never get the sort of odds like Leicester topping the league after 38 games. That was 5,000/1 by the way.
 
No, it isn’t. Take into account that Afghanistan are actually quite a decent side plus where they’re playing and you’ll realise it’s not that big a shock at all really. Akin to say Luton winning at Spurs. Surprising, but certainly not the greatest shock of all time.
 
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