Cricket News, Europa league Qualifiers and Champions league draw

The England cricket team took a break from their upcoming One day International’s against India to take part in a One Day International against Ireland in Dublin. England who are fresh off whitewashing India in the test series to become the worlds number 1 test team and now need to begin performing in the One day arena.

England used the game to give some of their developmental players the opportunity to play in the full England squad with James Taylor,  Ben Stokes & Scott Borthwick selected for the first full England match.

The game itself however was blighted by the rain with rain stopping play on 3 separate occasions. The young England squad looked unimpressive with veteran England players Jonathan Trott & Eoin Morgan rescuing the innings by top scoring with 69 & 59 respectively. England would finish on 201 for 8 in a reduced 42 overs so that left Ireland chasing a target of 202 from 42 overs.

Ireland would get the innings of to a good start and would reach 42-2 before the rain altered their run chase. The Duckworth Lewis method would then reduce Irelands target to 128 from 23 overs however the Irish could only reach 117 to hand England the win. The win for England will avenge the loss England suffered at the hands of Ireland at the World Cup earlier this year.

Moving away from Cricket News and onto the Europa league games which took place tonight and it is a sad day for Scottish football as their 3 representatives in Europe all got knocked out of the Europa league before qualifying into the group stages. Rangers lost 3-2 on aggregate to the Slovenian champions NK Maribor, Celtic lost 3-1 on aggregate to Swiss team FC Sion & Hearts lost 5-0 on aggregate to English Premier League team Tottenham Hotspur.

It was a different story for the English teams as all 4 teams qualified for the group stages Birmingham defeated Nacional of Portugal 3 nil on aggregate, Fulham beat Dnipro 3-1 & Stoke defeated FC Thun 5-1 on aggregate. All 4 English teams will go into tomorrows Europa League Draw.

The Champions League draw took place this afternoon in Monaco and all 4 English teams in the draw will be pleased with their draws and will believe that they can progress to the last 16 of the Champions League. Man Utd have been drawn with Benfica, Basel & Otelul Galati fellow Manchester club Man City were handed the most difficult draw of the 4 clubs with Bayern Munich, Villaireal & Napoli in their group. In the other 2 groups featuring English teams Chelsea drew Valencia, Batern Leverkusen & Genk whilst Arsenal drew Marseille, Olympiakos & German Champions Borussia Dortmund.

That wraps up our look at Thursdays Sports News so be sure to check back tomorrow for some Real Sporting News.

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