England v New Zealand ODI series

[SUFCEssex]

and now NZ are back in the series.

 

[Yorkshire Blue]

Absolutely awful from England.

There's no way you should lose a game from the position they were in, let alone against New Zimbabwe. They displayed no killer touch, they lacked a decent 4th bowling option and the batting was terrible.

 

[MrB]

Decent little write up here.

GHOSTS FROM THE PAST

So who was your scapegoat? Luke Wright for conceding 14 runs off five deliveries to Kyle Mills? Ian Bell for poking a would-be wide to cover? Kevin Pietersen for letting the ball through his legs at mid-on? Ravi Bopara for hitting it in the air after the loss of Bell?
Paul Collingwood for being the captain? Owais Shah for wafting outside off? Tim Ambrose for dropping Daniel Vettori? Graeme Swann for undoing all the hard work? Stuart Broad for looking like Malfoy?
Chris Tremlett for scoring three off 15 balls? Or Jimmy Anderson for leaking 61 runs off 10 overs?

Call this column a cop-out, but the Spin blames none of the above. Not properly blame anyway. The reality is that England's 50-over team - an entity that may yet come to be regarded with nostalgia as Twenty20 books in for bed and breakfast - continues to lurch from clinical brilliance to comical ineptitude, sometimes in the same game. While cricket emails and impatient fans look for the signs that can be called trends, England blithely preclude the pigeonhole. They progress and regress with a regularity that makes the Pakistanis look consistent.

Is that the fault of the players? Well, when isn't it? But England's one-day set-up has been hampered since 1992, when they should have won the World Cup. Between that tournament and the next, in 1996, their administrators casually provided them with far fewer 50-over matches than the rest of the world. England played 38 games, followed among the decent sides - in terms of inactivity - by India with 63.
Pakistan, by contrast, played 87. The result of this neglect? England have been playing catch-up ever since.

Even taking into account their traditional scepticism about the value of limited-overs cricket in the face of the Test match, there really is little reason to assume that the current crop should be able to consistently overcome the handicap passed on to them by the previous generation. Of the 55 players to have won 200 ODI caps, not one is English. Duncan Fletcher used to say that players needed 30 games to understand their one-day roles, but of the side that bungled it at Bristol on Saturday, only five - Collingwood (144 caps), Anderson (89), Pietersen (74), Bell (67) and Shah (39) - fulfil the criteria, with Broad not far behind on 29. And of them, Shah has been in and out, Bell has been shifted around the order and Anderson's inconsistency, so costly in Saturday's low-scorer, is a leitmotif for the entire team.

True, New Zealand have only five players in the 30-plus bracket themselves, but they include Daniel Vettori (218), Scott Styris (150) and Brendon McCullum (131), who have won more caps than the entire England team put together.

There is a curious feel about the 50-over game at the moment. On the one hand, Lalit Modi and Allen Stanford have succeeded in convincing us that 20-over cricket is the one-day game's future. On the other, England are trying to convince themselves that they are just starting to get the hang of a format in which they remain the only major cricketing nation never to have won a global event.

And yet Saturday's defeat was an awful throwback: not since February 2000, when South Africa made 149 in the final of the Standard Bank Triangular Tournament at Johannesburg and ended up winning by 38 runs, have they failed to chase a lower total in a one-day game. It was a horrible defeat, made more palatable only by the fact that it was New Zealand's first win of the tour. Still, England must plough on. They must decide who is going to perform what role (Wright to open? Ambrose to keep? Bopara the crux at No4?) and stick with the plan. Otherwise, we can start penning the 2011 World Cup obituaries right now.

 

[sufcintheprem]

This is a little humiliating to be honest. New Zealand have hardly been brilliant and yet they're smashing us. Need something special to salvage anything from this and that's a phrase I never like using after 20 overs.

 

[sufcintheprem]

Superb stuff from Bopara and Shah. Chance of a good total with Shah and then it's on the bowlers to win the game.

 

[canveyshrimper]

New Zealand get home by one wicket.

 

[Yorkshire Blue]

Graeme Swann should never, ever, play for England again.

All he had to do was throw the ball to Wright or to Bell and England win. He could have held onto it and England draw, instead he chucks it into no-mans land and gifts NZ a win. He is a complete ****.

I was pretty unimpressed with his fielding in Sri Lanka, where he managed to make Monty look a good fielder.

 

[Grayson]

English sports team bottles a tight game AGAIN.

 

[SUFC Forever]

Bloody disgaceful that Collingwood allowed the run out of Elliott to stand. If this is the way cricket is now then simply I do not want part of it anymore.

Collingwood should never captain England again after that.

 

[Yorkshire Blue]

English sports team bottles a tight game AGAIN.

England didn't bottle it, Swann bottled it.

Wright bowled a fantastic final over and England would have won if Swann had kept his head.

 

[SUFCEssex]

Bloody disgaceful that Collingwood allowed the run out of Elliott to stand. If this is the way cricket is now then simply I do not want part of it anymore.

Collingwood should never captain England again after that.

totally agree. i thought it was terrible the way that wicket was given and understand the NZ reaction to it. in some wins it made me want NZ to win.

 

[SUFCLiam]

makes the last game interesting.

 

[Yorkshire Blue]

Bloody disgaceful that Collingwood allowed the run out of Elliott to stand. If this is the way cricket is now then simply I do not want part of it anymore.

Collingwood should never captain England again after that.

I disagree.

It was a risky single and Elliott wasn't running in a straight-line, but ran diagonally towards the ball, in an attempt to block the run-out. I'd have had plenty of sympathy if it had been a comfortable single and he'd collided with someone who wasn't attempting to field the ball, but he deliberately ran in that direction at a time when the run-out was very much on.

Personally, I'd have been appealing for out obstructing the field.

 

[Jonny_Stokes]

Absolute shambles from start to finish. Awful top order batting, Bopara (yes, Bopara) and Wright utterly unconvincing, pee-poor captaincy, lax fielding, a complete lack of composure and, worst of all, a dismal failure to observe some sportsman ship (yes, I know that Elliott was running down the wrong side of the pitch, but still...). We've got to ship Mr. Bits and Pieces Bopara out of the side and either bring in someone who can stop Collingwood bowling so many overs, or move Wright down the order to 6 and let him concentrate on bowling. Ambrose can sod off as well - his glovework was abysmal again today, as was his batting. Bring back Phil Mustard! Bunch of useless ****s. :punch: :censored:

Rant over. :)

 

[The Big Shrimp]

I disagree.

It was a risky single and Elliott wasn't running in a straight-line, but ran diagonally towards the ball, in an attempt to block the run-out. I'd have had plenty of sympathy if it had been a comfortable single and he'd collided with someone who wasn't attempting to field the ball, but he deliberately ran in that direction at a time when the run-out was very much on.

Personally, I'd have been appealing for out obstructing the field.

& you would have bee wasting your breath! It was an accident & Collingwood could, sorry, should have withdrawn his appeal.

Cricket is better than football for sportsmanship & today England did a Ronaldo! I hope Collingwood is suitably embarrassed!

 

[Grayson]

YB, I see your point, but Swann is English and so my point still stands. The English seem to lack the mental strength so often.

Elliot should have been running down the left side of the pitch, as Sidey is left-arm over and so Mills was on the side of the pitch Elliot attempted to run down.

As for Bopara, he clearly has class as a batsman, and scored 58 today. He performed better than most of the side.

 

[SUFCLiam]

i'd don't understand why bopara doesn't bowl more surely he's better than collingwood.

 

[Jonny_Stokes]

As for Bopara, he clearly has class as a batsman, and scored 58 today. He performed better than most of the side.

He's got 2 50s in 22 ODI innings. He looked incredibly uncomfortable during the majority of his knock today, and I don't think that, if he's in the side at all, he should be as high as 4.

 

[Grayson]

He's got 2 50s in 22 ODI innings. He looked incredibly uncomfortable during the majority of his knock today, and I don't think that, if he's in the side at all, he should be as high as 4.

He's batted at 7/8 for most his ODI career. How many of those innings were above 5 or 6 in the order? I'd say 5 matches tops at a guess.

 

[South Bank Hank]

I've just got back from the game - my first ever Cricket match and a bit of a work jolly. I couldn't debate the finer points of the match with you cricket-aficionados, but when you set aside any shortcomings in the players, mistakes in captaincy, and a big fat nada from KP who I was so excited about watching, it was a truly fantastic match. The last hour of the game had everyone in the ground absolutely rocking! And to arrive at the final ball, with all three results still a possibility was incredible. What a finish!