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Pomz, Swanz and Patelz..

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By Cricketics
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graphic23 Newbie

graphic23

Posted
Posted

Boycott's take on the first ODI:

In the Stanford festival it was the batsmen who let England down, in this game it was the bowlers. Quite simply when a side score 387 for five batting first, as India did in their highest-ever one-day total, then 99 times out of 100 the game is over. At the end of last season England appeared to be on a high. They had just beaten South Africa 4-0 in the one-day series and a new era was beginning with Pietersen in charge. Steve Harmison was back bowling fast and straight, Andrew Flintoff was fit again and everything appeared to be moving upwards. There was a feeling of confidence and excitement ahead of next year’s Ashes series. But England’s performance in what turned out to be the Stanford circus, which was a damp squib after all the publicity and hullabaloo, was ineffectual and yesterday was another big let-down. We were looking for England to redeem themselves in India. But India are brimming with confidence having just beaten Australia 2-0 in a Test series and history says that beating them in their own conditions is always difficult. Our strength is seam and swing bowling, but the only swing and seam you see in India is when the ball leaves the middle of the bat. It’s difficult for our bowlers to be aggressive and get up the noses of the batsmen out there because you can only bowl one bouncer an over, you struggle to get the ball to bounce above the stumps anyway and the white balls tend to go soft very quickly. When you compare England’s spinners with India’s it’s a no contest, so it was always going to be difficult. When you are chasing a total that you might get once in 100 attempts, then you shouldn’t blame the batsmen. I have been saying for a long time that England have not got their top three right. Matt Prior is a very average batsman to be going in first for England. Ian Bell is a touch player who needs to have runs behind him and for his confidence to be high if he is going to be successful up front at international level. Last summer he went back to Warwickshire, spent time in the middle, made a double hundred and never looked back. So far this winter he has only played in the Stanford series and had a failure against Mumbai. Therefore he needs runs or he is going to struggle throughout the tour. As for Owais Shah, well anyone who believes that he is a No 3 for England wants his head testing. He is a good player in the lower middle order against the old ball. But if you have a borderline batsman who struggles to get in the team, why bat him at three in front of arguably one of the best two or three batsmen in the world in Pietersen and one of the best one-day batsmen in Paul Collingwood? It doesn’t make sense. Can you imagine the West Indies side of the 1980s batting Viv Richards down at four or five? You only have 300 balls in a one-day international innings and you want your best batsmen to face as many of those as possible so that they have the opportunity to shape the match. Everyone fails now and again but the law of averages says that if you give your best players the chance to get in they are going to dictate the course of a game. Just look at other teams. Sachin Tendulkar opens the batting for India, Brian Lara used to come in at three for the West Indies as does Ricky Ponting, Australia’s most successful batsman over the last few years. I would bat Pietersen at three and Collingwood at four. Who opens is a problem that, thankfully, I don’t have to solve, but perhaps England should look at pushing Flintoff up front. I’m not sure that batting him down the order is going to suit him in India because he is coming in when the ball is soft. He’s not going to be a raging success batting at five or six. He’s a destructive player who likes the ball to come on to the bat and it might be worth trying him as an opener when the ball is harder. Yesterday’s performance was disappointing but we should not be too critical until we have seen England bat first. Things can turn around so quickly in one-day cricket and India are not so clever chasing runs either.
We're not "clever" chasing runs? I didn't know that.
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Ram Newbie

Ram

Posted
Posted

Its one thing to look destructive and smash club-grade attacks to world record totals, which is what most high scores in ODIs are about, but an entirely different issue to smash that has Flintoff, Harmison, Anderson and Broad to a near 400 total. Astounding!

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