If the World Cup was a bilateral series – the criterium by which we reached the top of the world rankings – we’d currently be celebrating a 4-3 series win. Everyone would be extolling the vim and virtuosity of our victorious squad, and the management would be basking in the glory of yet another triumph.
But this isn’t a bilateral series. Recent defeats in the World Cup’s league format have hurt our prospects badly. I’ve long said that the current England side plays exciting cricket but loses too many games – we’ve lost two of every five games since the last World Cup – and now the chickens are coming home to mess in the roost.
The other brilliant point doing the rounds – I think this originally came from that wise old sage Mike Atherton – is that England simply aren’t used to playing under pressure. Bilateral ODI series are generally either an afterthought or a warm up for a high profile test series. Consequently there’s little riding on them. They’re essential just a bit of fun in which Jos Buttler and Co can play their trick-shots and entertain the galleries.
Unfortunately, however, World Cups are a completely different specimen. They are the main event. And thus far England have looked completely unsure how to cope in this high pressured environment.
As an avid watcher of other sports I’ve always been fascinated by the style and psychology of teams that win big global events. It’s generally rare for flair teams that light up the group stages to go on and win the actual trophy. Football is a good example. Everyone waxes lyrical about the sexy football played by Brazil, for example, but they last won a World Cup in 2002. And the last time they reached the semi finals (at home) they got trounced by the uber-efficient Germans.
The German football team personifies the style and methodology of typical tournament winners. They are exceptionally well drilled, play the percentages, do the basics well, and make few (if any) mistakes. Champagne football, champagne rugby, and champagne cricket, always seems to be ephemeral. It flashes for a game or two but ultimately fizzles out. It’s the efficient teams that last the course. After all, it’s incredibly hard to execute the fancy stuff and play with complete freedom when the pressure is stifling.
It’s the same in rugby. Teams with a strong set-piece and powerful forwards usually win. Less can go wrong. Even the immensely talented New Zealand All Blacks struggled to win their seminal world cup at home in 2011. They blew everyone away in the pool stages but could only scrape an incredibly nervy 8-7 victory against a poor France side in the final. All the sexy rugby from previous rounds evaporated when the pressure was really on. They’ve since become a colossus because they can play practical rugby and grind out results when needed.
So where does this leave the England cricket team? In my view it looks, at the moment anyway, as though we’ve dedicated the last 4 years to perfecting a strategy that can rarely be perfect – a strategy, I’m afraid to say, that simply doesn’t win big tournaments. One could say the strategy has been rather boneheaded. It’s focuses on getting people through the gates rather than actually winning tournaments.
The contribution of Paul Farbrace on Sky’s post-match Debate programme summed it up really. He completely refused to acknowledge any flaws in England’s approach. I found his pie-eyed optimism and intransigence quite embarrassing really. When Bob Willis pointed out that England had come unstuck on slow pitches in the past (not least the Champions Trophy semi), Farbrace argued that they lost that game because they weren’t positive enough! He simply wouldn’t countenance any criticism at all. No wonder England are so inflexible and unable to learn. What’s wrong with saying “we need to get better from X and learn from this defeat”? Farbrace was basically putting his fingers in his ears.
Perhaps I don’t need to repeat what I’ve said a hundred times before on this blog, especially as this problem is finally being acknowledged by the mainstream media, but England really do only play one way: it’s the gung-ho way or the highway. When they need to adapt, show flexibility, and think things through, they generally come unstuck. And this is why we’re finding the World Cup so difficult: it’s new opposition on different pitches every game. It’s simply not the run-fest on flack tracks we’re accustomed to, especially at home.
The problem with England’s approach was summed up by one incredibly revealing statistic yesterday: we only scored 3 singles in the first ten overs of our innings. This is absolutely flabbergasting – especially as we only needed singles (i.e. less than a run a ball) to win.
England seemed completely infatuated with hitting boundaries. They completely forgot that rotating the strike and hustling ones and twos is the best way to ease pressure and build a chase. Had they done so they wouldn’t have needed to play the ill-advised ambitious strokes that proved their downfall.
What’s really head-scratching is that Finch and Warner showed exactly how to go about building an innings under pressure. They realised conditions favoured the bowlers so they bided their time, dug in, rotated the strike, and almost played first class innings to begin with. The big shots came later.
Whereas Australia’s bowlers seemed to learn from England – the one positive from yesterday is that our bowlers came back strongly in the second half of the Australian innings – our batsmen completely ignored the way Finch and Warner played. It’s almost like the very concept of playing a red ball innings in an ODI is an anathema to them.
So where do we go from here? I’m not sure really. There’s still time for England to qualify for the semis and ultimately win the trophy. Indeed, now our odds are longer we’ll be good value if the right cricket betting offers come up. After all, we probably only need to win one of our last two matches to qualify.
It’s a bit of a cliche but anything really can happen if we reach the semis. If England beat India but then lose the New Zealand, for example, our habit of losing one in every three games might actually work in our favour: we’ll lose the last group game but then win the semi and final! Ahem.
There’s also an argument that maybe, just maybe, the pressure will be less intense now that people realise this England side is flawed? Now their perceived sheen of invincibility has rubbed off, perhaps they can just go ‘xxxx it’ (to coin a phrase) and play with freedom again. They’ll need to encounter favourable pitches, of course, but they may get lucky.
One thing in our favour is that the other sides chasing fourth spot aren’t exactly world beaters at this point. It will be a big ask for Pakistan or Bangladesh to win two of their remaining matches. And if England lose both their remaining games against India and New Zealand then we won’t deserve to qualify anyway.
Whatever happens, however, I think it’s pretty evident that we can no longer claim this England side is exceptional. We’re flawed. One trick ponies if you like. But that doesn’t mean that there won’t be a happy ending. It’s just less likely than we thought it was a month ago.
James Morgan
Written in collaboration with Betting Offers Cash
Superb article. And right.
It seems to me that England are the Graeme Hick of international teams – flat track bullies who can beat anyone on their day, especially when there isn’t much riding on the result of the game, but regularly fall short when faced with different conditions, or teams with a few top class players fired up for the competition. And, at the bottom line, Roy, Bairstow, Buttler, Morgan…good players, but not outstanding, not regular world beaters; Root alone amongst out batsmen can stand alongside Kohli, Williamson etc. And our bowlers just aren’t as good as Amir, Starc, Bumrah etc.
I’d quickly like to defend Graeme Hick :-) He was an excellent ODI player even though his career disappointed in tests. He was even man of the match in the 1992 World Cup semi final against South Africa after scoring a superb 83 off 90 balls against an attack led by Allan Donald.
Yes, I accept that he was better at one day cricket than at Test matches. He was also brilliant in the county game. But overall I think he was as I termed him…And not unlike the current English one day team!
Certainly not going to disagree with your assessment of England on current form.
PS Hick got all those county runs at New Road – the ground where the likes of Phil Newport and Stuart Lampitt were unplayable. It certainly wasn’t a featherbed ;-)
I’d wager Phil Newport got alot of his wickets away from New Road.
My most vivid memory of Hick, whom I believe was fundamentally lacking at the top level, both in technique and temperament, came In a one dayer against India at Edgbaston. He is a big man with some presence but by the time he arrived at the wicket amidst a deafening racket from the raft of Indian supporters, he looked about 3 feet tall. He was clearly intimidated by the occasion and a few balls later slunk back into the pavilion.
A great player at county level, to me he never had the necessary self belief to succeed in the test arena, and always looked vulnerable against pace and bounce.
My most vivid memory of Hick was watching from the Pavilion when he was out to a nothing shot in a Test match at Lord’s. An eminent Member and Peer of the realm was walking through the Long Room when he bumped into a friend. He said ‘Hick”, tapped his temple and said ‘the lights are on but there’s nothing at home’. You only had to watch him batting with Atherton to realise that that noble Lord was bang on the money !
England side have not been able to take any criticism in the test side for several years now despite some woefully inept and inconsistent performances, looks like the same attitude is with the ODI side. Comes from the top – I wonder whether they reflect in the dressing room or they just pat each other on the back and say we’ll get ’em next time because of the total lack of meaning and pressure in ODI cricket
I still think we’re the most talented side out there and other teams seem to be of the view we’re the scalp they most prize. To me the problem is conditions have changed during the competition as ‘flaming june’ has become ‘raining june’. I don’t think it’s anything to do with pressure. At the start of the tournament pitches were a bit slow but pretty flat, now they’re getting stodgy as groundstaff cant get out to work on them. I don’t think it’s any coincidence that as our batting style is hampered with tennis ball bounce when the ball hits the seam yet our bowling has been more effective. Against Sri Lanka and Australia we bowled pretty well, but don’t seem to know how to adjust our batting style to cope with the present stodginess.
We need to look at a team like New Zealand, who when they lost 2 wickets in the first over against the Windies knuckled down with Williamson and Taylor to accumulate, hitting very few boundaries, yet were able to put together a matchwinning 150 partnership in less than 30 overs. It’s about the mentality. The depressing thing about England’s post match interviews is they show no sign of adapting their style, it’s almost as though they’d rather lose in cavalier fashion than win ugly. Stoke’s arrogant comments about our ‘A’ game blowing people away does not sit well with Morgan’s obvious frustration at us not doing the basics, like building partnerships. The more risks you take the less chance of that happening. No team can bring their A-game to every match, so you must have a competitive alternative. I don’t feel we have this mindset at present, so we have to get Roy back, even if he’s not 100%. He’s clearly something of a talisman and Bairstow is struggling to carry the mantle of intimidator.
All that said the Aussies had a game plan and the skill set to carry it out, the ball that got Stokes was the best I’ve seen this tournament, however this is made easier if you know how the opposition is going to play in advance. The Aussies look impressive and their superior competitive instincts for me make them favourites. Tournaments are won by teams who get better as things progress. I just hope we’ve not shot our bolt too early. That loss against Sri Lanka has changed everything for us, can we learn from it?
Somebody picked a good day to leak to the DM that England players are about to get a massive pay rise (because of the new TV deal). When rewards get this disconnected from results in sport, the result is Manchester United.
Meanwhile it looks like good Pakistan have rocked up to reduce NZ to about 100/5 at the time of writing. They’re holding their catches and the less heralded bowlers taking wickets. The top of the table isn’t getting any less interesting. I just hope the idiotic rule that matches won is the first tie-breaker for teams on the same points instead of head-to-head or NRR doesn’t decide that last SF place because it will punish the teams hit by rain twice.
I caught a few moments of Farbrace’s bollox last night and noted he has inherited the default denial response of many of hiis predecessors. I had previously thought that he was one of the more sensible guys. Big mistake.
I’ve made a similar comment here before, but it has always seemed to me that the Bayliss/Morgan philosophy of let them score as many as they like, we can get them, was likely to come unstuck at a WC where the pressure of consistently having to chase large totals (which they haven’t even had to do) against the top sides, match after match would get to them. It has.
The other major flaw in England’s preparation has been playing almost solely on flat tracks. Not only does this give batsmen – such as Morgan – false confidence, but it meant that England’s lower order went into the WC having had very little time in the middle, with predictable results.
I don’t think many cricket followers had England down as near certs for this tournament. To me they were always one of 3 or 4 sides in with a chance and so it has proved. Yesterday really was a shocker though and it’s up hill all the way from here.
Good summary
The only point I would add is to go back to one of my pet gripes – Buttler should not keep. He missed a stumping that I would have expected to make in 2nd team club cricket as a 64 year old. But even more telling for me (anyone can miss a stumping) was his positioning. This was exemplified by the overthrow he allowed when he positioned behind the stumps to receive a regulation return, which then clattered the stumps and deflected past him (and the back ups). I was at The Oval on Monday, watching my side – Warwickshire – play Surrey. Foakes was brilliant behind the stumps – perfect handling and incredibly athletic standing back. He would be worth 10 runs a game over Buttler. Surely we can find a way of selecting Buttler as a pure bat in white ball and bringing in Foakes.
Foakes was man of the match in his last (only?) ODI. We need another intelligent batsman who can grind out the runs and rotate the strike. Could that man be Foakes? And his keeping is obviously a massive plus.
The batting seems to have come unstuck due to the injury to Jason Roy. Perhaps had HE opened with Bairstow, they might have approached the first 15-20 overs differently.
Morgan said he doesn’t blame the bowlers, and yes, they came back well. But was their really the luxury against Australia to play two spinners as well as an out of form Woakes? Would Tom Curran and Liam also have done things differently? Also, why is Wood (our fastest bowler) not opening the bowling with Archer?
To me, it’s easy to blame either the batters or the bowlers, but maybe this one was down to selection and tactics.
In any event, it’s got to change against India and New Zealand.
Out of form Woakes? Him and Stokes were the only 2 players who emerged with credit. It is not an accident that Woakes and Stokes are rated 6 and 7 in the ODI all rounder rankings (with Woakes at 9 in the bowlers and miles ahead of any other English seamer). Woakes was clearly our best bowler and chipped in well with the bat. And the answer to why Archer and Wood do not open together is simple. As Morgan has said, Woakes is the best we have in the first powerplay. As a batsmen I would love an Archer/Wood combination – no need to adjust on change of ends. Unless you are playing on a fast, hard, bouncy track (and Lords was not that) Wood is distinctly limited.
That’s Butlers 4th missed stumping in this tournament on top of a couple of dropped catches and has cost us well over 100 runs, although against the Aussies it was fortunate to be only 10. Don’t understand why the journalists in post match interviews who must have access to these stats don’t ask the question. It could easily be Kholi in the next game and how would that look. Surely Foakes in place of Moin or Rashid, neither of whom have produced significant spells, would help the lower order batting as well. At present only Woakes of the pure bowlers looks anything like with the bat. If you’re not using Stokes for the full 10 overs you can always call on Root as your 6th bowler if necessary. He’s done ok in this tournament when called on.
Agree with most of this but this lot amplify what is wrong with 4/5 day cricket to. Lack of patience, inability to read and adapt to conditions, and a mind set of hitting sizes into the crowd. When you add that they can’t cope with the pressure of a major tournament (like most other sports in this country), and constantly hyping themselves up (don’t hear a whisper from NZ) it’s a recipe to fall of the pedestal. They just are not that good in my opinion.
Yes Foakes is the best keeper by miles in the country, but it seems Bairstow has some God given right to covert the position. And Butler is a bit of a joke, Lancs 3 choice actually. Closed shop isn’t it.
The NZ v P pitch is turning – and this is the pitch England are going to play India on!
BTW Morgan was bounced out in the crucial 2015 WC defeat against Bangladesh and forced to retire hurt when hit on the head in the 2015 series decider against Australia. They’d done their homework.
Please let that be true !! A raging Bunsen would be hilarious to watch this one trick pony England side on.. lol
My worry on a turning wicket would be Buttler standing up to Rashid and Moeen. Perhaps he should take a trick out of the club players bag and stand back to spinners if needed.
If it was a turner I don’t think Moin or Rashid are going to put fear into the Indian batsmen. Bangladesh and Afghanistan have better spin attacks if there’s help in the wicket.
It’s Moeen and Rashid worrying Buttler which is the concern rather than them worrying Indian batsmen. I can hear the Indian team tactics discussion; “Always look to leave the spinners – we’ll pick up more runs in extras than we can hit”.
This is now (if it wan’t all along) about character and I fear for that reason but would be pleased to be surprised. I do not understand all the pundits going on about needing to win 1 or 2. To win the WC a side has to beat most of the best teams at some stage. Scraping a semi-final is not a goal in itself.
Rubbish. Nothing to do with character.. these are pros.. sadly the system has been set up to produce overly attacking cricketers who have no mentality or ability to adapt. Hopelessly shown up in red ball for thr last 3-5 years and now as soon as it’s not a road in white ball.
This is entirely predictable and many have been thinking it for ages but dare not say it due to the fanatic fans about how believe all the ECB and their paid hacks in the media bleet on about how great it all is
Simple fact is that to win a World Cup a team should be the best team.. this should be that they can bat in all conditions and adapt.. a team who wins because it’s based on roads isn’t the best team.. it’s jst the best on a road
Don’t knock scraping a semi-final. This is the World Cup! Getting to the semis is a big deal.
Pakistan winning piles the pressure on for Sunday…..
Was listening to Pakistan v NZ on the radio. NZ recovered well to at least post something to bowl at, after some superb bowling by an on fire Pakistan side. Pakistan then handled the difficult chase very well indeed, great knock from Azam, obviously helped by the fact that NZ only picked one regular spinner. Pakistan are often inconsistent but they are beginning to peak at the right time and you would back them to win their last two v Afghanistan and Bangladesh.
It all means England must win their last two. Today’s pitch isn’t the one being used for the India game, that one was hidden under some covering apparently. If it is anything like today’s turning pitch, then that would give a huge advantage to India, who have better spinners than we do. And it will be like a home game for India too, as it was for Pakistan today.
Lots of good points in James’ article. England just seem to believe all the hype and aren’t learning from their mistakes. The run chase v Sri Lanka should have been do-able, a similar total to what Pakistan chased today. Even the run chase against Aus might have been possible with more common sense and application, albeit Starc and Behrendorff bowled very well and Lyon was tidy too. Where are the cricketing brains amongst the England side and support staff ?
I just cannot see them turning it round now. Where Australia and Pakistan appear to be peaking at the right time, we are going backwards. The powers that be must have realised that tournament pitches would not be the usual run-fest roads we see in some ODIs.
I would love England to prove me wrong, but we looked shot at Lord’s, and I don’t think there is the intelligence within the camp to turn it round. Pakistan are perhaps favourites to take 4th spot now. I don’t think one win for us will be enough. So it is all looking like another World Cup failure.
It ultimately has been detrimental, all of these flat-track bilateral home series, Oval and Trent Bridge worst offenders, which are put on for pissed-up crowds besotted with ”maximums’. 400 plus scores in five aimless one-dayers is ultimately pointless when compared with a World Cup. They’re probably a little better than ”flat track bullies” as they have won away in places like Sri Lanka, but there is certainly more than an element of truth that they’re far too accustomed to flat tracks. Chuck their hands at the ball.
I said before the Tournament started that i had little intetest in…However the recent games have been more interesting because its a more equal contest between bat and ball, something that dosent help Englands mindless sloggers. There was a truly dreadful article in the I newspaper this week about six hitting…so fatuous and just about sums up the state of cricket journalism.
English sportsmen whether they be cricketers footballers boxers or rugby players are massively overated and over rewarded. We are mugs to have been taken in for so long.
Pakistan look good to reach 11 points. They’ve finally got their team selection right with Haris Sohail a massive upgrade in the middle order on Shoaib Malik and the dream that Hassan Ali could rediscover his CT form abandoned at last. They should have more than enough for Afghanistan which leaves them needing to beat Bangladesh, no gimme but their extra bowling firepower should be enough.
SL can reach 12 pts but need to beat SA, WI and India to do it. The crucial thing here could be what sort of WI turns up in the second game? One that is better selected and more relaxed – or one that’s already on the plane? If it’s the latter, SL could go into the last match against an already-qualified India with the momentum while the latter might rest players and with the lurking suspicion that by losing they might eliminate a more serious rival.
Bangladesh can finish on 11 pts – but have the match with India to contend with. They’d need to pull off a repeat of 2007 (Tamim, Shakib, Mushfiqur and Mashrafe all played in that match) and India’s batting doesn’t look totally convincing outside the big two of Kohli and Rohit so it’s not impossible but it is unlikely.
What all this is building up to is England very probably need to win both remaining games. Much as I like them, I quite favour England to beat NZ. NZ have only one of their top five in any sort of form and their bowling can go round the park if the Riverside serve up a road in the forecast good weather. I know England haven’t beaten NZ in the WC for ever but I don’t think there’s an intimidation factor there (quite a few played in the T20 WC where England thrashed NZ). The vital match looks the India game. A nervous batting line-up on a turning pitch has trouble written all over it….
Pakistan have the easiest run home in the tournament (now they are past NZ) , and England the toughest. Both likely needing to win 4 knockout games in a row to win the tournament, with Pakistan’s next two opponents being far easier.
I blame the ECB.
So do we all…
Shock, horror! The pitch reveals what everyone but Morgan and Farby could see during the E v A match – England bowled too short. England bowled 52% back-of-a-length to Australia’s 38% and 6% short to Australia’s 2%.
Growing up in the late 1970s one of the main England talking points was always why was Mike Hendrick so unlucky (he never took a five-for) when Botham took stacks of wickets? Botham would explain that it was because he bowled a fuller length and the moving ball would be less likely to have moved so much it completely beat the bat. He also attacked the stumps more whereas Hendrick tended to bowl “the channel”.
Forty years later, and all those megabucks spent on coaches and analytics, and they still don’t get it. At least, unlike the last Adelaide Test when they did the same thing, no bowler has gone running to the media blaming the bowling coach. Morgan says his England play without fear but he means the batsmen – the bowlers still bowl like they’ll be chastised if they bowl full and get driven a few times.
Botham always had an explanation for everything – even if it was complete bollocks. Mike Hendrick had a far superior test bowling average to Botham (25.8 to 28.4), and a much better economy rate (2.17 to 2.99). Only his strike rate was inferior, and that was because he bowled more overs at the top of the order against the best bats.I am not suggesting Hendrick was a better player than Botham (his batting was awful), but he was a much better bowler.
Hendrick was a comparatively ordinary bowler. He liked beating the outside edge by 6 inches rather risk being driven, and he liked keeping it tight at 2 runs an over. This does not win matches. It was perfectly obvious even then that the important ratio for winning Test matches was strike rate, not runs per over. Economy was seen as a virtue because most of the captains of the 1960s and early 1970s liked not losing more than they liked winning. The idea that it might be better to win a 5 game series 3-2 than to draw four times and win it 1-0 was not in the strategic mindset. Of course, something has been lost in the transition to result cricket, but the Botham insight (not unique to him) that you are more likely to get the edge with the swinging ball if you pitch it up is pure gain. Starc’s ball to Stokes is great cricket; beating the outside edge from back of a length is not.
Got to disagree. I saw both Hendrick and Botham many times (I was Cornhill marketing manager when we sponsored the tests). What mattered was average more than strike rate – and Hendrick was significantly cheaper per wicket than Botham despite being more exposed to the best bats. Botham was a very good bowler for the first half of his career, but deteriorated rapidly as he put on weight and lost fitness. Hendrick was an artist with the ball who would have played 100 tests if he had also been able to tell which end of a bat to hold.
But I have to agree about Starc. That ball was near unplayable. But ask yourself who is the best seamer of the last 50 years? I would suggest Malcolm Marshall, who was a genius at moving the ball from a length or back of a length.
In my Cricket Writer of the Tournament competition, Vic Marks has opened up a narrow lead over James Morgan and Mike Atherton with this in this morning’s Grauniad :
When Morgan says: “We have struggled with the basics of what we call our batting mantra,” he is starting to sound like Miranda’s mum. Yes, England must bat “in partnerships” but that is as obvious as craving an end to world poverty/ climate change/The Hundred.
Surely the time cannot be far away from when Morgan morphs into Michael Vaughan.
Someone called Simon something or another wrote a beautifully written article in the Grauniad, though it was quite cutting about the English team.
The weather is heating up, so I’d expect that England will qualify once the conditions are more conducive to their wham, bam, thankyou mam, style of play.
And there is still all to play for. Really can’t see them losing to New Zealand if the weather is in their favour. The loss to Aus makes for a damned exciting run in to the semis, every game seemingly a deal breaker for at least one team.
I note people stating that India have better spinners than England but while this is true the fact is that the Pace bowlers are at least as good as England. In Bumrah and Shami they have the bowlers with the lowest economy rate in the competition.
England’s main strength is all rounders and how deep they have free hitting batsmen. (Moeen, Woakes etc).
Problem is Moen and Woakes don’t bat intelligently. In fact bar Root and Stokes none of them seem able to think or adapt their approach. But as Barstow says “we play a great brand of cricket”. Yeah well. One thing they sure ain’t the number 1 side.
I have heard Woakes being lumped with Moeen and Rashid before, which I find odd. Woakes is a much more technically correct bat and much less inclined to the big hit. The one against Australia came when he was short of partners and he picked the right ball. In ODI’s his strike rate (despite usually going in late in the final powerplay) is 90, much less than Moeen or Rashid (and less than Stokes and Buttler) demonstrating his less aggressive style.
Criticise Woakes batting by all means – but not because he loses his head. He is one of the very few England bats not inclined to rushes of blood.
I’m sick and tired of hearing about this ‘bat deep’ mantra that England have going on. Moeen, Woakes & Rashid cannot be relied upon to produce runs when the pressure is on, and Archer seems to be an allout biffer, so I don’t see why England are so enamoured with it. Bairstow’s idiotic comments about the pitches & strategy employed from yesterday don’t help either.
Vince surely cannot play on Sunday. And if Roy is not fit we have a dilemma on the opening front.
We need someone with big match experience and temperament, someone with defensive nous and a solid technique, but with the capability of giving it a wallop when the ball is there to be hit.
Can I suggest Lucy Bronze?
Well if they must play Moen open with him. He hits the ball in the air constantly so when the field is in in the first ten overs he actually might score some runs. Short of that if Roy is not fit who else if your not going to play Vince?
There have been various comments about the lack of thinking amongst England’s bats, often lumping the all together. So I thought it would be interesting to look at their inclination to throw the bat. As a proxy I have looked at the % of the total runs they have scored in ODIs which have come from 6’s. The results;
Moeen Ali 20.4%
Jos Buttler 19.7%
Eoin Morgan 17,5%
Ben Stokes 16,7%
Jonny Bairstow 12.8%
Chris Woakes 9.7%
Joe Root 4.5%
This seems to clearly show a difference between the bangers (Moeen) and the true test bat (Root). The interesting one to me is Woakes who, despite usually going in late when banging is the team tactic, is far more restrained than those going in with plenty of time to play themselves in.
I very much hope that YJB hits a tremendous 6 that lands in Motormouth Vaughan’s mouth and knocks out all his teeth. I know that England are very sensitive about criticism but when it is expressed by the fake Yorkshireman I can understand why.
That said I expect India to win tomorrow in the cauldron that will be Edgbaston, because I think they’re more capable of adapting their game to the conditions and the situations.