England Murdered At World Cup, New Whodunit Mystery Grips Nation

Never mind Lucy bloody Beale, I want to know who killed English cricket. Although the obvious reply would be ‘New Zealand stupid’, I think we all know the real answer is more complex. English cricket was murdered at home too, most likely by those who run the game and their various accomplices.

I can’t pretend I stayed up to watch the game. Instead I woke up early to catch the end. It had already finished by the time I tuned in. Sigh.

It’s hard to give a measured reaction at the moment as I’ve only seen the hightlights. What seems pretty clear is that Tim Southee bowled like a man possessed. I don’t think I’ve ever seen anyone swing the ball so much in the middle-overs when there’s a lush outfield. It was extraordinary.

We can’t make excuses for all the batsmen, but some of them got absolute beauties. James Taylor, for example, got a peach that Bradman would’ve missed by a foot.  Sometimes you’ve just got to applaud the opposition.

Brendon McCullum also played a blinder with the bat, although I’m not going to praise him too much. You often see innings like that when teams are chasing small totals against demoralised opponents. McCullum is very good at kicking teams when they’re down.

Having said that, however, these dismal defeats are becoming a bit of habit. We lost a lot of games under Ashley Giles, who was rightly sacked as ODI coach, but now we’re even worse.

By my reckoning Peter Moores has now won just seven of his sixteen ODIs since returning as England coach. His record in his first stint was poor too. He has never won a single limited overs trophy in his long career. Best coach of his generation? Pull the other one Downton.

It’s hard to see where England go from here to be honest. Confidence must be shattered. I expected us to lose our first two games, but not this badly.

I just can’t help feeling that Moores and the coaches have shot the team in the foot. Before the World Cup started in anger, England seemed to be making a modicum of progress. Then came those bizarre selections for the Australia game.

Re-jigging the batting order for such an important match, when the team was already unstable, was unnecessary tinkering at its worst. I suspect it came from over-analysis, which can often obscure the bleedin’ obvious.

The bowling plans have also been head-scratching for a while now. Tim Southee showed us all today why pitching the bloody ball up is a good idea. I don’t care what the computer says.

James Morgan

106 comments

  • It was a very interesting podcast indeed. “Nothing grows in the shade” so it’s ironic he’s called Flower.

    My heart goes out to Rankin if that’s a fully true account. [But why wouldn’t it be?] What kind of psychological experiment were they attempting on the team? Seriously, what kind of coach is Saker such that so many bowlers go backwards in pace and results? And they call us “outside cricket”… outside ‘their’ cricket, for sure.

    Whilst we are still in this competition I’m doubting we’ll get any bombshells but surely the revolution can’t be far off. I wonder if KP’s saved a nugget or two for his second edition?

    • It’s odd, isn’t it? It’s one of several accounts now which suggest that Andy Flower simply didn’t tolerate people getting injured. KP was continuously maligned for being ‘injured’ and made to play through it relying heavily on cortisone injections when it has become clear since he could barely walk at times.

      In the 13/14 Ashes, Swann was playing injured, having not recovered from his op. Anderson was playing with a broken rib. Prior had a tear in his Achilles. Bresnan was selected despite being injured and was brought in to the team a match earlier than was believed the earliest he would be fit. Monty was having personal problems. Trott, poor sod, was visibly mentally unwell during the previous Ashes, according to Gooch, who raised the issue with Flower, to no avail (and Gooch is one of Flower’s biggest fans). Barely a man on the tour was fit. If Rankin were a horse he would have been shot at the side of the pitch.

      England’s injury management was negligent at best, malicious at worst.

    • Why make ANY form of technical intervention on a bowler who can bowl 85mph+? You have a 1% chance of making them better, and a 99% chance of making them worse.

      Only a completely incompetent coach who is hopelessly out of his depth would even consider such a stupid option. Saker should go back to coaching 12 year olds where his methods would be more appropriate for the level.

  • Do you think the lack of a coach with anything approaching the requisite level of tactical and technical knowledge might correlate to the ECB coach education system, where 90% of the content is about using the correct jargon and making sure you use lots of praise and continue to encourage the players even when they’re getting stuffed out of sight.

    Number of times an aspiring coach is told how important “technical and tactical” considerations are: literally hundreds.

    Number of times an aspiring coach is given information about what high level technique and tactics actually are (beyond the absolute basics that you could find on wikipedia): zero.

  • 1
  • 2

FOLLOW US ON TWITTER

copywriter copywriting