Promising

We didn’t freeze. We didn’t choke. Eoin Morgan’s men started their World Cup campaign with a bang. And this time, unlike previous World Cups, it wasn’t the bang of a metaphorical tire blowing up or the whole engine combusting, it was the bang of boundaries flying off Ben Stokes’s bat, and the clang of a Jofra Archer bouncer ricocheting off Hashim Amla’s grill. England performed well, particularly in the field, and completely out-classed a weak South Africa team.

Although England’s 311 didn’t look particularly imposing, especially for The Oval, it proved far too demanding for the Proteas in the end. The difference maker was naturally Jofra Archer, who adds so much to England’s attack. I can’t believe some people had a problem with calling him up. Kudos to Ed Smith and the selectors for ignoring all the bollocks and making what should’ve been an obvious call.

Bowling attacks with genuine pace always have a chance, even on the flattest pitches. Archer clearly rattled the opposition – sending Amla back to the pavilion for a concussion test was possibly worth more than a wicket – and South Africa never really looked like chasing the runs.

Woakes’s accuracy was the perfect foil, and the other bowlers played their part by picking up regular wickets. Once De Kock was dismissed – a key wicket as the Proteas keeper is a class act who could’ve won the game on his own – England’s win was never in doubt.

England’s batting never got out of third gear, the result of a pitch that rewarded slower balls that seemed to get stuck in the surface a bit, but there were still positive signs. The early loss of Bairstow didn’t affect our approach, and Roy, Root, Morgan, and Stokes all looked in good form. We’ve just got to find Moeen some runs and confidence and we’re all set.

What stood out for you in England’s win? It’s all looking pretty rosy if you ask me. Our bowling was possibly the worry coming into the tournament but they delivered big time. That’s a huge positive moving forwards. And who can forget that Ben Stokes catch?!

James Morgan

26 comments

  • For a sold out ground there were a hell of a lot of empty seats…..

    • I tried to get tickets for the England games in London three times in the ballot. Tickets for yesterday were sold out on all three occasions so I’m surprised if there were empty seats. I eventually got tickets for England v Australia at Lord’s but they’re restricted view (although they’re in the Mound Stand so I expect the view will be fine).

      • There were plenty of empty seats. ‘Sold out’ doesn’t mean all used. Corporates or people from ballots who don’t go etc etc

        As always, if you just go off the marketing and PR ECB hype you’ll be misinformed

  • At least they didn’t pull the boundaries in which stopped floods of sixes. 311 for the Oval is good and no doubt made a much better game than 400 vs 400. Great catch from Stokes, but I was at Edgbaston watching Surrey get beaten by Warwickshire with 15 lbws given in the match. Yeah well….
    Might watch the highlights but I doubt it.

  • Thought the batting was excellent as the pitch was definitely trickier than a usual Oval road. 18 months ago, that’s the type of pitch that England might have slipped from 110 for 3 to 220 all out by not reining themselves in and trying to get to 375 against a good bowling attack.

    Was that really SA’s best batting lineup? Looks like they’re entirely dependent on de Kock, Amla and Faf to get runs – how on earth does Duminy still get a gig?

    • I wasn’t able to watch all of England’s innings (work is a drag, eh!) but from what I saw we set ourselves up for a big finish that never really materialised. Could well have been the surface.

      Completely agree re: South Africa. The bowling still looks pretty strong on paper (especially when Steyn comes back) but the batting looks pretty average. Amla is possibly past his best now, and Faf has always been decent but short of world class imho. The only player teams will fear is De Kock imho – a player who’s fantastic to watch imho.

  • Did anyone see or hear Shaun Pollock’s totally innocent yet just about the biggest piece of political incorretness in the hisory of cricket?

  • When Ben Stokes took that outrageous catch at Deep Mid wicket the coomentary team was Nasser and Shaun Pollock. Nasser came out with some hyperbole and then it was Polly’s turn to speak. He said “Just look at the crowd in the background rising as one to applaud that magnificent piece of cricket” Halfway through that sentence the camera zoomed in a bit to capture the look of disbelief on Ben’s own face. However in the back ground all you could see was 3 people sitting in wheelchairs. Just about the most innocent piece of inappropriate commentary in the history of the game.

  • I followed the game on Cricinfo, but i think the pitch can’t have been the usual Oval road: 311/8 plays 207 all out is not a road. Given that, I’d describe England’s batting as mature, which is not a word I’d have used very often. I think we’re all agreed on South Africa: batting looks weak. In terms of the tournament (or at least the first phase), I’d divide the teams into:

    Likely to make the semi-final: England, Australia, India
    Might make the semi-final: West Indies (power packed batting), Pakistan (because they’re Pakistan), New Zealand (great record in tournaments, quality bowling and Kane)
    Probably going home: Sri Lanka, Afghanistan, Bangladesh, South Africa.

    That makes today’s game (Pakistan v West Indies) both important and unpredictable. It’s at Trent Bridge, which I think favours West Indies’ hitters.

    • He needs to have something like 10 ODIs under the belt. Then he can go too. Yet Duminy, veteran of nearly 200 ODIs but without a single ton against any opposition in this World Cup, has not been snapped up. Wonder why …

      South Africa does not have a middle order. Unless you count three walking wickets (Faf is horribly out of nick, Miller and Duminy have flattered to deceive for years if not decades) as a middle order.
      Next World Cup, instead of picking RSA, just pick Kolpakshire. Will be much stronger than the actual national team.

  • Usual inane commentary from Sky about the pitch and expectations of 350 plus as necessary target these days. I am totally fed up with this kind of bland salesmanship approach. Contrast this with Morgan’s enlightening comment that batsmen were reporting problems with the pitch when coming back to the dressing room. That is what I want to hear. It meant that England had to adapt. Excellent!! Intelligent – more than you can say for the commentary. Cricket fans are not idiots so why trot out the cliches? You do worry that The Hundred is going to infect the whole of cricket with its marketing jargon. I love the fact that England got to a good total by diligence. Good for Morgan. As for the catch didn’t Stokes take a blistering slip catch at the Ashes in 2015 when Broad routed Australia? Another best ever catch. Incidentally Colley and Bell took a few miracle catches in their time. Bell caught a similar catch by leaping one handed in the air at Durham last year. Except he was fielding near to silly mid on. The Bears team were so astounded every one left their positions to mob him. In the County Championship every year I’m sure there are similar instances of the “best catch ever”…

  • Agree with all the positive comments about a clinical display from the undoubted favourites. South Africa’s batting looks ropey, I guess if they haven’t a better selection than Duminy, who’s record in this county doesn’t inspire confidence, they’ve got issues back home. My one issue is the continued presence of Butler as keeper and vice captain. Don’t rate him as either. Surely Bairstow is a better bet behind the sticks and why isn’t Root vice captain. Butler dropped 2 catches and missed a stumping yesterday, one of the catches about as simple as you can get standing up. Better teams would have made us pay. He keeps on doing this yet our selectors do nothing. Still believe we missed a trick not selecting Foulkes, playing Root as the sixth bowler and using Stokes as a proper all rounder. He seems to have been relegated to a batsman who bowls a bit.
    Still rate Colley’s mid air gully catch as the best I’ve seen in modern times, he had less time to react, being closer, the ball was coming faster and he hit the ground harder from a greater height. There’s also a couple of amazing boundary catches recently where players palmed the ball back from over the boundary at full tilt, fell over and got up to complete the catch. Strangely though it’s quickies like Chris Old and Botham I best remember catching some beauties in the slips during the 70’s. There was one test match against India at Headingly I think, where the slip cordon included Botham, Old, Willis and Hendrick. Mark you I seem to remember most of the team were in close that day. We bowled them out for fifty odd with Old bowling metronomic through the innings, conceding about one an over and an apoplectic Jim Laker bemoaning the incompetence of the Indian batsmen. I do miss him, my favourite commentator, along with ‘The Alderman’.
    Here’s a little side line. Who would you all have liked to see commentating on this World Cup in an ideal world? Being dead is no barrier here and it includes both TV and radio pundits.

      • Benaud- in a class of his own. I’m not sure how suitable Arlott’s style would have been for a game like yesterday’s, wonderful commentator though he was. I would certainly go for Bailey – a summariser rather than a commentator I know – but he always provided insight which the commentators (and I !) had missed.

        • Baileys a good choice I think, but how insightful would he have been at I day cricket, not exactly being the kind of player that springs to mind forcing the pace. I don’t like Benaud’s rather superior tone, typical Aussie really, but he was always interesting, much preferrred Laker’s matter of factness, which to me was always laced with a deep affection for the game.
          Fred Truman would be my choice as a summariser though. His fixed point and often controversial opinions of authority are unmatched in sporting commentary to this day. He wouldn’t give a shit about offending the ECB, sponsors, other players and even other commentators and summarisers of he felt strongly about something.

  • There were some empty seats yesterday, but the ground was probably 95% full. Today….

    Nearly 90 minutes into the game and although the crowd is ceratinly a decent one, there’s no way TB is 95% full. I reckon it’s at perhaps 80%.

    • This is what you get when corporate buyers come in and oversubscribe, so depriving the proper fan of tickets. It’s a pet peeve of mine. I Remember when Warwickshire put their corporate boxes in to raise a few bob and they had so many complaints of rowdy behaviour from supporters sitting in the stand underneath, that they had to put ‘code of behaviour’ notices in each box, threatening eviction to the corporate yobs.

  • I was glad that England’s victory was not entirely trouble-free but nonetheless comfortable. SA, without AB de V and Morne Morkel, and Amla well past his best, are much weaker than they used to be. England recovered from hiccups which in time past might have plunged them into crisis. I trust that they will cause the miserable Pakistanis to disintegrate on Monday.
    The Stokes catch was a gem but even he says it was a fluke. I’be seen better over the years.
    Thankfully those extreme purveyors of hyperbole, Stumpy Ward and Thrasher Hussain, were not commentating at the time, otherwise the transmission might have failed under the weight of BS.
    As for commentators, Sir Richie of Benaud set the gold standard for me and John Arlott provided the artwork.

    • Pakistan were certainly awful today (though I give West Indies credit for a good strategy, well executed). Been a while since I last saw WI use “chin music” as a strategy. Oshane Thomas looks a serious unit, and his style reminds me of Patrick Patterson.

        • Archer looks more impressive than any of the Windies quickies to me. He bowls straighter and certainly gets more bounce off a good length, with apparently little effort, even on a rather stodgy oval strip. If Warwick can get their quickies fit we might have some real threat with the ball to succeed Anderson and Broad. i think the Windies missed a massive trick not snapping Archer up. It’s good to see them finding talent again but there’s no Roberts, Holding, Marshall, Garner, Walsh or Ambrose, let alone the likes of Daniel, Clarke, Patterson and Bishop, who couldn’t get a regular place in the side, in their ranks yet. Would love to see how the flat track bullies would have coped with them.

  • Wisden had an interesting take on the English performance…”All in all, a fair chunk went wrong in England’s innings. They lost a wicket in the first over. They lost two in four balls within the first 20 overs, leaving two batsmen on nought. They hit six boundaries in the last 14 overs. Even Jos Buttler didn’t get any, And still they ended up with 311″. not that any one seems to have noticed that things didn’t go quite to plan, made to look better by the SA performance.

    .

  • So 4 games in and 4 trashings, with the ones received by Pakistan and Sri Lanka the worst of the lot.

    Is the ICC already canvassing for a 4-team World Cup, with India, England and Australia, already pre-qualified to play?

    International cricket as a competitive sport is pretty much done now.

FOLLOW US ON TWITTER

copywriter copywriting