England 257-7. India 258-5 (47.3 overs) If you include warm-up matches, England’s record under Ashley Giles currently reads as won one, lost five. That’s pretty dismal by anyone standards – especially for a side that includes world class players like Cook, Pietersen and Morgan. So should we be despondent? Should we simply shrug our shoulders and say “we never win the ODIs when they’re after the test matches anyway, so we don’t care”. Or should we look past the results and take a broader...
Too awful to watch
England 155 (43 overs). India 157-3 (28 overs) The great thing about being a professional cricket journalist is that you get to watch England play cricket. The one great disadvantage is that you have to watch every match. You can’t just say ‘sod this I’m off to the pub’; you have to stay rooted to your seat in the press box, head in hands, eyes glazed, watching a depressing and all too predictable defeat unfold. So yesterday was a great day to be a cricket blogger – a privileged observer who...
From wheelie good to wheelie bad
India 285-6 (50 overs) England 158 (36 overs) Don’t worry. I’ll give the wheelie headlines a rest after this. But let’s face it. England’s performance in the second ODI was really, really bad. But let’s not get too downhearted. Nobody wheelie (sorry) expected us to win this series, so the odd bad day at the office isn’t unexpected. With Trott, Swann and Anderson missing, our unproven players struggled under fire. The bowling was always a concern, and our batsmen fell flat on their faces when...
Ashley Giles: From The Bears into the bear pit
This aint like dustin’ crops boy. It hasn’t been the most auspicious start for Ashley Giles. England were thrashed in the first warm up game and beaten soundly by Delhi in the second. Thank heavens we weren’t playing Jaipur and Mumbai too, otherwise things might have got really ugly. It’s all the more embarrassing because England are, if the rather bizarre ICC Championship rankings are to be believed, the best ODI team in the world. Imagine what Delhi might have done to South Africa or...
Banana skin avoided
Go get ’em Wrighty England 196-5 (20 overs) Afghanistan 80 (17.2 overs) England were always going to beat Afghanistan. Never once did it cross our minds that we might actually lose. Not even when the third best batsman wicket-keeper in the side, Craig Kieswetter, played out a maiden and then got bowled – leaving us 0-1 after the first over. It’s not like we have a history of losing these types of games. We all just imagined the defeat to Holland at Lord’s and the loss to Ireland when...
Can England’s lions retain the World T20?
Everyone was behind Colly and the boys in 2009, but will Broad’s team cause a few surprises too? Let’s break this one down. The World T20 is being played in Sri Lanka. Sri Lanka is part of cricket’s subcontinent. England are rubbish at limited overs cricket in the subcontinent, so what are the chances of England winning a trophy there? As slim as Andrew Flintoff’s chances of becoming a world boxing champion I reckon. Or are they? T20 cricket is essentially what the Americans call ‘a...
