England Outclassed Twice
Get ready for another happy posting from me! After the success of the Twenty20 series our hopes were raised that things were moving in the right direction. However those thoughts have come crashing down on a slope steeper than the one I suggested New Zealand were on in my previous post (oops!).
Each of the first two games were compounded by one main thing - the complete inability to build an innings as a team and set a target which would test the Kiwi’s. In the first game, the pitch caught us out a bit, but these guys are professional and must have a plan of where the runs are going to come from. You know that players like Oram and Styris are going to bowl wicket to wicket, so the top order guys must know how they are going to counter that by using the crease, attacking at the right times etc. They didn’t do that, the run rate got completely stifled and players got out to bad shots. Not forgetting the fact that we had three run outs as well! At least with the ball we got a few wickets and showed a bit of fight - Stuart Broad in particular, but we were never going to win with the runs on the board. The areas we were bowling in weren’t quite right, but the Kiwi’s came out and showed how to bat aggressively in a one day game and taught us a lesson.
We didn’t learn though, and the second ODI was just plain embarrassing. Luckily I won’t be in this evening to see the “highlights” , but I saw the end of the game this morning and I’m just so frustrated that the team which looked so good a week or so ago now looks like its forgotten how to play. This game was even worse than the first one, with the bowlers taking a tanking as well. Admittedly they didn’t have much to defend, but they seemed to try and bowl shorter and shorter, which just meant getting dispatched further into the crowd by McMillan and Rob Key’s fatter brother Jesse Ryder! A couple of dropped catches, a missed chance or two for direct hit run outs just compounded the fact that it was a shockingly bad day at the office.
I don’t know where we go from here - after the first game there was already talk about shifting the team around a bit but the selectors resisted the urge but the team needs a bit of a shake up after this. Quite why Ravi Bop continued to play though is a complete mystery to me when Dimi played well in the Twenty20 and Ravi didn’t even bowl in the ODI’s following.
Then remember to bowl in one day mode -” keeping things tight and put the pressure on the batsman would be a start. Then the main thing is the batsmen need to step up to the plate - in particular KP needs to justify his billing as a world class player and now would be a damn good time to show that class. Its not that different out there to UK conditions, so why we appear to play like a bunch of numpties I do not know.
Anyway, I promised a happy posting and here comes the happy bit; We can do it, we can beat them. Just for some reason at the moment its not happening and the Coach and Skipper are the ones that need to start turning it around.
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