England Twenty20 failings
By the time I complete this post we'll know if England still have a mathematical chance of qualifying for the semi-finals of the Twenty20. Clearly they don't deserve to, but you never know if New Zealand can beat south Africa.
There have been some obvious failings from the England team that are poor performance, and others that are poor strategy. From a strategy point of view, it was a strange feeling to actually want your top order out asap. I suppose Maddy and Prior could have come off, and Maddy did once, but Pietersen and Collingwood should have been our match winners. And Shah should always bat ahead of Flintoff. So we got our batting order wrong to start with.
We also mixed and matched with selection in an indefensible way. If a bowler like Kirtley comes in and bowls one over for 12, how can he not get another over in the fist place, and secondly, how can he be dropped. In Twenty20 you have to have a bit more confidence in a player, because even Flintoff - our best bowler by miles - can go for loads in an over occasionally. It doesn't mean we lose faith in him. So we got our selections wrong.
And then on the pitch, our out cricket was appalling. 6 run outs so far in 4 games and often as a result of mix-ups. Yes there will be some close line calls as batsmen push for runs at the end, but batsmen stranded because of a break down in communication is unforgivable. And then finally, and most depressingly, our fielding. There has been criticism of our bowling, but I'd argue that it is our fielding that has let us down far far worse - 7 possible chances went down (or weren't touched) against South Africa - that must be a world record!
So poor selection and batting order, and poor fielding and running between the wickets. No surprise we're out. But then we never really expected to be in the top 4 in the world did we?
(P.S. I have to say Schofield was a lot better than I expected!)
4 comments:
Agree with most of what you say, but question whether Pietersen will ever be a true and reliable match-winner: he's too arrogant and not nearly intelligent enough, tactically or otherwise.
Also very disappointed with Collingwood's captaincy, even leaving aside his jaunt to a lap-dancing establishment the night before a big game. (Flintoff was disciplined and sacked from the vice-captaincy for a similar breach of team discipline.) Collingwood seemed to lack the ability to think on his feet and recognise the need to change to plan B when plan A had failed. He should also have been straight to Broad tonight after the first two balls of the over to Yuvraj that went for 36: I just hope that the experience doesn't wreck the confidence of a young lad who is perhaps one of our best prospects both as a bowler and as a bowling allrounder.
Although it would have been nice for us to do well in a form of the game that we invented, I still regard Twenty-20 as Mickey Mouse cricket and a gross perversion of the game: boring old f**t speaking!
I think Collingwood got off lighter than Flintoff because he wasn't drunk - depending on what you read he may have not known he was going into a lap-dancing club when he went in, had one drink and left, but it's difficult to tell what the real story is!
On his captaincy, it does seem like he's made a few wrong decisions, but that was the risk we took when we got rid of one of the best captain's in the world. We made the assumption that a less good captain would be made up for by additional runs and more athletic fielding from the player brought in at Vaughan's expense.
I don't know how much time was left when Broad was getting hit for his six sixes, but there are fines for not completing the overs in time....I suspect that could have prevented him from spending time chatting with Broad between balls.
Your expectation of Schofield can't have been very high!
correct, it wasn't!
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