a bit of a fluke now.
It’s only a little over a year back that the England men’s cricket team were finally crowned world champions in some form of the game, Twenty20. It came as a shock at the time and looks more shocking as time goes on.
We were told this was the start, a resurgence in the limited over game to go alongside the mighty steps taken in the real game. One annihilation by Australia followed by a humiliating 50 over World Cup later we were back to being outclassed by Sri Lanka in the one off Twenty20 at Bristol.
From the first deliveries where the England openers decided that wild, harum-scarum, wahoos, trying to hit the cover off the ball was the right way to go but well before the England bowlers tried their best to knock off the runs Sri Lanka required themselves without any batsmen involved you knew this wasn’t going to end well.
While the three Sri Lanka batsmen that had to bother were finding gaps to hit boundaries left, right, centre, front and back, with measured control and ease. England’s, bar Pietersen and Morgan, were finding fielders either for catches or just to dry up runs with wild panic. Jayawardene and Sangakkara stayed still, even when they came down the pitch it was with a calm stillness. England on the other hand do that stupid back and forward running about trying to put the bowlers off. It had no effect on the likes of Malinga, it just helped him bamboozle them more with his low, slingy, slow balls.
So then with a measly 137 to get England decided that was too much, so in the interests of fair play they decided to reduce it by giving away 11 free runs and adding nearly 10% more overs with some judicious use of the wide delivery. So a run rte of 6.85 was reduced to 6.27. Simple for three players with 1067 ODI appearances and a lot of wins between them.
What makes this even worse is when so called pundits
tell you that they still make England favourites for the 50 over series coming up.
On what would you base that judgement?
Oh that’s right, I forgot, Ian media darling
Bell might play. Form of his life, don’t you know.
Just have to hope that this upcoming series doesn’t have any adverse effect on the new 50 over captain, Alastair Cook.