England v New Zealand, 3rd ODI, Bristol, 21st June

Broad is brilliant - I love that guy. I think it's pretty clear that only Notts. boys have the balls to play for England though.

Did anyone turn up for England today ?
Apart from Broad?

A top four including Dinga, Ark-Wright and Bee-Bop-Bopara is asking for trouble ...

Lara Lara Laughs wrote:

Not sure how you worked that one out. £10 at 12.5 = £115.

Approximatation FFS!! £10.83 was my stake

Augustus wrote:Ambrose at seven seems suited more to Test Matches than to ODIs (he doesn't really have any strokes).

Based on the evidence of 8 balls faced in this series?

Wonder how he was one of the best performers in one day domestic cricket last year

I think that Swann is mysteriously under-rated by Collingwood; he's a very good lower order batsman and a canny ODI bowler in a similar mould to Daniel Vettori. Even if he hadn't taken a further wicket, he might have been the difference between chasing 170 and chasing 182.

Colly captaincy was poor. 75/6 and no slips to his own bowling. Poor stuff....

Throughout his time at Nottinghamshire he has proven himself against some excellent batsman in the one-day game (and four-day for that matter). He shouldn't have to play second-fiddle to some jumped up technical nightmare called Luke Wright, who is frankly awful in every respect currently. His technique, both in batting and bowling, is the ugliest to be found anywhere in world cricket.

My thoughts on Wright are well documented, but not so sure Swann is that qualified to do this job. I'd like to see the stats for him opening for Notts in domestic cricket. I doubt his success ratio is that good.

Another criticism I have of England's selection - Owais Shah. Owais Shah should not have to bat below Ravi Bopara, who relative to Shah has achieved absolutely nothing in any form of the game. Shah has scored massive runs in the county game, season after season, nearly scored more Test runs in either of his debut innings than Bopara did on the whole tour of Sri Lanka, and also has a ODI hundred to his name despite the considerable disadvantage of batting at six. He should be batting at 4.

Merlin would love you
Might be worth a go, but Bopara has been in dazzling form in the FPT this year. If ever he's going to bat at 4 rather than with the deadmen down the bottom, it's now. I'd give him the remaining games...

Tremlett bowled really well. Don't forget him.

He's still not ideally suited to one day internationals where he won't always have pitches that suit him, but he's just got to find a way into the test team sooner rather than later.

I wasn't proposing that Swann pinch-hit; I was still whinging about the bowling choices. Regarding Ambrose, I still think he's a poor technical batsman, and one good season won't convince me otherwise. You can look at every single player and point out a good county season - Chris Read has one every year.

On Bopara - Shah; it's probably fair to say that they've both been very disappointing thus far in their ODI careers. If two new batsman were knocking on the door, they'd be in trouble. Averages of 24...are we Bangladesh?

But where are players - pressing them for their places (not that I'm arguing that Shah should be dropped - far from it)? Hildreth is having such a crap season, that he's been dropped from Somerset's 20/20 side. Benham is inconsistent. Joe Denly might be worth a run in the side, but the selectors will have to get Wright-as-opener out of their system first.

Augustus wrote:I wasn't proposing that Swann pinch-hit; I was still whinging about the bowling choices. Regarding Ambrose, I still think he's a poor technical batsman, and one good season won't convince me otherwise. You can look at every single player and point out a good county season - Chris Read has one every year.

The Read debate has gone on for years and I've always accepted the view that his batting's not up to Test cricket but I still think it was very harsh to drop him from the ODI side, he didn't do too much wrong there. Like Mustard this year he has been the victim of a questionable decision to pick the same keeper for both forms of the game.

Augustus wrote:On Bopara - Shah; it's probably fair to say that they've both been very disappointing thus far in their ODI careers. If two new batsman were knocking on the door, they'd be in trouble. Averages of 24...are we Bangladesh?

Not great you have to admit, but in their defence they have played 24 and 39 matches respectively, which is nothing in terms of an ODI career, and often low down the order where you can't build an innings. Both deserve a bit longer but as I said I'd bat them the other way round in the order. And just by comparison, McCullum who is one of the highest rated limited overs batsmen in world cricket at the moment averages 28. So numbers aren't necessarily everything...

Broad and Tremlett were the only guys whose performances were what you might call international class.

Swanny hinted at putting in a good all-round shift, but for some reason only got four overs.

England were decent for 40 overs of the game, but then just faded away abjectly.

Disappointing.

Winkle Spinner wrote:Tremlett bowled really well. Don't forget him.

He's still not ideally suited to one day internationals where he won't always have pitches that suit him, but he's just got to find a way into the test team sooner rather than later.

I think he's the whole package - minus fitness. He's troubled plenty of decent players during his on-off England career thus far.

I'd love it if the bloke could get a decent run of being injury-free so we could actually find out once and for all what he's made of.

These odd games here and there - in-between the knocks, niggles, strains and pains - are a tantalising glimpse of a potentially very good international bowler.

It's frustrating. In the Alex Tudor stylee.

Bearing in mind that we were chasing 182 on a seamer friendly pitch, there was a strong case ( with the benefit of hindsight) for Shah (a proper batsman) being promoted to open with Bell.

We were let down by a lack of lateral thinking.

JKLever wrote:

Augustus wrote:Ambrose at seven seems suited more to Test Matches than to ODIs (he doesn't really have any strokes).

Based on the evidence of 8 balls faced in this series?

Quite. Three ODIs in and already he's a write off. No strokes apparently. Lord knows how he scored so many one-day runs last season - including two hundreds. Must've been a lot of Chinese cuts.

Basil wrote:Bearing in mind that we were chasing 182 on a seamer friendly pitch, there was a strong case ( with the benefit of hindsight) for Shah (a proper batsman) being promoted to open with Bell.

We were let down by a lack of lateral thinking.

I don't know about that. Pietersen (a proper batsman) was in to bat with Bell after just four balls, so I don't think you can really lay the blame at Wright's feet.

England just didn't bat well. Never looked at the races. NZ finished their innings on the up, England's heads dropped and they never recovered.

Poor show all round.

Basil wrote:Bearing in mind that we were chasing 182 on a seamer friendly pitch, there was a strong case ( with the benefit of hindsight) for Shah (a proper batsman) being promoted to open with Bell.

We were let down by a lack of lateral thinking.

And a couple of very poor shot selections - given the circumstances.
Bell, Bopara and Shah were three of note.
Also felt there was a lack of a game plan -
England let things drift along (complacency ??) having had the Kiwi's under the cosh
and when it came to their batting seemed rudderless as to who was going to anchor and who do the scoring.
One more thing - if Colly does have a niggle WTF doesn't he step down?

Aye, disappointing day.

Basil wrote:Bearing in mind that we were chasing 182 on a seamer friendly pitch, there was a strong case ( with the benefit of hindsight) for Shah (a proper batsman) being promoted to open with Bell.

We were let down by a lack of lateral thinking.

The whole chase was a bit headless chicken style. Entirely why I never feel easy chasing anything and writing it off as a 'gimmie'