Plusses and minuses for England from the ODIs

Plusses:
Chef's batting - need convincing about his capataincy
Bedwetter's all-round contribution - his keeping has greatly improved
Morgan - the go-to man in the batting line-up
Douchebag - nice line in slower balls and good wheels when he bowls properly

Minuses:P
Bell - he's no number six, and there's a bit of a road block at the top of the order.
KP - promised more than he delivered
Sammy boy - I don't think he's good enough
Broad - dropped after he took a couple of wickets - weird one that
Fluke Wright - was he even in the squad?

KP averages something like 23 since 2008. Hate to sound a bit like Henry but we really, really need more from him.

We've probably seen the last of Bopara & Wright - bit harsh of FatSam on the one performance....

Fat Sam bowled well I thought, our most economical bowler after Swann and got the vital wicket of Mendis when asked to bowl a pressure over.

KP seems to have forgoteen how to pace a one day innings - I think he should be moved down to number 5 where he had his initial success. He always seems to be in T20 mode so lets have him come in with less overs to go.

Has FatSam ever batted higher than 6 or 7 for England? Seems he's having to do all his work with the ball as he gets limited opportunity in the middle with the bat.

Luke Wright was a positive. He wasn't picked.

Fielding was pretty dang good. Cook and Kieswetter work pretty well. Swann seems in reasonable form. Jimmy Anderson didn't, as I feared, get injured. And T-Broz probably bowled a bit better as the series wore on and he got more match fit. Which may or may not prove a positive with the India Tests around the corner.

Dirty didn't disgrace himself, although he did look a bit lost at times. Patel just replicated the Yardy role: unthreatening but reasonably tight SLA, handful of runs, plodder in the field.

Pietersen would be more of a worry if he looked horribly out of touch. But it's quite the opposite. He just can't seem to find the right gear once he gets set. Too often shifts from 2nd to 6th when he should be steadily working his way through them.

But who would you replace him with? He's a proven world-class ODI player when his game's rocking. Drop him for Ravi Flopara? Get real.

Bell, on the other hand, has had 100 goes at being a ODI player and has never been up to standard. So you could replace him with anyone.

Replacing Bell, and he hasn't made a case for his retention, is a tricky one. Do you replace him with a "proper" batsman, or a bits and pieces player? I have serious doubts about Sammy Boy, but maybe he should get a go at six.

The ideal solution would have been to have a look at Ben Stokes, but it will be weeks before he plays again.

Or, how about blooding Alex Hales?

You would think Stokes will come straight in once he's fit and in form again.

Aside from being a middle order batsman of substance in terms of both runs and power, he bowls half-decently.

Six looks perfect for him. Will he be fit for the India ODIs? We shall have to wait and see...

A "by the coaching manual" player like Bell is always going to struggle at six. Someone like Stokes or Hales "see, ball hit ball" has a fighting chance of succeeding. Stokes has the edge because of his bowling. I can't see any other realistic alternatives

Dello wrote:Luke Wright was a positive. He wasn't picked.

Fielding was pretty dang good. Cook and Kieswetter work pretty well. Swann seems in reasonable form. Jimmy Anderson didn't, as I feared, get injured. And T-Broz probably bowled a bit better as the series wore on and he got more match fit. Which may or may not prove a positive with the India Tests around the corner.

Dirty didn't disgrace himself, although he did look a bit lost at times. Patel just replicated the Yardy role: unthreatening but reasonably tight SLA, handful of runs, plodder in the field.

Pietersen would be more of a worry if he looked horribly out of touch. But it's quite the opposite. He just can't seem to find the right gear once he gets set. Too often shifts from 2nd to 6th when he should be steadily working his way through them.

But who would you replace him with? He's a proven world-class ODI player when his game's rocking. Drop him for Ravi Flopara? Get real.

Bell, on the other hand, has had 100 goes at being a ODI player and has never been up to standard. So you could replace him with anyone.

The answer is to move him down to number 5, where he doesn't have to rein his game in, and can also play himself in against the back-up bowlers, rather than at 3 or 4 where he often is exposed to the new ball.

Trott is also a place too high, he is better than anyone at taking advatnage of the boring middle overs, but doesn't like having to hit boundaries at the start of his innings.

The troublesome number 6 problem - easy, Eoin Morgan is our best 6 hitter and at improvising boundaries.

The solution is what Sri Lanka have done, get your young talented batsman and put him at number 3 - where you have freedom to play shots rather than having to bat at 6 with the pressure of knowing your wicket could lead to a collapse. So none of this b0ll0cks about hierarchy, if a Hales / Taylor / Hildreth is going to play then they should bat at 3.

If they must persist with Bell it is also the only position in the batting order he has ever looked like an ODI cricket - it was a while ago now, but the 7 ODI series against India 4 years back Bell batted number 3, got 422 runs at 70+ and a S/R of 92. Sit him down with a load of tapes of that series, and of Jayawardene in this series, instead of trying to pre-meditate everything. But it is probably time for a fresh broom.

Finally, it has been painful watching Swanny have to bat after Brezzy and The Enforcer (who has never got a limited overs 50 at any level)

Cook
Kieswetter
Hales / Taylor / Bell
Trott
Pietersen
Morgan
Patel
Swann
Bresnan
Bowler
Bowler

Sorted - that's actually a good batting line-up right there.

Pietersen hasn't been getting out to the new ball though, so dropping him down the order to "protect" him from that isn't really based on anything. Yesterday was the first time in the series he wasn't entirely responsible for his own dismissal, having received a pretty decent ball. A surprise lifter. The Yang to Kieswetter's grubbing Ying a bit earlier.

All his other dismissals were carelessly slapping long-hops from the spinner up in the air. As has been his wont in ODIs for too long.

Gary 111 wrote:If they must persist with Bell it is also the only position in the batting order he has ever looked like an ODI cricket - it was a while ago now, but the 7 ODI series against India 4 years back Bell batted number 3, got 422 runs at 70+ and a S/R of 92. Sit him down with a load of tapes of that series, and of Jayawardene in this series, instead of trying to pre-meditate everything. But it is probably time for a fresh broom.

Nice. If we're doing far-in-the-pasts, we may as well stick Nick Knight in at 3. He averaged 66 against the WC-winning Aussies back in 2002.

Belfohl :

This series:

81 runs @ 20.25, S/R 69.23

This year:

480 runs @ 26.66, S/R 74.53

His is in the form of his life , granted, but for me it's more of a 'probably'.

Perhaps I should get off the Bell bandwagon. Perhaps it's the weight of my support holding him down.

Good, figures, aren't they? Sort of life-defining form, IMO. Did you see how excellently he timed the ball straight down long-on's throat? Picked him out a treat. If he wasn't in form, he may well have tried to miss that chap - over his head, wide of him, maybe not even play the shot at all, but as it was, old formy was is such form he nailed it to that bloke. Nailed.

Is the problem that England is relying too much on NLWL II?

Zat wrote:Is the problem that England is relying too much on NLWL II?

They do rely on him a little too much. They rely on him to get the f*ck out early, or we lose. Selfish batting has no place in ODI cricket, IMO. That's what it is, selfish.

So you've got Fat Brezzy and Fat Sammy now. Who's next? Any chance Fat Bobby will make a Lazarus like return, or has he retired?

Who's next? Not dynamic strong hitters like Hales and Stokes, that's for sure! We need some nurdlers in there, maybe Mark Chilton or someone as rigid...

As for fatties, there aren't many at the minute, Sales and Key, one's injured and in horrendous form, the other's just in horrendous form. TBF, in division two of the CC they've stopped pie breaks, so that could be why they're so crap.

Chilton finds it difficult to break a threshold of about 25, so no.

Fat Jamble maybe?


Or perhaps we can get Cozzie to do a SLaw ...

Positives -

Alastair Cook - is basically just a really good batsman
Eoin Morgan - ditto
Graeme Swann - bowls like a dream every time
James Anderson - looked like a ODI bowler for once, or maybe even twice

Neutrals -

Jonathan Trott - draws criticism but has good figures
Craig Kieswetter - sometimes looks a bit rubbish but is okay for now
Tim Bresnan - bit of an oaf but took key wickets
Samit Patel - one game, looked alright but limited

Negatives

Kevin Pietersen - everyone's making special excuses for him because he's Pietersen, but he has now averaged next to nothing for about two years and doesn't look remotely capable of building a ODI innings
Ian Bell - no explanation necessary, out of his depth
Stuart Broad - petulant and unjustifiably arrogant, deservedly dropped, hopefully for a while
Jade Dernbach - just don't see it in him, he's a gimmick bowler like Mendis

In terms of the future, I see Pietersen and Bell dropping out of the team, in the case of the latter on a permanent basis. Ben Stokes would fill the place that Ian Bell vacates, which would give us two half-bowlers in Patel and Stokes to get through some overs. I'm reasonably happy to persist with Patel for a whole series in the future, his bowling yesterday was okay given that he is a spin-bowler and bowled quite a few of his overs when he was in the firing line, including a first over in the PP and two at a time when Sri Lanka were on the charge. His figures were only marginally worse than Swann's, and Swann was outstanding. There's a tendency to look at him as a bowler when he's really a batsman who happens to bowl a lot. He is a part-time bowler, he just happens to be quite good for a part-time bowler. His ODI figures so far are certainly nothing to be ashamed of.

Below are the table of averages for Pengland, top 7s anyway, because I'm a lazy qunt and can't believe I started it. Aspects in red mean that they've received a neg rep point from me.

Player	Runs	Ave	S/R
AN Cook	298	74.5	96.75
C Kieswetter	204	51	96.68
EJG Morgan	158	39.5	111.26
IJL Trott	136	34	76.4
GP Swann	31	31	114.81
KP Pietersen	85	21.25	94.44
IR Bell	81	20.25	69.23

Player	Wickets	Ave	Econ
GP Swann	8	20.5	3.64
JM Anderson	9	21.77	4.62
JW Dernbach	8	28.75	5.47
TT Bresnan	8	29	5.52
SR Patel	1	49	4.9
SCJ Broad	2	95.5	5.61
KP Pietersen	0	- -	7.5

So, the only two who get two neg reps are Belfohl™ and The Enforcer, which in ways is surprising considering the state we were in two matches back, well done for getting back in there England.

They simply can't keep picking KP based on his ODI batting from 2005-2007. If they do, they are picking him purely on his reputation, and are sending out a bad message to batsmen who are hopeful stacks of county runs will count for something when selecting England teams.

An ODI average of 23 since the end of 2008, some 40 odd games, is ridiculously bad for a player of his talent.

Henry wrote:They simply can't keep picking KP based on his ODI batting from 2005-2007. If they do, they are picking him purely on his reputation, and are sending out a bad message to batsmen who are hopeful stacks of county runs will count for something when selecting England teams.

They should drop him, but If they do drop KP then they have to drop Belfohl™ too.

It would be indefensible to drop someone who while isn't performing well, does have a reputation as someone who can play the one day game and has performed for a consistent period of time in his career. Yet at the same time pick someone who has no such reputation, at least on the international stage, and no sustained period of good form, ever.

I can't see them dropping 2 front line batsmen, that's too daring for this lot. So the conclusion is, we're stuck with that little qunt Belfohl™.

Yes, drop them both, but for all of the criticism Bell gets, the cold hard stats suggest KP has been even worse.

I mean, he has been clearly the worst performed England ODI player for two years now. Worse than Broad, Bell, Bresnan....anybody. But he MIGHT suddenly turn it on and win us a game, so that's why we're picking him- Purely on reputation. Sooner or later you have to say "enough is enough."

Henry wrote:but for all of the criticism Bell gets, the cold hard stats suggest KP has been even worse.

I've not checked the stats, but that doesn't surprise me. Belfohl™ is happy to plod along until there's no chance of winning the game before he starts to motor on, KP more likely to get out actually attempting to do something proactive.

krikri wrote:

Henry wrote:but for all of the criticism Bell gets, the cold hard stats suggest KP has been even worse.

I've not checked the stats, but that doesn't surprise me. Belfohl is happy to plod along until there's no chance of winning the game before he starts to motor on, KP more likely to get out actually attempting to do something proactive.

Exactly! Knew you were a sensible type krikri

It's all well and good saying that KP has performed less well than Belfohl, but if you're selfish enough to look after your wicket so much that you're striking at a 1990's era sort of S/R then of course you're liable to be averaging more than someone who's been playing the team situation more. It just happens that your team are probably doing worse because they have to share your burden.