England do the unthinkable

Who would have thought it? Less than 2 weeks ago, the England cricket team was a dismantled wreck, a bunch of men who had been beaten and flogged repeatedly until they were little more than a shell of team. On the back of a catastrophic 5-0 drubbing in the Ashes, England did as everyone might have expected in getting properly thrashed in the opening games of the one day series by both Australia and New Zealand. The outcome looked deadset and it was going to take a miracle for England to reach the finals.

Well, a revival in fortunes has seen them do exactly that, after first beating Australia and then New Zealand. Collignwood finally clicked with the bat, scoring a hundred, with Strauss backing him up with a consecutive 50. Mal Loye will arguably be annoyed at losing his place to Micheal Vaughan, who could only manage a first-ball duck, but the value of having Vaughan in the side, scoring runs or not, is becoming increasingly hard to quantify. What has ultimately worked in England’s favour in this series is that England and New Zealand are moreorless on an even keel, that is, Australia have been so consideradbly better, that it was never a contest to see who could beat Australia, more, it was a contest of who would win out between England and New Zealand. That contest was drawn 2-2, but England’s shock defeat over Australia sealed the deal. England now get a chance to continue the revival with three more chances to mop up the mess they made of the Ashes. The chance of that is decidedly slim, but it is a chance nonetheless and there would be a delicious irony in it all if they were able to snatch a victory here.