England meander through
England successfully navigated their must-win match against Canada in the group stages of the World Cup. Having lost to New Zealand in game 1, a defeat here would have sealed a similar fate to that of Pakistan. Luckily, it didn’t happen, albeit under inauspicious circumstances. For starters, the team was without Andrew Flintoff, who was sidelined for a “breach of discipline”. Ravi Bopara replaced him. After being inserted, England started well, with both Joyce and Vaughan playing fluently. Vaughan got yet another start, but failed to make a big score, but he did at least manage to progress out of the twenties and limp in to the forties. He looks in fine form, so it’s really a case of getting his head down and scoring big. Joyce finally made some runs, and his 60 odd was a good foundation for England. But yet another spate of quick wickets took hold and it was up to rapidly becoming best English batsmen Paul Collingwood to steady the ship with another one day 50. Ian Bell, Ed Joyce and Kevin Pietersen all got out to undignified shots, which indicated a total lack of concentration on their behalf.
A quickfire 23 off 8 balls from Paul Nixon got England up to 280 from their 50 overs. I might regret saying this, but I’m slowly beginning to like Paul Nixon. I was critical of his initial selection because he’s too old for this to be a longterm solution, but it’s impossible to fault his work ethic (even if he was one of the players reprimanded for the boozing). Sure, he spouts a lot of nonsense behind the stumps, but he’s the first keeper since Alec Stewart to genuinely be the centre of the game, a role that the wicketkeeper must adopt. His batting has improved vastly and his ‘keeping has been as tidy as any of the others in line for the position, particularly stood up to the stumps to the likes of Collingwood and Bopara.
Canada did a fine job in trying to get the runs, despite early wickets. Samad, Mulla and Dhaniram all scored useful runs and helped Canada to their best ever total in one day cricket, albeit 51 runs behind the required. That England couldn’t bowl Canada out is telling. Whether the bowlers were the missing omnipresence of Flintoff, or if they were still recovering from the exploits of Friday night is unclear but this bowling attack won’t survive against the likes of South Africa or Australia’s batting and surely must improve if England are to go further in this competition. Job 1 is to raise their game against Kenya in the final match of their group.
