England managed to end the Ashes tour on a high by somehow winning the Commonwealth Bank Trophy series. After a staggering 8 “group” matches, Australia entered the finals with 31 points having lost only one game, and England entered on a lowly 13 points having lost 5 games, just one better than New Zealand. The fact that one game basically decided the members of the final is to me laughable. Nevertheless, the Australians would still have targeted a win and their abject performances in the finals were quite mystifying. There’s no doubt that England improved their game substantially in the …read more

Referring to Flintoff, as Captain, that is. As a player and a man he’s a total legend, but I couldn’t think of the best way of describing the irony, nay hipocrisy of the whole England team Captain / management / selection issue. Here’s a brief timeline:

Flintoff appointed Test captain, England lose 5-0
Flintoff loses some ODIs
Vaughan recovers from knee injury, leads England in a ODI, England win
Vaughan injures hamstring, Flintoff resumes captaincy, England lose
Vaughan recovers, resumes captaincy, England win
Fletcher says “Flintoff best when not captain!”
Vaughan injures hamstring again, Flintoff announced to resume captaincy for the CB Trophy finals

It doesn’t take a …read more

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 …read more

As the Commonwealth Bank trophy continued to trundle on through the never-ending “group stages” and after reading Tim DeLisles’s We Want Less, I got to thinking about the state of the travelling throughout this Ashes tour. And I even knocked up a little graphic to illustrate (using the first test in Brisbane as a starting point.)

I know that Australia is a big country, but my extremely rough calculations, our boys will have done 26,000km travelling by the end of this tour (not including the 17,000km or so each way in just getting there). It’s no wonder they’ve been a little …read more

Australia recovered from their defeat to England to beat New Zealand with relative ease. New Zealand posted 290, just 2 less than England needed to beat Australia earlier in the week, but with Ricky Ponting back in the side, Australia looked back on form. Ponting, back from his rest, scored a hundred and Brad Hodge, in for the injured Andrew Symonds ended on 99 not out after hitting the winning runs.
All this means that when England and New Zealand meet in the final match of the series, the winner will be the team lucky enough to meet Australia a further …read more

England did the unthinkable: they actually played some good cricket. The net result: They Beat Australia. And considering that really, that’s all this trophy is about, it’s a Big Thing. Most surprising, however, was that England actually played the type of cricket of which we knew they were always capable, but have totally failed to demonstrate throughout this Ashes tour. Australia did feel like they were gifting the win, but considering the point of Australian cricket is to beat the English, then it’s hard to conclude that they may have actually let England win. Besides, it’s much more satisfying to …read more

Whilst watching England vs New Zealand in a ODI in the CB Trophy, I was hit by all the different people who caught my attention. So here they are.
Umpire Steve Davis
I’m not sure what it is, but there’s something about Umpire Steve Davis that I don’t like. I think the first thing is that I have absolutely no idea who he is. He has somehow appeared on the International scene without so much of a word of warning. The second thing is that in today’s ODI between England and New Zealand, he made a lot of mistakes. But thirdly, and …read more

First things first: England continued their fine run by losing another game of cricket. Nothing new there. New Zealand battered 318 off their 50 overs and England only managed 260 in theirs. Jacob Oram did another demolition job on England’s bowlers at the death, seeing the last 2 overs go for 36, and scoring yet another half century in this tournament. England’s bowling was shoddy at best, with some 36 extras. Their batting was at least more promising than it has been in recent weeks. A rejigged top order appeared to have a good effect as Ed Joyce came good …read more

Following England’s annihilation at the hands of Australia (I could qualify that and say in the most recent ODI, but is there much point?), Paul Collingwood’s been running his mouth off spouting nonsense running the PR show in his column for the BBC. He spins all the usual stuff “we were really disappointed”, “we have to work harder”, “we still believe we can turn this around” yahda yahda yahda. In fact, it would be possible to completely pick apart his column and scream “NO SHIT, SHERLOCK” at virtually every comment.
“…at the moment we are not completely on the ball.”
Uh-huh. You …read more

In a shocking stop-the-press development, Michael Vaughan is still injured. I mean injured again. I mean still injured again. Again, he’s still injured. After being out for over a year with a knee injury, Vaughan managed one game in charge (and marshalled England’s first and only win of the tour) before injuring himself with a torn hamstring. He then missed two more games (where England got royally stuffed) and looks set to miss England’s next encounter with New Zealand after niggling it in the nets.
Is Michael Vaughan really that good a captain? England have failed to win any games in …read more