England’s ODI woes

I wonder why we perform so poorly in the one day game. The tradition of English cricket is county and test and unlike Sri Lanka we never seem to be able to adapt those forms of the game to the limited over format. It seemed to take ages to appreciate that Alastair Cook, a cautious run accumulator, was never the right person to captain the one day side.

As it stands it looks like we are going to have to beat Bangladesh in the early hours of March 9th to qualify in our group, where 4 teams do and 3 don’t. It was frankly embarrassing to see New Zealand knock off our total of 123 in 12 overs. Skipper Morgan said there was movement in the air but no one in the commentary box seemed to see it.

I don’t think the Piers Morgan campaign to restore Kevin Pietersen helps any. I was having a drink with Rex Mitchell who recalled similar press campaigns in soccer not working, like the one for Rooney to play centre midfield in the last  World Cup and before that Stan Bowles to play against Italy in 1973. Both ended in defeats. It’s true that Pietersen was fundamental to our 20/20World Cup victory but as he plays so little county cricket it’s hard to gauge his form.

A one day batsman I like is Luke Wright and I was ever so pleased to accept Ivan Conway’s invitation to attend the launch of his benefit season at the Grand Brighton this Friday. Luke, who also played in the victorious 20/20 team,  is a free scoring limited over batsman courted by Indian and Australian  sides and I would have thought would make a bigger difference to our fortunes than KP.