England In India - October 2011/12

[War]

In modern one-day cricket with this revamped power-play overs period you need an opener and somebody in your top-three who can really go after the bowling.

This is especially important on flat wickets, which can be the difference between scoring 280+290 scores or 300+ scores., as we seen in the India in the just concluded series.

England is the only team amongst the top 8 nations, that has two anchor-men type batsmen in its top-three and that pretty much tells the inherent problem with English ODI cricket, that has been going on since the 1992 world cup.

Of course, in reality although Cook hasn't disgraced himself in ODIs this year - long term only one of him or Trott can be in the ODI team.

 

[Aalay]

Well I am not a big fan of Craig Kieswetter, so I would just kick him out.
This should be the lineup of England:

Cook
KP
Baristow/Davies
Trott
Morgan
Bopara
Samit/Butler/Stokes
Bresnan/Anderson/Dernbach
Broad
Swann
Finn

 

[Ollie_H]

long term only one of him or Trott can be in the ODI team.

Urgh. WHY WHY WHY WHY?

Cook has a S/R of around 95 this year. What is so wrong with that? How is that an anchorman?

 

[shravi]

Urgh. WHY WHY WHY WHY?

Cook has a S/R of around 95 this year. What is so wrong with that? How is that an anchorman?

Helloooo, Ollie, War said only 1 of them can be in the team, so that's that. Jeez, you're so slow sometimes.

Their strike rates are the least of England's worries. They need to learn how to play spin. I think they are both too good to drop. England should have both of them in the XI.

 

[Sureshot]

I don't care if Trott is only scoring at 80%, he's averaging 50+. That's not a useless stat, if he was averaging high 30s/40, fine, people would have a point. But he isn't, so they don't.

I think someone has already hit the nail on the head. KP to open, with him finding his feet again and playing so well again, I think it's time to give him the challenge.

Kieswetter isn't playing that badly, but he's just not going on. That's why we dropped Prior as he was making quick 20s/30s and getting out. Albeit Kieswetter is scoring slightly more than Prior did.

Problem is there is no definite ODI keeper, unlike Prior in Tests no one has grabbed it and said "This is mine". If we have a keeper in the middle order, who is it? Seems fairly pointless playing either Kieswetter or Davies down there, as they do open. As many know, I still don't really think Davies should have been dropped. I think Bairstow is a season or two off being able to be a middle order keeper. His batting in India was poor, mighty fine talent though.

Morgan was the link in the chain we were missing this series. He just makes everything work.

Cook isn't getting dropped any time soon, he's the captain and will be given time to find his feet and create his team. Mind you, he's been playing well since his turn as captain. Averaging 40ish (not checked this) at 95/100 balls. Can't complain at that.

Trott is a run machine, scored more than anyone else this year. Also, I remember the Sky team revealing his SR this year is the same as Virat Kohli's (2nd highest runs this calendar year in ODI's iirc). If Cook was only scoring at 80% SR, then yeah, it may be more of an issue.

 

[puddleduck]

I think the problem with Cook at the moment is that if the pitch has some pace to it, then he can hook, pull and cut until his heart is content. However the moment it's a slowish pitch with some turn and the spinners come on, he either gets bogged down, out, or bogged down then out (normally caught playing some stupid shot 10 overs before he needs to). He doesn't seem able to keep picking up the singles and moving along at 4-6 an over in singles.

There aren't many ODI players who can get to 60 pretty comfortably and then look they've just arrived at the crease if the pace gets taken off the ball. It's at that point that it should seem easiest to start pushing easy singles and rotating the strike. Fair enough in a test match, the bowling side has to get him out and that'll be mighty difficult, but in an ODI the ball is in his court, and unfortunately, it needs to be in the road

Still, I love Cookie and he's clearly earmarked as next England test captain, so I'm more than happy for him to use ODI cricket to work on his thought processes and expand his shot reportoire.

Trott, I don't understand why people slate him, he's scored runs pretty much since he was first picked, and there's nothing wrong with his S/R when held up against other similar averaging players.

 

[War]

I think the problem with Cook at the moment is that if the pitch has some pace to it, then he can hook, pull and cut until his heart is content. However the moment it's a slowish pitch with some turn and the spinners come on, he either gets bogged down, out, or bogged down then out (normally caught playing some stupid shot 10 overs before he needs to). He doesn't seem able to keep picking up the singles and moving along at 4-6 an over in singles.

There aren't many ODI players who can get to 60 pretty comfortably and then look they've just arrived at the crease if the pace gets taken off the ball. It's at that point that it should seem easiest to start pushing easy singles and rotating the strike. Fair enough in a test match, the bowling side has to get him out and that'll be mighty difficult, but in an ODI the ball is in his court, and unfortunately, it needs to be in the road

Still, I love Cookie and he's clearly earmarked as next England test captain, so I'm more than happy for him to use ODI cricket to work on his thought processes and expand his shot reportoire.

Trott, I don't understand why people slate him, he's scored runs pretty much since he was first picked, and there's nothing wrong with his S/R when held up against other similar averaging players.

Yea this is where i'm sort of getting at with my minor criticism of Cook and Trott than some above posters missed and others (Shravi) chose to go down a disrespectful road.

Cook can score at run of ball fine in the first 10 P-Play overs when the field is up quite fine - he has shown that enough times this year. But in the middle-overs and other 5 blocks of P-Play overs he hasn't mastered
a way to as you articulated, to change his gears well. The same can be said about Cook as well.

I certainly wouldn't like to have Cook or Trott batting in the 35-40 batting P-Play of the last 10 overs, if they dont have a finisher/slogger like KP or Morgan with them.

That batting period would not be taken full advantage of and on a flat pitch, that may be the difference between ENG scoring 280-300, which is key especially with ENG ODI bowling attack not very penetrative ATM.

Criticism for such batsmen isn't unique either. I remember AUS posters giving Michael Clarke similar stick recently for this and West Indies fans towards Chanderpaul and they were the only batsmen of that style in those teams ODI line-ups.

As i said ENG are the only top 8 ODI team, with two such batsmen and in the top 7. So once the aforementioned scenario's occur in the future, unless ENG ODI bowling attack becomes as good as its test attack, having both Cook and Trott could affect the ODI team on occasion.

Since its makes no sense for example ENG scoring 290/3 of 50 overs with Cook and Trott scoring 100s and run-a-ball, in which they didn't dominate during the BP overs. When the bowling attack isn't good enough to defend such a target on flat ODI wicket which is prevalent world-wide 80-90% of the time.

 

[shravi]

Haha, I'm only joking, War. But you've pretty much answered your own question. If they hit 290/3 they really haven't done anything wrong if England end up losing the game. The onus is then on the bowlers to step their game up and if England lose, the blame is on them, and it should be if your batsmen put 290 or above on the board, on any track.

 

[War]

Haha, I'm only joking, War. But you've pretty much answered your own question. If they hit 290/3 they really haven't done anything wrong if England end up losing the game. The onus is then on the bowlers to step their game up and if England lose, the blame is on them, and it should be if your batsmen put 290 or above on the board, on any track.

Yes the bowler will certainly have to take some blame. But are you going to forever excuse the inability of Cook and Trott to maximize the batting-power play overs, even if they score runs consistently?