Heroes & Villains, the Aston Villa fanzine
Off Topic => Sports Arena => Topic started by: Rip Van We Go Again on January 10, 2011, 07:56:50 AM
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Comments here for the two 20/20 games and seven one dayers against the Aussies.
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From bbc.co.uk
An unbeaten century from opener Ian Bell led England to a seven-wicket win in a rain-affected tour match against the Prime Minister's XI in Canberra.
Bell continued his superb Ashes form with 124 off 102 balls as England eased to a revised total of 223, after the home side had posted 254-9.
Jonathan Trott, batting at number three, added a useful 48.
Earlier, Michael Yardy and Ajmal Shazhad were the pick of the England bowlers, taking three wickets each.
The match enabled a number of players to stake their claim for selection for the first Twenty20 international, which takes place on Wednesday in Adelaide.
And it was Warwickshire right-hander Bell - who has not played a Twenty20 for his country since June 2008 - who most successful demonstrated his credentials, in an unfamiliar opening role in the absence of the rested Andrew Strauss.
Bell's typically fluent and attractive innings ensured England remained above the required run-rate, as they chased down their revised target.
He was ably assisted by Steven Davies (24) in an opening stand of 82 and, more significantly Trott, with whom he added 98.
Bell offered only one real chance to the home side during his innings but Callum Ferguson spilled the catch off the bowling of Trent Copeland.
Not even a 30-minute rain delay, shortly after Bell had reached 50, could halt his momentum and he brought his century up from 89 balls.
Bell and Trott were two of four players retained from the Ashes Test side, along with stand-in skipper Paul Collingwood and Kevin Pietersen.
Yardy was the pick of England's bowlers with 3-33
Pietersen - another player hoping for a recall in the short-form of the game, after he was dropped for the recent one-day series with Pakistan - added 13 late on, before he was out lbw to Brett Lee, leaving Bell to fittingly strike the winning boundary.
Earlier, there was a somewhat rusty display from the England bowling attack, which included new arrivals Chris Woakes, Luke Wright, James Tredwell and Yardy.
It was the latter who emerged with the best figures of 3-33 in an innings that began almost an hour late due to rain.
Initially, Shazhad and Woakes struggled for rhythm and were wayward as captain Tim Paine and Usman Khawaja amassed an opening stand of 75 before the latter was caught and bowled by Tredwell for 22.
Yardy then came to the fore with a double breakthrough as he claimed the key wicket of Paine (50) and Alex Keath (15) with almost identical lbw decisions.
Shazhad bowled Ferguson - who made 39 - before Yardy claimed a third wicket when Tom Thornton offered a return catch, as the hosts stumbled to 179 for five.
However, some clean hitting from Dan Christian got the innings back on track before he was caught by Pietersen off Shazhad for 53.
Woakes returned and claimed two wickets - Sam Miller caught by Collingwood and James Pattinson caught by Wright - and Shazhad bowled Xavier Doherty, but Brett Lee's unbeaten 26 ensured a competitive total.
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Nice knock that from Belly, wouldn't be wonderful to beat the aussies in all forms of cricket this winter!
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I toyed with the idea of staying up to watch this, but I lost too much sleep over Christmas. Woke up just in time to see KP's brief knock, Bell get his century and us win the match. Good times.
In a way, I'm pleased to see Brett Lee fit and doubt he'll last too long before he breaks down again. On the other hand, he's quite useful!
We won comfortably - without Strauss, Anderson, Swann, Broad, etc. and we still had loads of batting left. Good times.
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Hopefully we'll batter them in this series as well. I'm reasonably confident, we need to keep momentum for the World Cup.
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Great win for England, we seemed to be coasting & then made it hard for ourselves. 8 wins in a row now, great stuff.
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Good to see Woakes keeping a cool head at the death. He made a very encouraging debut.
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Superb win ! England seem to have that knack of just getting over the line when needed.
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Made hard work of it if truth be told and Bell was very lucky to be dropped twice. Woakes did well at the death, and one poor over aside, did bowl well. Ring rust from the team and nothing more. I expect them to go on and win the next 20/20 now with ease.
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Ice veins from Woakes.
Hats off to Shane Watson though, how gutting for him to have played that well and lost.
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Yeah really impressive from young Woakes.
Obviously has a lot of potential, but crucially also a strong mentality.
Should have won the game at a canter but hey, wouldn't have been as exciting.
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Good to see England have developed the ability to win when we're not at our best.
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Interesting to see what happens for the ODIs when Strauss comes back. Open with Bell & Strauss. KP 3, Colly 4, Morgan 5, Davies 6, Yardy 7, Bresnan 8, Swann 9, Woakes 10, Shahzad 11
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Ice veins from Woakes.
Just checked his profile on the Warwickshire website, sorry can't do links, he's a Villa Fan
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Bit of a let down that, should have won easily.
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Bit of a let down that, should have won easily.
Meh.
T20 is just glorified baseball.
It's okay for an evening out at Edgbaston or Worcester but I can't take it seriously.
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Should have won.
This shows how difficult the one dayers are going to be.
Collingwood is starting to look like a liability.
Needs form with the bat and quickly.
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Agree about Colly; he's infamous for performing brilliantly when desperate, but not so far... Drawn series, not the end of the world. The proper business starts Sunday.
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It didn't help that we only hit 1 six in the innings - and that was in the last over!
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We didn't hit many fours either. It appears that Finch was the difference. Looks like he played the Morgan rôle.
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Not good again.
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Got to give credit to Watson for an incredible innings.
Still when you are 130/2 after 20 overs, you really should be getting 320/330 easily.
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Not too worried, the Ashes were what this tour was all about. Now we just need to fine tune the one-day side before the World Cup.
Today we were just beaten by a brilliant innings, very little you can do when a batsman just clicks.
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Nice to see England letting one of the developing nations get a couple of wins under their belt.
Hopefully the sport will take off in Australia now and the locals might start turning up for matches.
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An excellent start from England, but White and Marsh have dug in. Still fancy us to restrict them to below 200 and should win this one.
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Well it should've been below 200, but Doug the Rug hung around too long!
Good century by Swampy too.
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Should never have let them score that many.
It's a gettable target.
Tremlett was brilliant.
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Hmmm we are making a hash of this, I don't know why but I'm not really happy with our batting line up in ODIs at the moment. We just seem to have too many 'all-rounders' and are a bit light.
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I'm not overly fussed as it feels like so much after the Lord Mayors Show here.
I honestly think after nearly 3 months here the Test players should be playing a couple of games and then going home for a rest or have gone after the last Test Match and come back in for the last two One Dayers.
We need to be mentally fresh for the World Cup and right now a few are looking mentally tired and playing tired shots.
I've not seen much of England in limited overs Cricket so I might be missing something but can somebody please tell me what Yardy offers at all. I'm really struggling to see it, same goes for Luke Wright tbh.
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Yardy is useful in that he ties up an end well, but he shouldn't be batting that high. Also he goes through his overs very quick, and it can force teams into panicking about run rate. Wright though for me offers very little, he occasionally gets a score through slogging but generally gets nothing. His bowling offers very little as well. As I said earlier, I think we have too many 'all-rounders' who don't really offer enough in either department.
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Yardy is useful in that he ties up an end well, but he shouldn't be batting that high. Also he goes through his overs very quick, and it can force teams into panicking about run rate. Wright though for me offers very little, he occasionally gets a score through slogging but generally gets nothing. His bowling offers very little as well. As I said earlier, I think we have too many 'all-rounders' who don't really offer enough in either department.
Agreed........I would have Bopara in for Wright, his bowling is just as good as Wrights and his batting/fielding is far superior. I would also like to see Bell given a few overs and im not sure about Prior opening
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Bowling was alright but let them of the hook massively. Batting woeful, the balance of this side needs sorting out.
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Well, that was crap. We let them off the hook and failed to get an achievable target.
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Started off crap again. We look like an England one day side from a couple of years ago.
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What on earth is going on?
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The intensity of England must have dropped dramatically. No way can they be focused and still play this badly.
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We're back in this now, 100 for 5.
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Another piss poor performance.
We're close to being the best in the world in the test games, but we haven't kicked our old bottling habits in the one dayers.
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A number of the players need a rest, they have been travelling/playing for 3/4 months as it is, and with the World Cup coming up it will be nearly 6 months of straight cricket for them.
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They look like they have just had enough.
Maybe they have sort of given up on this series and will somehow try to pick themselves up to peak again at the World Cup?
Not very professional but as VS says, they have been at it solid for months now.
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Weird thing is, up until this series they've been really good in ODI's lately. But the balance is completely wrong and the batting has been utterly atrocious. I'm fine with Prior being in the side, but not as opener.
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Prior, for me, hasn't got the discipline to open at any level, let alone ODI. He's the sort of player that you bring in at number 4/5 - someone who will get you 30 runs off 15 balls.
I also don't see the point of Wright, Tredwell or Yardy either to be honest.
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Well being at around the 150-1 mark after 25 overs, to only reach 299 is very disappointing. Should've been looking at 325+
Trott batted well though for his 102, although he was very lucky on a couple of occasions - especially with that near run out with Prior when both found themselves at the strikers end - Aussies really should've ran him out there.
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Get in there!
2nd wicket for Trotty.
He's having a blinder today.
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207-7 after 42 overs. Looks like we could win our first game.
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Excellent, disciplined bowling performance by England.
That's more like it.
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Good stuff about time, need more batsmen to make runs though.
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Good stuff about time, need more batsmen to make runs though.
Pietersen need to pull his finger out (again).
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Dismal from most of the batsmen again.
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Too many batsmen giving their wicket away to poor shots, much to improve on before the world cup- very poor batting display yet again!
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They need to start playing properly at the top of the innings. 250 should be comfortable to chase down, and Prior's shot was atrocious. Morgan also badly needs to find some form and Collingwood needs to be dropped.
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What a contrasting game for Trotty!
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Normal one day service has been resumed.
And let's not hear any bullshit from the media about tiredness.
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We are going to struggle in the world cup next month
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We are going to struggle in the world cup next month
Maybe not.
This series was always going to be difficult, for a start it was "After the Lord Mayor's Show" after winning The Ashes. The Aussies were always going to be more up for it after the thrashing they got as well.
Add to that a few less than enthused players who have been away from home for months.
They'll be back for the WC I reckon.
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30 years ago today - Dirty horrible cheating Aussie bastards.
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Another excellent century from Trott today.
Bloody runs galore!
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Trott could well break the record for the fastest batsman to reach 1000 runs in one day cricket.
Not bad for the person most pundits didn't want anywhere near the World Cup squad!
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You have to hand it to England, they keep finding innovative ways to lose a game. It's not easy to do it after scoring 333.
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No true, at least we got some runs though. We need this series to end, rest for a week and get completely refocussed for the World Cup.
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I'm not normally one for giving highly paid and pampered sportmen excuses;
Whoever scheduled an away Ashes tour consisting of 2 T20's and 7 ODI's all played within a month, starting 3 days after finishing a 5 Test match series played over 6 weeks, directly before a World Cup that could also last for 6 weeks (for the finalists anyway) needs bloody shooting.
Forget the physical side, they must be mentally shot to bits. Even i'm over Cricket now and i'm usually a Cricket tragic.
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Trott looked good in the highlights, sky have announced the Hants vs Warwick is the on for the opener of the CB40 season
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Oh dear!
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Another shocker, thank god this one day series is over. We have been utterly dreadful.