Comment here, but as this is more their bag, go over to the Full Toss.

I’ll have the reactions of my own later.

And here they are.

First of all, you have to have belief. I really don’t think they believed they could win today. They felt that they had to play Australia in an opening game in front of their largest crowd, and they just didn’t think it was on. Sure, they will tell you that they had this belief, but it is, as we are increasingly finding out, not a guide to future performance in listening to these media-trained automatons. Australia are in our heads. Just 18 months or so ago we scored around 270 in a Champions Trophy game in our backyard and we won it at a canter. That team had a good number of the players we met today, but we had mental strength over them. I still maintain we are the only team to win a test series 3-0 and come out of it believing we might have lost! We gave up our mental hold over them, and that’s the biggest crime of the end of Flower’s reign.

We had them at 70/3 and still allowed them to make 342. Good grief. There’s a lot said about our garbage death bowling, and I have to say I was sleeping and then tending to my sick border collie so unable to watch the game in this period. But it takes an innings long debacle to allow a score like that on the board. Then our batting subsided meekly. This was a performance that lacked heart and belief. James Taylor showed what could be done if you got in and picked your spots, and although a lot of the congoscenti are saying that it was easy pickings because Australia had taken their feet off the gas, this doesn’t ring true with me. Australia want to humiliate us, it is in their DNA. They want us buried, because, unlike us, they don’t feel any sorrow for losers. Just five or so years ago we sat here lording over the Aussies wondering when they’d next give us a contest. That arrogance is coming home to roost.

But in the end, this doesn’t really matter. As so many say, the format means that losing these games do not mean the competition is over. We need to win against those we are favoured against and perhaps nick one against Sri Lanka or New Zealand, and we’ll be safely in the Quarter Finals. Then it’s that puncher’s chance old crap. Our clearing of the decks, our minute, detailed preparation under the greatest coach of his generation, has come to this. Praying we might get lucky in three fights in a row. I weep. I truly weep.

This game taught us little, other than confirmation that our coaching and selectoral staff have the propensity to drop WTF decisions on us. Taylor has done really decently at number 3, but this brains trust thought the better option might be to drop Taylor to 6 to accommodate a test number 3 who has played one full ODI since June. It’s just mind-numbing. Others will go into it in much greater detail than I, but this should be one nail in Moores’ coffin should we go down that route.

Morgan’s lack of form is also a concern. This is also something the anti-KP lobby (I refuse to believe there is much of a pro-Cook one) are throwing at us refuseniks. “Look at Morgan, he’s not getting the stick that Cook is” is the lamentable, pathetic, mind-numbingly tedious drivel coming from these people who don’t quite reach “clown” status when it comes to debating this. This sort of thinking makes me want to poke needles in my eyes, pull them out of my socket and stick them in acid.

By any measure, and by the way he actually plays, Cook is not an ODI player now. There’s a great piece on Tim Sherwood by Spurs fans saying why Villa shouldn’t hire him. “He played Kyle Walker as a #10” is repeated ad nauseam. Persisting with Cook, who could not make a run, nor make them at any great pace when he did, and the circus surrounding him was a crushing error and akin to playing Walker behind the striker. This is our coaching brains trust trying to be too damn clever.

Morgan has a century amongst all these ducks, had one in Australia last year as well, and when he makes runs, he makes them at an electric pace. He is in shocking form, but he has more likelihood of getting it back than Cook, who was never really suited for ODI cricket in the first place. Stop using your anti-KP blindness to avoid the truth. Yes, Morgan isn’t doing well. But Cook never would have. We tried for so long that even these clowns in the ECB realised it. There are plenty of this apologists on the Guardian, but some absolute sockpuppet on the Telegraph who trolls incessantly is being wilfully obtuse. You’ll know him if you read below Boycott’s article today.

The KP appearances on BTL are now as tiresome as they are inevitable. Again, no doubt, people will be saying I want him in the team instead of someone else. Again, these people will just pass on their ignorance and not be bothered with what I am saying. That’s increasingly their problem, not mine. KP’s points need addressing, deny it if you want, but he’s not exactly being proved wrong on much at the moment (and hold your gums on Taylor – plenty of others agreed with him given he didn’t play for ages). It’s tiresome he does a Q&A on this evening, but he’s right about Downton, and deep down, you all know it. Admit it.

I also tried to get a fight like cornered… meme going on Twitter this morning, but no-one was biting. They were supposed to be English related, as we don’t have many tigers. Here’s some examples…

Be interested in your own suggestions.

UPDATE:

David on the comments on The Full Toss pretty much nails it for me…

The big thing to me between Aus and Eng is look at Finch, Maxwell & Warner, then look at Hales, Stokes & Roy. If Finch, Maxwell & Warner were English they’d be looked at with suspicion, not trusted, criticised in the press and be kept at a distance from the international side, they don’t play like the establishment men want, they don’t follow the MCC, Eton & Harrow coaching manuals, yet all match winners for Australia. Hales & Stokes, 2 players gone backwards big time under Moores, and Roy wouldn’t be trusted by the current management.