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.
Being Outside Cricket 
But let me tell you what grates at me. Like the nails down a blackboard, like a Downton interview, like a westcorkthinktank patronising…. it’s this:
Or
This make my blood boil. Australia seem to be able to switch between the two with no difficulty whatsoever. South Africa are the world’s number 1 test team, yet they always fill their big ODI games, and certainly prioritise both forms of the game. Why in the name of hell do we think we are so damn special that a form of the game at which an undisputed World Champion will be appointed in a competition that is held every four years is beneath us. That we shouldn’t care? I’ve read this defeatism, and it makes me livid. It’s not as if we performed well in our holy grail of Ashes test cricket the last time we did it. We used to sell out our ODIs with ease, so it isn’t a lack of public interest. Or it wasn’t.
The ECB, for all we slag them off for their stupidity, cleared the decks to prepare for this competition. They got us to play a somewhat daft ODI series in Sri Lanka as a warm-up, and then got a Tri Series gig in the Big Three Cup. They’ve lined this tournament up. I actually don’t want to throw them under the bus for this bit. Where we cocked it up is we decided, 12 months before the competition, to do what we did. We know what that was, and for me I lay the complete farce this has been so far squarely at the door of my bete noire, Paul Downton. It was he who was the man behind the now infamous dismissal of Pietersen. It was he who was the man behind the selection of Peter Moores as the coach. It was he who was the man behind the unequivocal backing of Alastair Cook as captain in both tests and ODIs. It was he who was the man behind the maintenance of Cook as that captain for ODIs because he deserved chance after chance (and hoping he would come good). It was he who was the man behind the public backing of Cook in Sri Lanka, and then was part of the decision team that sacked him, at practically the last possible moment. I love Andy’s line about him being so far out of his depth that he’s below fish with lights! I wonder what needs to happen for this man to vacate his post…..
But you know that’s what I think. Those of you (that’s probably 99% of my visitors) that frequented my previous place will also note I’ve been pretty quiet on the Peter Moores front. While I wasn’t exactly decking the bunting at his appointment, I want to be as even-handed as I can about his performance, but my patience is wearing thin.
Last year I said this:
and this:
Moores has not impressed. James at TFT points out on a regular basis that he has never won a one day trophy as a coach, but he’s still the outstanding coach of his generation. Moores comes across to me as a genuinely decent bloke. I fear that the culture among major sporting teams in this country is that we seem somewhat resistant to home-produced coaches, seeing them as ordinary compared to an exotic overseas appointment. I think he also had the obvious issues from the first time around that weigh him down no matter how much people deny it. The smell test is that this is not working, no matter how hard he is trying. The selection of Ballance at number 3, and then dropping Taylor down to six on the day of the first game of the World Cup has panic written all over it, even if it is a rational decision in his eyes. I felt his justification, and subsequent comments smacked of “not my fault” after the Australia game, and to a degree, it isn’t his fault if batsmen play crap shots. But this is a team, whenever you listen to them in that management drone drivel they specialise in , that talk incessantly about “getting the right plans”, “doing the basics” and “executing our skills”. It is said a good coach can be reflected in on field demeanour and fielding quality. These seem not to have improved no matter how much we are told about the dream pairing of Cook and Moores “are creating a good environment”.
Moores knows that the attention is starting to move his way. With Cook out the way, and Downton seemingly impervious to the hatred his presence ensures, it is Peter Moores who is in the hot-seat. Saker is on his way out, Paul Farbrace seems to have become the invisible man, and the layers of protection are being stripped away. It’s not looking good. We’ve entrusted a World Cup to this man, and it seems the last line of defence is the old defeatist one that I stated above. “We’ve never been any good at it”. That doesn’t wash.
If this tournament ends in abject failure, heads have to roll. We cleared the decks for this. We supposedly prepared for this. We ruined the Ashes in many peoples eyes for this. We have a brutal 2015/6 for this. To then rely on lazy presumptions that the fans don’t care, and an Ashes win will satisfy us, are taking the punters, as usual, for fools. This is not either/or. It never has been for teams that aspire to be great. I presume that’s what we want. After all, we won a World Title at the shortest form of the game, so that canard of being no good at this sort of game for some endemic reason is absolute shite. It’s a crutch for those who can’t face the fact that the people that made THAT decision are, in fact, charlatans. Because to admit that would be to admit you-know-who had a point. I saw someone today, who I know has encountered KP, say he’s rather have B*llock cancer than have him back in the team. That’s the sort of thinking I adore.
I’m not going to bother with these players. What’s the point? They got us into this mess, they need to get us out of it. By any means necessary. If they don’t, then eyes need to be cast in the direction of the likes of Stuart Broad, Eoin Morgan and Ian Bell in particular, as well as Jimmy Anderson who disappoints me more and more in this format. There’s a lot of talking, and not a lot of doing.
Oh well. 1500+ words of ranting, and I’ve only scratched the surface. There’s plenty more out there, so read them as well. TFT, Peter Miller et al. Eviscerating stuff showing the disappointment we feel. We care. We really care. Why people think we don’t is beyond me. Utterly beyond me.