Pretty decent warm up for the forthcoming World Cup. Whitewashing Pakistan 4 - 0 in a one-day series with the other game abandoned
It was decent. Need a few **** pitches as they said. In general the tallys were about 350 every time for both sides so (and im still amazed by it tbh) thats just par these days.
If the ICC prepare dry/turning pitches then we will struggle a little. I still make England favourites but India could come into it depending on pitch, if not then it’s England and maybe NZ
in the end hitting power will count for a lot. buttler and stokes can really be key but so can morgan and bairstow England have the firepower to score heavily so its going to come down to on the day what breaks go what way. Over 50 overs theres always an element of good fortune and piling on the pressure
And Roy and even Root who averages over 50 in ODIs. By by far the best batting line up in world cricket and probably best England have ever had. Even our tail is very strong with rashid, archer, plunkett all being able to bat a bit. Saw stat and England have best average for tailenders with about 25 compared to India’s which is about 14. Bowlers still hit and miss at times, but woakes and Curran seem to be in good form and archer gives us that X factor. England are rightly so heavy favourites, and should beat anyone on their day, just need to make sure don’t choke in the knockouts.
in fairness they are quite sought after in india well all but root who is not considered good enough. Root is kind of almost cook like now. hes a shot maker, and shaper of ball not a smash the ball merchant. It says it all about the game i suppose that ball smashing fast as possible is more valued than someone who can outwit a batsman and craft a score in a variety of ways.
Yes the bolwers are inconsistent. Theres a mix needed of death bowling line and length to keep score down and wicket taking. Really the sport is more about forcing guys to swing and mis time than about wicket taking. Its get catches cos teams are under pressure to get 8 or 10 an over.
my point woud be that we have guys opening who play fast and get the team moving but the BIG hitter are capable of scoring so heavily so quickly that teams struggle to cope. If you've only a few over per bowler you can't really afford to target just one of our best hitters like buttler cos then you might bowl out and end up being destroyed later. theres probably 4 or 5 that can take a game away form someone with a quick 50 and anyone could be there at the death. Even an alli say can score sixes. Morgan, baristow, stokes, buttler. roy..
Thats the thing, the bowlers don’t even need to be world beaters at the moment because the batsmen are so good, it puts pressure on the opposition to score big if setting s target as they know 350 is only par v this England team and anything less is easily chased down
they need to keep the score down. thats all. 6 and over = 300. thats normally not enough now. Easy and doing it can be two different things but it really only takes one person to blow a game wide open.