Watching the highlights you would think Bopara and Prior really did cost England the game, Collingwood was poor also. Wright still looked as bad as ever too, effective yes but against better bowlig he could be contained.
England had the game to win, but I'd say it was lost when Collingwood and Shah were batting together. After 37 overs Australia had been 160/3, England were 157/3 with Shah and Collingwood batting together. England were right in the game with two settled batsmen, although the previous few overs had slowed the runs right down when England should have looked to press on. I've said before that England lose their way around the 100 mark
End of 29th over : 125/3w
30th over : 1 run
31st over : 9 runs
32nd over : 2 runs
33rd over : 6 runs
34th over : 2 runs
35th over : 4 runs
36th over : 2 runs
37th over : 6 runs
38th over : 5 runs + wicket of Shah
So we went from 136 needed off 21 overs at 6.47 to 99 off 12 overs at 8.00. Just when we needed to start accelerating we didn't, in fact our RR went from 4.31 down to 4.26 in those nine overs even with seven wickets in hand until the last of the nine.
I don't think England have a clue how to bat to win, we were well in the game but didn't take it by the scruff of the neck. Any kind of positivity during that spell of nine overs and we'd have probably won, instead we played out four overs with 1-2 runs from them and only three with more than six. Fair enough Bopara played fairly sedately, but someone playing the anchor is no biggy. We just never accelerated, too many batsmen playing themselves in, too many silly incidents like run outs off no balls, treading on stumps etc.
In truth we didn't really create much pressure on the aussies during their innings, they also lost their 3rd wicket not long after reaching 100, but didn't fall apart before the home straight. We have too many bits n pieces cricketers, should really have been Sidebottom, Anderson, Broad, Swann and Rashid bowling through but we go with part-timers too readily and underuse our main wickets threat. Collingwood picked up a couple of wickets fair enough, but surely our main seamers pose more consistent threat, especially to new batsmen, than a medium pace wobbler who bowled tidily and got a couple of wickets reward? I looked at ODIs we win by number of wickets taken and we don't win too many taking less than 8-10
It was interesting that Sidebottom opted not to play at a wide ball in the last over that wasn't a wide, I was thinking earlier in the day whether a wide is such a valuable thing to get or if you should try hitting wide balls for four or six. If the ball is wide, you get a run/extra and an extra delivery. But is one run and extra delivery better than a four and no extra delivery? I'd take four runs over one plus a
chance[i/] of more runs off the extra delivery.
