England in New Zealand

[vaibhav mehta]

I think Ya your best batsman should be at number 4.And KP coming after Bell Always makes thing easy for England as far as run rate is concerned in ODIs.Nothing was wrong about batting order against NZ.It was just bad time for KP and hope he'll get rid of soon..

 

[Leicester Fox]

Why? It's not like he fluked them runs, he made 700 of them. The fact is every other position in the order he's an average basmen, look at his average it's not even 40. I'd rather get the best out of our best batsmen at 5 than lose a lot of his influence nd have him higher up the order.

 

[Sureshot]

Joe, if KP is to move to any position it's up to 3, not down to 5. He is too good a player to waste having only 15 overs at the end.

 

[King Pietersen]

My point exactly. He's our best player, and shouldn't be wasted by coming in for the last 15 overs. KP at 3 is by far the best option as far as i'm concerned.

England looking good in the tour game. Jimmy bowled well in the first innings taking 3for, Hoggy also bowled well. Monty has taken 2 in the 2nd innings aswell, so it's looking good for England's bowlers; would be a bonus if we could get Sidebottom fit for the test series though. Harmison, Hoggard and Sidebottom are our 3 best quicks. Broad and Anderson are ones for the future, but Hoggy, Harmy and Sidey are the 3 in form bowlers, especially Sidebottom. They should play in the tests.

Cook
Strauss
Vaughan
Pietersen
Collingwood
Bell
Ambrose
Hoggard
Sidebottom/Anderson
Harmison
Panesar

That'd be my team for the first test.

 

[Leicester Fox]

Well he wouldn't only e in for 15 overs at the end because we always collapse. I'd still rather have him in for 15 overs averaging 115 than 30 overs averaging 40. I still wouldn't have him at 3, by ******* around with him we're going to ruin the career of one of our best batsmen and Bells doing fine at 3 considering how bad a side we are.

 

[King Pietersen]

What do you mean 'how bad a side we are' ? We won a home series against India and an away series against World Cup finalists Sri Lanka and then lost a dissapointing series against the 3rd best side in the world. We're not a bad ODi side under Moores, and when at our best can beat anyone. Joe, you have to be one of the most pessimistic fans ever, constantly telling us how we have a team of non-commital, lazy not-bothered cricketers as soon as we lose 1 match. England are no longer a bad Odi team, we're certainly improving immensely, and in a year or two will be one of the best sides in the world. You just need to give the lads a chance.

Also, if you're so worried about averages at certain positions, why change Colly's position at 5 when he's averaging 45 at 5 and 28 at 4. If we promote Colly to 4 we're wasting the talent that he offers us at 5. Collingwood also bats at a far higher strike-rate at 5 (82) compared with 52 at 4. The other option would be Shah, who only averages 11 in 4 previous innings at 4.

Also, you're the one suggesting messing the batters around by bringing in a certain player when a certain opener gets out, where's the sense in that ?. You mentioned that if Cook got out first then Bell at 3, and then Wright at 3 if Mustard gets out first, but that surely messes about one of Englan'd best young players in Ian Bell if he gets dropped down the order if one of the opener fails. Therefore going for the aggressive and technically sound Pietersen at 3 is by far the best option.

Another point i'd like to bring up is the players ahead of Pietersen when he was batting at 5. This was a stage remember when the ODi team was in complete turmoil with Fletcher trying to train players for Test cricket using the ODi format. In the Zimbabwe series Pietersen had players like Solanki, Vaughan, Bell and Strauss ahead of him, hardly One Day specialists, not exactly players who have lit the ODi scene up. So that's why Pietersen was getting such a chance to make big scores when at 5, and often finished his big innings not out at the end. If Pietersen was to bat at 5 in the current side, the chances of him getting more than 20 overs to bat are extremely slim as Cook, Wright, Bell and Collingwood are all very good ODi players. I just feel that Pietersen would be completely wasted at 5, and that would do his career more damage than putting him at 3.

Also, Bell's not been in great form at all in the 07/08 season, only averaging 21 in 10 innings, and considering that batting at 3 is the most important role in the team as it's the batting position where the batsman sets the pace of the innings he isn't really suitable. Pietersen's not exactly been in much better form, but at least KP is averaging in the 30's this season.

I just feel that Pietersen would be the much better option for the balance of the team, and allows us to get off to a good, confident start. He's our best player, so should be at 3.

 

[Leicester Fox]

The difference between Colly at 4 and 5 is 17 whereas the difference between kp at 4 and 5 is about 80 runs so logically I would choose KP at 5.

We are lazy and this team has managed to put out some of the worst performances ever seen from an England side, especially as they're naturally more talented than most England sides we've had.

 

[King Pietersen]

They're a young side, they don't yet have the experience to consistently perform like Australia. You seem to forget the series win against India and the away win against Sri Lanka and are just focusing on 1 or 2 poor series. Peter Moores has only been in charge of the One Day team for 4 series, winning 2, that's a pretty good record considering the shambles we were with Fletcher as coach.

Also, you mention the differences in averages between Colly at 4 and 5 and Pietersen at 4 and 5. They played almost the same amount of matches in the other guys position and Pietersen's average at 5 was 15 higher than Collingwood's at 4. An average of 23 is nowhere near good enough for Collingwood to bat at 4, and there's also the change in strike rate that i mentioned.

Also, confidence is a massive part of Pietersen's game, and if he feels that he has the confidence of his coach and team he plays better; hence the quality performances in his first few games in the England team. Imagine the effect that dropping him to 5 would have on his confidence, especially considering he'd be dropped down the order for inferior players.

Another factor to take into consideration is the opposition faced when he was at number 5. He scored 104 of his runs in 3 innings against Zimbabwe, 2 of those unbeaten. Being at 5 means he has less time at the crease and more chance of remaining not out at the end of the innings, hence the massive average. If you just take his runs at 5 and divide it by the amount of innings it comes to 58, less than 20 higher than his average at 4. The fact that 6 of his 12 innings at 5 ended with him not out shows that he had far less time at the crease, and he could have made far more runs had he been batting at 4 or 3.

I just feel that the stats that i'm providing are far more evidence for Pietersen being at 3 than the odd stat or reply that i'm recieving from you; and when you do provide a stat in reply it's often a farcical one. The stat mentioned in the last post is completey irrelevant to the argument considering that Collingwood only averages 23 at 4, something that is not good enough to warrant him taking Pietersen's place in the batting order.

 

[Leicester Fox]

I have no problem with losing if we show some fight.

Collingwoods improved a lot since he batted for the majority of his innings at 4. You can't say KP could have made more runs batting at 4 in his not out innings when he only averages in the 30's batting at 4. How do you know he would ever have got those runs in the first place. He still averaged 151 against South Africa at 5 and it's better than averaging 40 at 4 because you sayhe would make more runs due to not outs but he consistently makes less runs than he did at 5 before getting not out anyway.

 

[irottev]

Iain O'Brien got like 1 wicket. Hopefully they don't select him. I'd much rather see Gillespie. He's faster and get a little more movement. He does leak runs, but at least he attacks. O'Brien seems a containment bowler. We don't need those against England.

I'm still undecided on what side I want to see. Really we're still rebuilding and we need to start settling on the side we want to use in future. I don't think we have a show of winning this test series, so any draw or win we get will be fantastic. I'm kinda expecting 3-1 with 1 absolute hammering. We just haven't played enough test cricket against quality opposition for years.

Also just a reminder, this is Stephen Fleming's final series. So I hope he can go out on top.

 

[Sureshot]

The difference between Colly at 4 and 5 is 17 whereas the difference between kp at 4 and 5 is about 80 runs so logically I would choose KP at 5.

We are lazy and this team has managed to put out some of the worst performances ever seen from an England side, especially as they're naturally more talented than most England sides we've had.

Collingwood is and has proven to be a far better finisher of innings. That's where I want Colly, he's very clever and knows how to finish and innings. Take his 70 from 50 the other day.

The 2nd mini-paragraph is a poor comment. 1) We aren't lazy, 2) You don't remember some of our Test match showings during the mid to late 90s? 3) Naturally more talented? Not for me. All of England's 'Era's' have had talented players in.

 

[RoboRocks]

I have no problem with losing if we show some fight.

Collingwoods improved a lot since he batted for the majority of his innings at 4. You can't say KP could have made more runs batting at 4 in his not out innings when he only averages in the 30's batting at 4. How do you know he would ever have got those runs in the first place. He still averaged 151 against South Africa at 5 and it's better than averaging 40 at 4 because you sayhe would make more runs due to not outs but he consistently makes less runs than he did at 5 before getting not out anyway.

He batted at 5 in 2004 because he was new to the side. He is thee best player in the side despite his lack of runs recently. He definatly needs to go at 3 for me, I think he will find having a hard new ball come on to the bat wil be better and also he will most likely come in the powerplays.

Collingwood is the type of player who will nurdle the ball around and then set a platform for the end of the innings where he along with Luke Wright can then find boundries and propell England's score. He has always been suited to 5.

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Anyway as far as the tests are concerned, Strauss has no right to play since at the moment he can't buy a run from a newsagents up town. Shah surely should play instead of him after he top scored for England in the warm up game. Bat him at 6 and move Vaughan to open.

As far as the keeper situation, I wouldn't mind if Ambrose played in this series as long as we assess, which of the two will play both forms since we can't have a split keeper situation because it puts pressure on the both of them to get into both sides.
Hopefully the selectors will give Ambrose the gloves in the next game so they can see how his keeping is compared to Mustard's.

I was just looking at their keeping stats and we know that Ambrose has the better batting stats quite easily but I was experimenting with keeping statistics:

Ambrose - 72 Matches - 3627 FC Runs @ 34.87
145 Catches - 14 Stumpings @ 2.88 DPM

Mustard - 67 Matches - 2846 FC Runs @ 27.36
221 Catches 10 Stumpings @ 3.44 DPM

These show that Mustard is genuinely a better keeper but this DPM system is not always going to prove right in terms of keeping ability since Matt Prior has a high DPM average that keeping great Godfrey Evans.

Moving on, Hoggard seems to be in form, hopefully Sidebottom will be back by the time the first test comes around, Harmison apparantly was a bit rusty in his first spell and we need him to get back into a rytham, Broad and Anderson bowled well from the looks of things and will be looking for a spot in the test XI, Monty bowled well in the condtions and didn't give much away, so the bowling looks like its back on track after the ODI series.

My team:

Cook
Vaughan
Bell
Pietersen
Collingwood
Shah
Ambrose (Mustard can still get in if he can make some runs in the next game)
Sidebottom
Hoggard
Harmison
Panesar

I know our tail is long butb hopefully we won't have to rely on them too much.

 

[lancashire666]

sidebum might not make it for the first test apparently, i really hope that england pick broad anderson and hoggy, hoggard has simple got to play, broad looks like he could become as good as hoggard and offeres something with the bat and id go for jimmy over harmy at the moment, but if sidebum is fit than id play him over anderson.

my test team for 1st test

Cook
Strauss
Vaughan
KP
Collingwood
Bell
Mustard
Broad
Sidebottom/Anderson
Hoggard
Panesar

i really wanna put shar in the team but id have to drop strauss and play vaughan as an opener which im not sure about

 

[Leicester Fox]

Collingwood is and has proven to be a far better finisher of innings. That's where I want Colly, he's very clever and knows how to finish and innings. Take his 70 from 50 the other day.

The 2nd mini-paragraph is a poor comment. 1) We aren't lazy, 2) You don't remember some of our Test match showings during the mid to late 90s? 3) Naturally more talented? Not for me. All of England's 'Era's' have had talented players in.

Look you aren't going to change my opinion on KP at 5 so i'm not even going to bother anymore because its just going to carry on for another load of pages and tbh i can't be arsed, I'd still rather have Colly at 4 at the end of the day. Half the time it's not different to batting at 4 because we always collapse, see commonwealth bank series 100.

In the late 90's we were a lot worse than this side, there was so much wrong with our team in those days and cricket has moved on since then, the only batsmen who comes out and shows any character when we collapse is Collingwood and even he doesn't do it. When it gets tough we don'tshow any fight.

 

[cheese]

If this England side doesn't wipe the floor with the current shocking test team we call the Black Caps, you guys do not deserve the test ranking.

If there is no fight in the English team, there is NOTHING we can look forward to in this New Zealand side.

None of the batsmen in this lineup can safely say they have good techniques. None.