for me england didn't really prepare for this tournament enough. I know the ashes thing is a lame excuse but it is true.
they were never going to outstrip their ambitions when all they did was turn up to see how it went. other teams have been gearing up for the world cup all year.
England fail in so many ways before the tournament, during it and just in ODIs in general. Why players like Tredwell and Shahzad were picked without having been given a reasonable amount of games beforehand is criminal - Tredwell now has FIVE ODIs to his name, Shahzad 11 and Dernbach was called up without any to his name.
England just potter along taking one series at a time, no foreplanning or forethought. They do pick and stick with nothing players like Wright and Yardy, Wright was such a waste of an inclusion as proven yesterday when he was given a chance neither with bat (1no off 3 balls) or ball (0/17 off four overs)
Wright 46 ODIs
701 runs @ 22.61 & 15 wkts @ 57.53
0-5 overs (29 ODIs) : 1 wkt @ 292.00
6-10 overs (17 ODIs) : 14 wkts @ 40.79
Yardy 28 ODIs
326 runs @ 20.38 & 21 wkts @ 51.19
Yardy does at least bowl 4+ overs every time, the biggest problem with Wright is he has no defined role, he's neither included as a batsman or included as a bowler so why include him at all?!?!?!?
What went wrong yesterday? Perhaps England went into the match with their pace of innings already decided. I've said before that finishing with just 4-6 wickets down is often an indicator you've not made best use of your wickets in hand - especially if you've gone in rather light in the bowling department.
10 overs : 32/2
20 overs : 65/2
30 overs : 112/3
40 overs : 173/3
50 overs : 229/6
So in those 10 overs spells England scored 32/2, 33/0, 47/1, 61/0 and 56/3. Should have scored more runs in overs 10-30 with only one wicket down but only adding runs at 4.00 rpo.
Of course England might well have lost anyway as the bowling was not great and too toothless. Strauss, as I predicted, muddled through his fifth bowler allocation more or less with Bopara and Wright bowling 9-1-39-0 which is tidy enough but England needed to bowl Sri Lanka out and while both might have been worth a go, it should have been the main bowlers getting through most of their overs with those two not terribly likely to trouble Sri Lanka.
Was that THE most embarrassing defeat in World Cup history? I'd say yes, even to the point the batsmen were turning runs down to get one of them to a personal goal - England might as well have let the ball trickle to the boundary, it wouldn't have been any less farcical. Had it been the final I would guess there might have been one or two "retired out"s it was that much a walk in the park, although I suppose batsmen in might well have wanted to "hit the winning runs" for what that actually symbolises.
Steps forward? Stop picking players like Yardy and Wright, draw up a long term plan build around a small handful of existing regulars and take a squad forward to build for the next World Cup. Make sure this mostly separate squad has warm up games when playing ODIs during tours, otherwise County Cricket will be their practice arena. Maybe even set them up with separate series in places like Namibia, Holland, Bangladesh, Scotland etc to give those countries experience while giving our own squad experience.
Let's face it, our supposed "best ODI players" got their Rses kicked down under and were fortunate to reach the QFs of the World Cup. Current plans have not been working for the past TWENTY years, time to bring in plan B. Maybe if implimented correctly we can go into the next World Cup with proper ODI specialists who have notched up maybe 40+ caps but ahead of the subsequent World Cup they'll be racing to 100+.
England were always going to struggle without KP, Shahzad, Broad and to an extent Anderson.
Anderson is hit and miss, not sure why others can't see that. His average of 30+ isn't 30+ by accident. Out of those, only Broad has been making a difference, KP has the ability but have a look at his recent stats :
PIETERSEN ODIs (2009-2011) - 26 inns, 601 runs @ 23.11 (50 x2, HS 78 vs Australia)
He hasn't scored a hundred in ODIs since November 2008, his career average has dipped from 60.38 after 33 ODIs to 50.26 after 72 ODIs to 40.99 after 114. I was picking out points at which it was last over 60, 50 and now 40, but you can split it into three parts
ODIs 01-38 : 1382 runs @ 55.28
ODIs 39-76 : 1395 runs @ 43.59
ODIs 77-114 : 871 runs @ 27.22
A clear decline, his early high average in part due to not outs (7) but also three hundreds in his first 11 ODIs helped, he's added just four in his last 103.
But damn, Dilshan and Thranga thrashed them. I thought Trott played a solid innings, but given that the pitch wasn't that slow, he could have pushed the gas a bit.
I think England had in mind how the pitch would play and didn't adapt, once a batsman was in, set, and a platform built they should have accelerated, but by the time they did it was too late. 112/3 after 30 overs was the right number of wickets lost, but about 20-30 runs too few. I think they feared the Sri Lankan bowlers a bit too much as well. It's a shame Bell and Strauss threw their wickets away, England never mentally recovered from 31/2.
Of course you could argue England were lucky in that Morgan was dropped so many times. But the way England bowled wasn't good enough, should have gone with the extra spinner but England called up back-up seamers and only did like for like - by the time Yardy decided to go home I assume it was too late for Rashid to get here in time. But then England's "foreplanning" included how many part-time spinners among their batsmen..................? England don't realise how lucky they were to have Hick when they did, dropped from ODIs way too soon. Who since then has been remotely as effective among their batsmen as an extra spinner? Hell, T20 made an "international cricketer" of Yardy so England make him into an all-rounder, might have been better to try him as what he is (batsman who can bowl) and taken Rashid or Patel in the first place.
I think a big part of England's decline is in attitude, they talk as if losses are "just the way it goes", but with that mentality they are turning up HOPING to win rather than doing everything they can to win games and it reflects in their selections, tactics, batting, bowling, fielding, in everything. Almost as if they think it is luck that decides who are World Cup winners and who are also rans
