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    England’s one-dayers in India

    By Will 2 years ago, at the start of April Leave a comment on this post

    The reason for the lack of posts about England’s one-dayers in India is, I’m afraid, I don’t really care about them. We’re going to lose. Get over it. Move on, nothing to see here. Roll on 7-0 and maybe we’ll actually realise how shit we are.

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    17 Responses to “England’s one-dayers in India”

  • R J wrote:
    April 6th, 2006 at 8.54 pm

    The England team’s mindset and the way they ‘fought’ showed that they really didnt care anymore. Fletch’s gone and made all the positive noises making the ‘fresh ODI’ team look good. Looks as if all of them have had enough and just want to go home. The likes of KP however seem to have the attitude of, ‘we’ve lost the series anyway, I might as well go out and get my averages up’.

    This Indian tour has been crippling for England on the whole. Bad luck, injuries, loss of form, the heat & humidity. Much more so than the Pakistan tours.

    Dealing with the heat and humidity of Indian summer will and should be priority preparation for future tours to England… and oh by the way, also pick a good fit team!!! ;)

  • S Jagadish wrote:
    April 6th, 2006 at 9.21 pm

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Fox_and_the_Grapes

    Ha ha ha!

  • R J wrote:
    April 6th, 2006 at 10.32 pm

    and oh by the way, also pick a good fit team!!!

    Appears that a tongue-in-cheek remark of mine MAY have been taken as a rebuke by the 2nd comment and I trust it was not.

    That was not my intention.

    Having pointed out the effect of the heat and humidity, I would also say here that not many years ago, India complained about the choice of venues by the Kiwis - hosting games at bitterly cold grounds. Obviously the Kiwis were accustomed to it, but the Indians, far from it.

    That is called Home advantage and is a fact in almost all sports. England’s main problem was not all these side issues, but that of injuries pulling the anticipated players out of the matches.

  • Vijayendra wrote:
    April 7th, 2006 at 6.15 am

    Oh well, btw way. What if England had overcome all the crisis of player management, injuries, and of course the hot n humid weather and topping it all stream rolling India 4-0? or 7-0 ? Iam sure your blog must have been over-flowing with analysis, KP ga-ga, Mr.Atlas Flintoff and so on. Even if the injured players come around, England are still not good enough.

  • R J wrote:
    April 7th, 2006 at 6.51 am

    The Indian fans and the Indian media have been doing, are doing and will continue to do the same as what you purport Will to be doing, Vijay.

    When India is on a losing streak, they get the cold shoulder, lack of fan interest etc etc. They do well and the players which shined become god!

    A full strength England side may not have won. But they would have given the Indians a good fight, I believe. A full strength could have achieved an ODI series result of close to [India 4-3 England].

  • pamthree wrote:
    April 7th, 2006 at 10.46 am

    lets see. no sachin. shewag is not batting well. kaif is in wretched form. even with these problems dravid went with 5 batsman in the last 2 games. now what would have been the result india had its main players batting good. the result would stiil be same i think.

  • Zainub wrote:
    April 7th, 2006 at 11.10 am

    When was the last time England won a one-day tournament?

  • R J wrote:
    April 7th, 2006 at 2.57 pm

    @ pamthree:That is true, if India also had a full strength side, granted that the result may have been 4-0 or 7-0, but the full strength England side would not have folded like it has and like it did.

    The difference in the Old India ODI team and the current India ODI team, which is also the difference between India and England, is that Batsmen 6, 7 and 8 have contributed significantly to the totals.

    The absence of the likes of Sachin and the loss of form of a few batsmen (Sehwag, Kaif) has been negated by the performance of postions 6, 7 and 8. Run chases have been more effective and successful due to this lower order coming through and not really due to the fact that our star batsmen have always led the way and performed, making it easy for the lower order.

    Some weight does needs to be given to Fletch’s comments that his is a fresh inexperienced (or rather it is the England A side who do not have clue!! :))side and they will need time. Post-Gangles, SL series of India reported the same sentiments on part of Chappell, which with the recent, wel deserved wins, has been conveniently forgotten.

    @ Zainab: Records, statistics will and can prove anything you want them to.

    In any field, you are only as good as your last effort.

    It was on the Cochin ground that the favourites India actually did the unthinkable…they lost to Zimbabwe..did the past records of either team help in any way?

    Havind said that, records, statistics provide a good benchmark; a fair basis of retrospect comparision on which future decisions can be based, but not counted on.

    my do paisa worth!

  • S Jagadish wrote:
    April 7th, 2006 at 5.27 pm

    Zainub: And no Ganguly. For all his recent failings, he still has 10K runs from 279 games. England’s inexperience is certainly a factor, but India don’t exactly boast a lot of old hands for that matter. It is the ECB’s fault that the likes of Flintoff, Collingwood, Hoggard etc. have played so few one-dayers. Like I pointed out last week or so, Kaif, Yuvraj, Sehwag and Harbhajan, all of who (re)established themselves in the one-day side after Flintoff made his debut, have all played nearly 50% more games than Andrew has.

  • Will wrote:
    April 7th, 2006 at 8.01 pm

    Sour grapes is one argument Jag, and understandable, but I genuinely don’t think England care about one-dayers. Indeed I spoke to an author of a rather famous book the other day who told me of the many many cricket fans he knows who care little for one-dayers. It’s simply better attended and more highly regarded in the subcontinent.

  • S Jagadish wrote:
    April 7th, 2006 at 9.11 pm

    England’s one-day side has never really been good, save the 1992 World Cup runner-up medal, which probably explains the lack of interest. Then again, it could become a sour grapes argument.

    What I don’t get is how test cricket and Twenty20 interest cricket watchers in England, but not one-day cricket, which is effectively a mean between the two and a far more established form of the game than Twenty20!

    I’ll stick my neck out and say that the England fan’s interest in Twenty20 will fizzle out once other teams start beating England regularly.

    Basically the interest in cricket is tied in with how seriously the administration does its job and the team’s performance. I don’t think it is the other way around.

  • Sunny wrote:
    April 8th, 2006 at 5.08 am

    Oh just because England won a couple of test matches and one of them barely (and lets not forget both victories came when McGrath was not even in XI), all of a sudden ODIs don’t matter. Please! Will you still care when you get whitewashed in the next Ashes?!

    In any team sport, bench strength is of utmost importance. What this series has shown is that England’s bench is at best a liability and at worst a laughing stock.

    But I will atleast give you credit for coming up with an original excuse this time. Sapping heat, dodgy prawns are old hat. Lack of interest is just perfect. When the Australians salivate at the prospect of taking on the Indians, when Steve Waugh annointed winning in India as his greatest challenge, the English can’t be interested. Let’s just bowl some rubbish, pack it in and hit the pub. Nice.

  • SpryCorpse wrote:
    April 8th, 2006 at 10.28 am

    Interesting discussion.
    But regardless of whether England is ‘interested’ or not, you’d think that a nation that is currently as good as anyone in the long form of the game should perform so poorly in the short form. I mean it’s mainly the same stuff. You try to play good shots and bowl good balls. And take catches. It’s not **that** different. Just more aggressive with batting (and England bats aggressively in Tests) and more defensive with bowling.
    It’s a bit of a mystery to me why England isn’t more competitive.

  • Zainub wrote:
    April 8th, 2006 at 10.48 am

    Sprycorpe,

    I’ll solve the mystery for you. England are a poor one-day side because they don’t care. They keep telling them selves one-day cricket doesn’t matter. When you’re in this state of mind, what do you expect?

    To be honest I find the whole “people don’t care about one-day games in England” line of argument a bit annoying as much as I find it a case of sour grapes.

    One day games ARE something to care about. The only multilateral tournament in the sport that aims to produce a “World Champion” is in the one-day format. The World Cup is everything said and done the largest comepetetion in the sport, the biggest prize as it were.

    For all England obsession with the Ashes, the Ashes is not the World Cup, and will never be, because only England and Australia play the Ashes. Not everyone else.

    England are perfectly within their rights to get obsessed about the Ashes, consider it a be all and end all, but they might as well forget their dreams of being recognised as the best side in the world if they’re not going to give up their “only winning the Ashes matters , to hell with everything else” mentality.

    The best sides in the world don’t just beat Australia, they beat everyone they play, home and away. That’s how Australia became the best side in the world, not just by defeating England again and again and again, but also by defeating everyone else.

  • SpryCorpse wrote:
    April 8th, 2006 at 11.16 am

    You’re probably right, Zainub, that the Poms don’t care. It’s just annoying - I’d prefer to think that they were passionate about it but were just shit at it. :-)
    Personally I don’t have an enormous interest in most one-day games. Just keep an eye on overall progress and trends between World Cups to see if Australia is doing the right things to field a competitive unit come Cup time.

  • pamthree wrote:
    April 8th, 2006 at 12.56 pm

    england is trying to host the first 20/20 world cup.
    cricket mad india isn’t even considering playing 20/20. sour grapes right on.

  • S Jagadish wrote:
    April 9th, 2006 at 6.16 am

    I keep reading about how Fletcher wants the test and one-day sides to be fairly identical. I think that is a central problem. The skills for both forms of the game are different. Is he failing to recognize it? Perhaps if England had one-day specialists, those specialists would have more in their ODI performances unlike those who play in the tests as well.

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