Australia 3-1 up in the series Australia 249 all Out off 49.3 overs England target 250 @ 5.00 England 63-3 off 13 overs @ 4.85 Require 187 off 37 @ 5.05 Good recovery from Pieterson and Bell Can England go on to pull it back to 3-2 with 2 to play
103-6. The wheel's come off for England. It's down to the tail to try and grasp victory out of the jaws of defeat, but with 6 an over required and only 4 wickets left it's a big ask.
So frustrating to see the return of the 'old England' with their spineless batting and epic collapses. Might as well as opened with Finn and Anderson, haha they're showing the top order how it's done. The one positive we can take from this is the strength in depth of our fast bowling; Anderson, Broad, Finn, Bresnan, Shahzad, Tremlett, Woakes all pretty decent pacers. Ahh well, we might not win the world cup, but we've got the Ashes.
The last wicket stand between Anderson and Finn was fun while it lasted. It certainly puts a few in the top order to shame. Too many soft dismissals England are a very good test side at the moment and are world Twenty20 champions, but they always seem to struggle with the 50 over format. With the World cup starting barely a week after this series they need to get their act together pretty damn quickly as far as building an innings is concerned!
We've had 3 exceptionally poor batting performances this series and 2 ok ones. I don't know why Alistair Cook doesn't play ODIs but maybe they could use someone like him as right now they seem to have too many aggressive players and Trott seems to be the only one with any temperament - and the only one with any good scores. Anderson and Finn weren't playing with great skill but they still got good scores - this wasn't down to streaky boundaries though, they didn't have that much luck to be honest either. So if they can do it, why can't the top 6?