Can England Win the Cricket World Cup?
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A couple of weeks ago Ravi Bopara was in the Caribbean with the England Lions, playing in front of a few men and a roti. Now he is on the brink of performing before a packed stadium against India in Bengaluru (formerly Bangalore), which, judging by the scuffles for tickets, could be filled two or three times over.
The finger injury to Eoin Morgan opened the door for Bopara, who was the Irishman’s replacement in this tournament. Now two sparky innings, one in the practice match against Pakistan, another more important one against the Netherlands in England’s first Cricket World Cup match, make him a strong contender for a place in their best XI. It did not take Bopara long to leapfrog Luke Wright in the pecking order. It is because he has a touch of class.
He also has handy knowledge of the conditions because of his Indian Premier League experience. “I know what the pitch is likely to do in the subcontinent. IPL has definitely made me a better player and a more confident one.”
Bopara has always exuded confidence but that seemed a front after an unsuccessful Ashes series in 2009, which saw him dropped for the final Test at The Oval. There followed 18 months on the periphery of the England set-up.
“I played that Ashes after scoring three successive 100s and I expected too much from myself and it didn’t work out,” says Bopara. “I have done a lot of work since the Ashes, not only on Test cricket but ODIs as well. Playing in different countries makes a massive difference – South African conditions, New Zealand and obviously India. I have not put too much pressure on myself now.”
At the moment all he wants is to be in the team, even if it is in the unfamiliar No6 slot. “Obviously I love to bat high up in the team. My ambition is to get higher and higher. At the moment, we are playing well at the top order and it is hard to get in there. To win the World Cup we need the guys at the top to fire.”
In Bengaluru, as is the case everywhere in India, the spinners will have a critical role. Bopara said England were not too bothered about that. “If it is a spinning deck we have got our own spinners who can cause problems. A pitch that spins is going to cause trouble for any team. It is going to cause problems for India as well. And if the conditions don’t suit spin we don’t have to worry about it. We know in places like Bangalore, there can be high totals of 270-300. It is a good wicket to bat on especially against the seamers. It slides on to the bat quite nicely. Last time I played in Bangalore it did not spin.”
He would say that. He wants a game ahead of Michael Yardy on Sunday.
guardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2010
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Time for England to prove their one-day mettle against India
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For the past six weeks it has been difficult to judge exactly where England stand as a one-day side. They have had bad patches and poor matches, but I would argue that there have been mitigating circumstances. The 6-1 series defeat to Australia came in the aftermath of the Ashes. For the England players it would have felt like going straight back into a run of league matches the day after winning the cup final. I know from my own experiences in 2007 that the team who have lost the Ashes can have a lot more motivation than the opposition going into the one-day series that follows it.
Then there was the match against the Netherlands on Tuesday. I have seen and been involved in a lot of games like that one, and odd as this may sound the so-called minnows can be quite difficult to play. You have little to gain and a lot to lose, just because you are expected to knock the opposition over. England may even have thought that themselves. That would explain why their bowlers seemed a little arrogant in the way they went about their work, as if they thought wickets would be easy to come by. Instead they ran into a great innings from Ryan ten Doeschate, an all-rounder a lot of international teams would be happy to have in their side.
India are going to be the acid test. I expect that the game against the Netherlands will be the kick in the pants that the England squad need. There will not be any arrogance about the bowlers on Sunday. As for their shoddy fielding, that is harder to explain. As a coach it is something of a mystery – the fielding drills don’t change, the intensity levels at practice don’t change, but the performance does. England’s error count should be a lot lower against India, because the players will be switched on from the start and will be fully aware of how costly any mistakes will be.
I saw two warm-up matches in Bengaluru, and the pitch played completely differently on each occasion. England will be happy if the surface is as slow and low as the one on which South Africa beat Australia. But if it turns anything like as much as it did when India beat Australia, they could struggle against all those Indian spinners.
With that in mind, moving Kevin Pietersen up to open looks to be a shrewd move. Pietersen seems to have developed a mental chink against spin bowling, not a technical one. When I worked with him he was an avid reader of the newspapers. I wonder if all the talk about his weakness against left-arm spinners has got to him a little, and is starting to weigh on his mind. Moving him up to open means that he should be well set when the spinners come into the attack, though MS Dhoni may well be tempted to give Yuvraj Singh an over or two at him early on.
People have often talked about pushing Pietersen up the order in the past, but the worry was that he could be exposed by the lateral movement of the new ball. In India that is not going to be so much of an issue. Here, being in from the start may actually suit him better because he does tend to go at the ball, a method that works well when it is skidding on to the bat. It is only when the ball gets older and softer and stops on the pitch that he starts to struggle a bit. And by that time you hope he will already be well set.
Collectively, England’s batsmen now look in reasonable form. No matter who you are playing, to chase down 292 with such composure is impressive. And it was another example of England’s ability to improve their performance when they need to.
That is what the bowlers are going to have to do. Stuart Broad is still feeling his way back from injury, but his kind of into-the-pitch bowling should do well. We saw in their recent series against South Africa and in that warm-up match against Australia that the India batsmen can get pretty nervy when playing steep, bouncy bowling. At the other end of the scale, Paul Collingwood has a crucial role to play because later in the innings, when there is no pace on the ball and it is squatting low, it will be difficult to hit across his line. England need to use him in short three-over bursts so that he eats through overs before the batsmen have a chance to settle.
Jimmy Anderson is more of a concern. England need him to attack India hard early in the innings. The ball is scuffing up so quickly on these pitches that you cannot really expect to get much swing after the eighth over. But if he cannot get a breakthrough up front then he is going to have to sit back and be patient. But that is not Anderson’s character. He always wants to go looking for the wickets.
By the end of this weekend we will have a much clearer idea of whether England are serious contenders or not.
guardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2010
Published via the Guardian News Feed plugin for WordPress.