England is playing outdated one day cricket- Not surprised nor shocked by this fact that the country which pioneered the game of cricket, has failed to win a World Cup yet!. This time England genuinely had players to combat this format. The surface and the condition did suit their playing skills.
They have batters who have played excellent limited over cricket all over the world. They employ the reverse sweep and convention sweep with great ease, and almost every batsman playing limited overs in England knows how to play(unlike Aussies)this difficult shot!. They have bowlers who can swing, both conventional and reverse, with bounce and pace, and almost everyone is a 6 footer, producing 140kmp consistently.
Than what went wrong?.
Bad selection(both in selecting WC Squad and playing XI)
… dropping Alastair Cook as their captain/player was the best thing they ever did in recent times, so that Cook can concentrate on playing Test matches.
However they didn’t pick players with required skills for this WC. Cricketers like Luke Wright(successfully opens the batting/bowling for Melbourne Stars @BBL), Michael Carberry(opens for Western Warriors @BBL),Alex Hales(WC squad member only played the last 2 games),Ravi Bopara(pushed down batting order)Michael Lumb(Sydney Sixers openers@BBL),Johnny Baristow, Ben Stokes, Jade Dernbach, Chris Kieswetter, Sabit Patel and Chris Jordan(WC squad member only played the last 2 games) whom i felt would have made a huge difference despite poor domestic performance.
These players basically are limited over specialist with good experience!.
Adding to this tragedy their newly appointed captain Eoin Morgan, ran into batting slump before the WC, which effected his captaincy skill.
It is always interesting to observe someone leading a team as a stand bye captain, or a fill-in captain, and then compare his captaincy skills when he gets that job full-time!. They all lead with great aggression and think out of box, and not worried to lose wickets/concede runs when trying to win…but all that changes when they are appointed full time.
Morgan was no different, he started to make the same mistake which was done by previous English captains.
- Win toss and bowl
- Use two conventional openers, with one playing the anchor and other to attack from the onset.
- Poor fielding tactics when you are defending >250 or >300. Here instead of attacking they used conventional field placing allowing new batsmen to settle in and build score.
In recent times England likes to chase/like to bowl first if they win the toss.
Reason being –
- They can chase reasonable target while restricting teams to modest score. This is true.
The stats(since Nov 2012) suggests success rate is (45.83%) while bowling first in 24(11 wins) games.
And restricting teams inside 250 score is excellent, as they achieved this 11 times with success rate (81.81%)
- While bowling second their success rate is less -34.78%. and defending a target of less than 250 is slightly better -41.66%.
Nevertheless here is the catch in this stats(shadow data)… while bowling first (24 times)13 times they conceded more than 250 score – lately this has been very consistent as their bowlers are leaking too many runs up front and back end of an innings. And chasing anything >250 is not an easy task. England manage to win only 15.38%
The summary here is – if you decided to field after winning the toss, than use those bowling skills that you have. Tall bowlers can employ regular bouncers(2 allowed) and swing (2 balls used from each end) for 10 overs each way. Employ few slips, short leg and constraint batsmen from stealing single by having fielders not at edge of 30-yard circle, but much closer, so that they can create run out opportunities. England is much better fielding side than WI, PAK, IND yet they manage only two run outs in this WC far less than these teams.
One hardly saw any variable bowling (bouncers, or Yorker, or slower balls, reverse swing) at any stage of the game.
Batting wise – it was great move to promote Moeen Ali to open the batting. It worked wonders for them as they had the best opening stand Batting Average (67.16) in this WC. Scores of (18-172-62-25-43-83) for the first wicket is an encouraging sign for them. However it’s the middle order that is playing outdated cricket. Their run rate in powerplays has been the lowest(along with Pakistan) in this World cups the worst for top team.
A stats summary of CWC2015
| England (Mts 6 , won 2) | Batting | Bowling | Gap between bat and bowl |
| Runs scored/conceded | 1327 | 1349 | -22 |
| Wkts lost/taken | 45 | 36 | -9 |
| Avg | 29.49 | 37.47 | -7.98 |
| R/o | 5.50 | 5.67 | -0.17 |
| Scoring rate | 46.72 | 47.48 | -0.76 |
| Boundary rate | 9.73 | 10.56 | -0.83 |
| Centuries | 2 | 4 | -2 |
| Top 4 batsmen(contribution) | 57.87 | 62.49 | -4.62 |
| Eco rate | |||
| Maiden over | 2.90 | 4.21 | 1.31 |
| Consecutive < 4 runs/overs (C 4) | 24.47 | 31.54 | 7.07 |
| < 4 runs/over (L 4) | 49.36 | 50.88 | 1.52 |
| >6 runs /over (6+) | 39.40 | 42.47 | -3.07 |
| >10 runs/over (10+) | 14.10 | 14.29 | -0.19 |
| Powerplay(Batting) | |||
| Avg | 53.70 | 37.80 | 15.9 |
| R/O | 5.40 | 5.70 | -0.3 |
| Scoring rate | 35.60 | 35.30 | 0.3 |
| Boundary rate | 12.80 | 12.80 | 0 |
| Maiden over | 5.00 | 6.70 | 1.7 |
| Consecutive < 4 runs/overs (C 4) | 20.000 | 36.70 | 16.7 |
| < 4 runs/over (L 4) | 51.70 | 58.30 | 6.6 |
| >6 runs /over (6+) | 36.70 | 30.00 | 6.7 |
| >10 runs/over (10+) | 13.30 | 15.00 | -1.7 |
| Powerplay(second ) | |||
| Avg | 20.20 | 144 | -123.8 |
| R/O | 6.10 | 6.50 | -0.4 |
| Scoring rate | 53.30 | 57.80 | -4.5 |
| Boundary rate | 9.20 | 13.30 | -4.1 |
| Maiden over | 5.00 | 9.10 | 4.1 |
| Consecutive < 4 runs/overs (C 4) | 15.00 | 22.70 | 7.7 |
| < 4 runs/over (L 4) | 40.00 | 40.90 | 0.9 |
| >6 runs /over (6+) | 45.00 | 50.00 | -5 |
| >10 runs/over (10+) | 15.00 | 27.30 | -12.3 |
| Partnerships | Bat | Bowl |
| Partnerships (>100 runs) | 1 | 5 |
| Opening stand avg | 67.17 | 49.83 |
| (>100 runs) top order(I,II, III) | 1 | 3 |
| (> 100) middle order(IV,V, VI) | 0 | 2 |
| (>50s) lower order(VII, VIII, IX, X) | 2 | 1 |
| Method of dismissals | bat | Bowl |
| LBW | 2.22 | 0.00 |
| Bowled | 20.00 | 13.88 |
| Run out | 6.66 | 5.55 |
links to all the stats indicators http://allthatcricket.com/?p=1489
