Random Thoughts: West Indies v England 2nd ODI

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England’s Batting

  • It’s not often that you win an ODI without one of your players making 50; England would have been very lucky to have pulled it off twice in the course of three days. Today, four of their batsmen – Beaumont, Elwiss, Knight and Sciver – all got starts but failed to push on. Ultimately that’s where the game was lost.
  • England’s mammoth collapse from 93-3 to 110 all out exposes the fact that they have a bit (a lot?) more of a tail than they had a year ago. It doesn’t help that this team’s success over the summer against Pakistan was built around the strength of their top-order batting, with everyone below that barely getting a look in. Inexperience can find you out in high-pressure situations.

The Pitch

  • Today’s was another low-scoring game, on what looked like another poor pitch. Robbo described it on TMS as “good attritional cricket” – we agree with the last two words, but aren’t quite so sure about the first! What’s baffling is that West Indies are a side of big hitters – surely they can’t be any happier with these pitches than England? Perhaps the WICB needs to step in? In any case, let’s hope for better wickets at Sabina Park.

England’s Fielding

  • A couple of chances went begging today – including Marsh putting Dottin down on 6 (she went on to make 21). You might get away with that against some teams, but when playing a side like West Indies, England really need to rediscover their ruthless streak.

Always Look On The Bright Side Of Life… 

  • England might have lost today but – at the risk of sounding like a player in a post-match press conference – there are definitely some positives to take away. Alex Hartley already has 7 wickets this series and just missed out on a five-fer today. Over the summer it was Sophie Ecclestone who looked more of a natural in an England shirt; Hartley was at risk of playing second-fiddle left-armer this series, but she’s responded to that pressure brilliantly.
  • Amy Jones also deserves a mention. This is the first overseas tour in her career that she’s been the first choice keeper from the get-go, and it seems to have done wonders for her confidence. Today she spent a significant proportion of Katherine Brunt’s overs standing right up to the stumps a la Sarah Taylor – and pulled off a great stumping of Stacy-Ann King as a result.

18 thoughts on “Random Thoughts: West Indies v England 2nd ODI”

  2. Don’t think it’s intentional doctoring. Pitches in the West Indies have been dreadful for years. It would be great if the pitches for the ICC Championship games are more conducive to scoring but the average women’s ODI run rate in the West Indies (3.56) suggests otherwise.

    A few more points of interest: This match was just the third in the last decade (and 11th ever) that England have failed to win chasing a sub-150 target. Taylor’s half-century was only the third ever by a West Indies woman in ODIs against England. Dottin’s 4-19 were the best ODI figures by a West Indies woman in matches against England. Fletcher’s 3-20 were the joint 3rd best.

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  3. Looked a bad toss to lose. Same wicket as the last game so it was always going to be hard. Saying that when your 93 for 3 you probably think you are going to go on and win it. Sciver going straight after the captain was crucial.
    England with Hartley and Eccleston in the field does effect the teams general athlectism although Eccleston is young enough to improve.
    Did anyone see Winfields LBW? Looked a shocker!
    All set up nicely though. Here’s hoping for some better wickets and let’s hope our girls conference is ok after playing on these wickets with no real training.

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    • I see no reason why Hartley’s fielding ability should not improve further. The word around is she has worked really hard at this and I see no reason it won’t keep improving. Both left armers have to spend net time with a bat but, as was pointed out on commentary, with so few left hand batsmen in international cricket I see no reason why both shouldn’t take the field pretty frequently in future. If their form continues I see no problem with losing a right-arm spinner for either of them. My point simply is it need not be an “either-or” situation. Yesterday’s defeat in ODI2 was not down to the bowling, it was the batting collapse. If the last 5 had managed even a few each, the result would have been different.

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  4. 1. Pitches. When the highest score in four innings is 149 something is awry. Regardless of which side you’re on this can’t be good for women’s cricket when set against the men habitually posting 350-plus nowadays. It may be “good attritional cricket” but it won’t attract bums to seats. Thank God it wasn’t televised!

    2. Chasing. Last summer England won the first ODI v Pakistan convincingly by 7 wickets, after an early stutter. The remaining five matches (ODI and T20) were all won batting first. This followed a T20 World Cup where chasing became a serious issue for England. On a poor (by all accounts) pitch, with longish boundaries and a slow outfield, chasing down 150 may not be as easy as it looks on paper, but this is an area that England need to do some serious work on. I felt in the summer we should have put Pakistan in a couple of times as much for the practice as anything, and I haven’t changed my mind.

    3. Mark Robinson. I’m in no hurry to pass judgment yet. But the one thing that does needle me a little is him being in the commentary box. It may be more in the style of an interview for much of the time, but he’s being asked to pass public comment on his players while they’re out in the middle. I would only ask one question – would Trevor Bayliss be asked to do this? And if so, would he agree to it? It doesn’t sit right with me. He should be in the dugout, even when his team is in the field. I get that he perhaps wants his team, and his skipper, to think for themselves rather than cast an eye to the sidelines for guidance, but the commentary box is not the place for him during play.

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    • Totally agree with your comments regarding Robinson and he should be with the Team in the dug out–not in the commentary box.The trouble is he wants to be the centre of attraction all the time and there is no way he should be passing comments on England players in the middle of a One day International.

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  5. There you go again Clive been personal. What possible evidence have you to say he wants to be the centre of attention. Do you know him? have you talked to him?
    Jason Gilespie was a regular in the commentary box for Yorkshire, I guess working on the premise that he was trying to promote county cricket. Isnt that what’s happenning here.
    Don’t compare the job that a men’s international coach does to a woman’s coach because the two worlds are completely different.
    My family enjoy it when one one of coaching staff come on the radio because you learn more of what they are trying to do and get a real insight into the game.

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  6. Although the result was disappointing, England played decently for 5/6ths of this match. The side looked in control for much of the game. I was never highly confident we’d reach the target, but it certainly looked very possible up to about the 100 mark.

    West Indies can thank Dottin a lot for this win. Earlier in her spell she was getting frustrated as England were taking her for a few twos that should have been ones. The body language was not good- it could have got worse for her but instead it all started working, she got 3 quick wickets and the match was effectively over. This won’t always happen once the West Indies shoulders start slumping.

    So then a couple of dubious lbw decisions, some poorly executed sweeps (we lost 3 wickets to sweeping, so the shot didn’t pay off on this occasion) and 2 set players, in Knight and Sciver, giving their wickets away trying to push the rate a bit more than they needed to – was what it took to turn the game against England. We only needed to convert a couple of 20-odd scores into 40-odd scores, and that would have been game won.

    There’s no need for panic – this was never going to be a series England were going to get through without at least a couple of defeats. There haven’t been any really disappointing individual performances yet. Remember we are missing Taylor, Shrubsole and Wilson; which must be like Windies missing Dottin, Taylor and Matthews or someone. The main challenge comes with the final 3 matches. Hopefully Robbo can do a better job than Shaw did at instilling confidence and belief in the players, which does seem to be at least part of what has been missing these past few years.

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  7. England losing their last 7 wickets for 17 runs isn’t a record. England have twice ‘achieved’ a greater collapse of 4th to 10th wicket and once equalled the 17 runs. The ‘best’ collapse was for a mere 7 runs (156-4, 160-5, 160-6, 160-7, 161-8, 163-9, 163-10 against Australia on 31/01/1985). The scorecard read:-
    Brittin (C 73)
    Hodges (B 48)
    Southgate (B 17)
    Court (B 1)
    Powell (RO 10)
    Stother (C 0)
    Tedstone (B 0)
    Edney (C&B 0)
    Stockdale (RO 2)
    McConway (RO 1)
    Starling (NO 0)

    One might think the 3 runs it took for the 5th to the 10th wickets to go down in the WI match is a record but no, as can be seen from the above case, it merely equaled the record.

    It is record collapse for 6th to 10th wicket. Only 2 runs were accumulated thus beating the 3 runs in the above case and the 3 runs in the match against Aus on 15/08/2005.

    It is record collapse for 7th to 10th wicket. Only 1 run was accumulated thus beating the 2 runs in the above case in 2005 against Aus.

    Fortunately our record collapse for 8th to 10th wicket is zero runs – so we avoided that one.

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  8. Personally I enjoy hearing the coaches opinions on the radio and it’s a good point regarding county coaches in the men’s game going regularly on the ball by ball commentary. I can see why some might think it’s wrong but wasn’t it when we were fielding? So it shouldn’t have been a problem either way.
    I do think some people have there own agenda when it comes to Robinson and need to move on and stop looking to nail him at every chance.

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    • I have always been in two minds about coaches and where they should be during play. If you sit with the team during the batting period and chat and make general remarks fine. If you find the need to frequently send messages out to the middle when the side is fielding (or batting I guess) then you’re not trusting your players or perhaps – and even worse – you’re not trusting your captain.

      I have occasionally wondered if coaches should be like one 2nd World War General who, when the battle was about to start retired to bed with a Western novel. His theory – he done all he could – it was now up to the troops.

      Maybe, if you feel the need to keep ‘messaging’ the middle, you’ve picked the wrong captain. I think the best balance is trust your troops, watch the match, by all means from the commentary box, and debrief after the battle. In my experience in business you get the best out of people by teaching them, encouraging them and, possibly most important of all, trusting them.

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  9. Just to be clear, I certainly don’t see it as MR trying to be the “centre of attention” or anything like that, I just don’t feel right about him being there during play. The same applies to County Coaches such as Jason Gillespie (mentioned in one comment above). I go back to the point that Trevor Bayliss wouldn’t be asked to do it, and wouldn’t agree if he was.

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    • I look forward to listening to Mark Robinson during England matches. The women’s game in this country right now requires high profile coaches to and Mark has the highest profile. Allowing people who are interested in Women’s cricket to hear Mark’s perspective is crucial at this stage of the games development.

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