By Tom Bason
October 22 2006

Yesterday, England played Australia in both teams second match of the ICC Champions Trophy.  Both teams had lost their opening games, to India and West Indies respectively and needed to win to have any chance of progressing to the semi-finals.  Despite this most of the attention was on the rapidly approaching Ashes series.  This game was seen as a pre-curser game, with the winners gaining an early psychological advantage.  Both teams were missing players who will surely play important parts in Australia- see Trescothick, Panesar, Hoggard and Cook for England, and Langer, McGill and a certain Shane Warne didn’t play for Australia.

 

With so much riding psychologically on this game, it was important that England got off to a good start, and that they did.  Bell and Strauss opened, and apart from Damien Martyn inexplicably dropping Bell, they coasted to 83-0 in 18 overs.  Then, after a drinks break, England tried to up the tempo and Bell attempted to drive Shane Watson but only succeeded in giving    Michael Hussey a fairly easy catch.  Then, the capitulation started.  Pietersen, moved up the order to 3 to try and capitalise on England’s good start was done with a 2-card trick by Johnson for just 1 run, and Freddy attempted to smash            Watson out of the ground, succeeding in just giving Hussey a fairly easy catch in the deep.  Yardy, Dalrymple and Read all followed soon after, Yardy slightly unlucky as the ball appeared to come off his sleeve rather than his glove on the way through to Adam Gilchrist.  Paul Collingwood was the only England middle-order batsman who ever got going, and he hit a decent 22 off 73 balls, aided by Jimmy Anderson hitting a quick fire 15 to give England a slight chance of getting something from this match.

 

England came out into the field knowing that they needed to strike very early, and they did.  Gilchrist was the first to go, followed by captain Ponting and Michael Clarke as Australia fell to 34-3.  Saj Mahmood and Anderson both bowled well, keeping the Australian batsmen on the back foot.  Unfortunately, Steve Harmison is a man bereft of both form and confidence, and when Martyn had hit him for 26 from his first two overs, you could almost see the change in confidence in the Australian team.  Martyn batted excellently on his 35^th birthday to hit 78, and his partnership of 118 with Michael Hussey took Australia to the brink of victory.  Harmison came back into the attack, and finally took Martyn’s wicket, caught behind by Read, but it was too little too late.  Hussey, who averages 79.58 from 36 ODI innings, drove Harmison through the covers for four to seal not only 2 points for Australia and give them a good chance of qualifying through to the semi-finals, but to also give them a first victory over England of the season.

 

England can take some positives from this performance though.  Bell played his best innings against Australia, and he and Strauss batted very well at the start of the day.  Collingwood never looked like getting out lower down the order, and it’s just a pity he ran out of partners otherwise he may have been looking at getting a high score.  Both Saj Mahmood and Jimmy Anderson bowled well, as did Yardy and Dalrymple, although the latter two never looked like taking a wicket.  2 of England’s biggest disappointments came from two of the elder statesmen in the team.  Flintoff holed out when there was no need to hook, and some of Harmison's bowling was awful.  Add to that Pietersen again disappointing, and you have to wonder whether Australia will have all bases covered in the Ashes.  We will need a far better performance next week against West Indies to give the players something to build on for the summer.  Hopefully, this was all part of a masterful Duncan Fletcher plan to lull the Aussies into a false sense of security!!