| Wow! I've jsut got back from Lords! What an amazing match! That's the second Natwest Final I've seen - the first was the 2002 nailbiter against India which we lost. Perhaps next time I go to see one we might win!
I thought Harmison and Flintoff bowled beautifully. Gough was a little wayward. Jones was poor in his first spell, but came back well. I thought Vaughan maybe misjudged things slightly by bowling Colly and Giles for too long. I think he was so chuffed to have a chance at getting the Aussies out for less than 250 that he didn't realise that 200 was a par score on that pitch and would be difficult to chase. In the end I think Gough, Jones S and Flintoff didn't bowl their full allocations - if he had brought them back earlier perhaps we would have got them out for 10 or so runs less. It's particularly annoying, because unlike Australia, we bowled five good bowlers and four in-form quality pacemen, whereas Aus got by with only two (exceptionally) good bowlers.
However, compared to Ponting, Vaughan is a captain of genius! I thought Ponting captained very, very badly today, most especially when he started bowling Hussey near the end. Ponting has never really been tested as a captain - this isn't to say he's never achieved anything as captain, simply that most of his problems as captain have been resolved by chucking the ball to Mcgrath, Lee or Warne and telling them to take wickets. Australia's team selection today was very poor - they had only two decent bowlers. It's just that those bowlers played extremely well and were helped out by some poor shots by our top-order. If we had managed to lose just one or two - in fact, we could probably have coped with losing four - wickets in Mcgrath and Lee's opening spell, I think we'd have then exploited the weaker bowling of Symonds, Hogg and Gillespie. Symonds and Hogg can be useful bowlers when you are defending 250+, but at anything less than that their effectiveness pales. Indeed, Colly and Jones managed to milk them for 2/3/4 runs an over without looking in trouble.
And the pitch. I personally think it was a great game of cricket that was very tense and enjoyable, and I certainly didn't think the pitch was too bowler-friendly - it's the same for both teams, after all. However, it was undoubtedly a difficult pitch to bat on, especially against the quality bowlers both sides had on display. So credit must go to Hussey, who played extremely well for his half-century, and to Collingwood and Jones. These two deserve even more praise because they effectively had to face the new ball, something they are not expecting to do. If only one of them could have seen us through to the end. But it was an extremely mature performance by both of them. I think that innings really has to end the debate about Jones and Read's batting, at least. If Read had been playing today we'd have crumbled to about 80ao. To come in at 33-5 against a rampant Mcgrath and Lee on a bowler-friendly pitch is possibly the hardest task for a batsman in ODI cricket.
England's top order have some serious questions to ask of themselves, though. The target was not difficult - Strauss, Tres and Vaughan should all have gone out with the intention of batting until the end of the innings. I was especially disapponted with Vaughan, because he seems to be good at playing Test innings in ODIs, and on the one occasion where that would have actually proved useful, he got out for an awful duck! | 
02-07-2005, 07:25 PM
in reply to Victor Frankenstein's post starting "a good game in sense of the result and..." 
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