In England the top soccer sides had to have huge wire nets round the ground, and believe me they looked ugly, it was ironic that deaths caused by these barriers caused them to be taken down, they block escapes from out of control crowd movement.
This has to be looked at - the huge boundaries spoil the game IMO, they also allow bad shots to go unpunished.
I have said this all along - without Trescothick to open with, he went to pieces, he could not IMO cope with being the senior partner to Cook, that's why I opposed him being captain.

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Ern

Prediction ashes 2010

Ricky Ponting top edges and he is caught by the 5473rd Third man Billy the trumpeter from the "Barmy Army"

I think its because when he opened with Tres, we got off to some good, quick starts putting the opposition striaght onto the back foot (which relaxed Strauss). With Cook and Strauss the opposition got the advantage straight away because we wernt scoring anyruns, then a wicket fell and.......

Saying that I thought he did captain well in the summer.

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Mark.

You have got a good point there. Might be an idea to try Dhoni as an opener or at No: 3 in some of the 'lesser' matches and see how it goes. If he seems comfortable enough, he might be given a chance higher up against the stronger teams.

Well he captained England against Pakistan for 4 matches - he won 3 and drew one - but pakistan should have won one only for not comeing out to play.

He captained Enfland to a very poor one day series against Sri Lanka, lost some one dayers against Pakistan - so his record is only average at best.

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Ern

It is interesting to note that the top two countries in ODI that score the highest runs in the last 10 overs is South Africa and Australia at over 7 an over.

On the other hand Sri Lanka and West Indies are the lowets in ODI - Will this be where these two teams fall, or will they improve there ratings for the world cup as the West Indies did in the Champions cup

Still far better than Flintoff's though.

well i think flintoff was poor there is no doubt of that but the experiance and learning curve he picked up aided with support from vaughn, with alitte support he could really be an exceptional captain leading from the front, if treskothick would have been in the side do think he would have been back up for vaughan in the world cup? what is his captaining like in ODI's? and when tresco comes back ("fingures crossed") will he be vice or freddie?

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Finally England have risen from the ashes.

By and large, tactically Flintoff is fine. His main weaknesses are in poor man management. He handled Panasar poorly as well as Mahmood. Although as the tour went on his handling of them did get better.

Re: Strauss as captain he was unlucky against Sri Lanka for the ODI's as that was probably the worst England team ever sent onto the field - full of bits and pieces player.

Back on topic, those stats from cricinfo show that England at best are going to average 60-70 off the last 10. That is why we need to score as a minimum 230+ in the first 40 overs. With our batting we may struggle to get near 175 which on the small grounds will cause us to struggle. Saying that a fit and on form Pieterson could make a significant differance to our batting.

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Mark.