Ah yes well, if you put it like that. It really is quite easy to see that I'm being a bit of an ar5e!

Sorry about that.

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Red-it, Red-it, Read it and wept

Put NET RUN RATE into Wikipedia. Explains it further

What a childish post - the TMS commentators thought the same, to bowl to a field like that it must a been planned, now I never said Flintoff was not part of the plan.
Rememeber Vaughan is the captain, Flintoff would not have been allowed to set a field like that on the hoof.
Don't quite know why, but it was explained in part last night - net run rate rises for the team who wins, had they scored faster than Bangladesh, they the net run rate would have gone much higher.

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Ern

Well still not quite sure, TMS say a teams net run rate will go up after a win, Wikipedia says click here .

In fact Englands net run rate did rise despite the Bangladesh rate being higher.

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Ern

What a respectful post. Ignore my point about you never admitting that Flintoff must take responsibility for his own performances by demeaning my posting maturity. Quite brilliant!

I have always admired Flintoff's ability to bowl well consistently in ODIs, mainly due to his consistency in maintaining challenging lines and lengths. Yes, I was going by text commentary as I was at work this time and for the first time in a while am without Sky TV, but the suggestion was that his line and length were awry. His penchant for overstepping is a constant thing and so I don't believe that changed, but Vrock and others here pointed out (and most of them were watching) that Flintoff was not bowling to his usual standards. I'll leave them to comment on the fields, however the principal culprit for a bowling performance is that bowler and not the field he is set - that is perennially secondary, and that is why I hold Flintoff as culpable for his own performances as I would any other player.

Contrast, for instance, the Ashes 2005. Shane Warne bowled brilliantly despite poor field settings made by Ponting. The flip side of that is that I believe Flintoff was quite possibly responsible for bowling badly with good fields, having watched Michael Vaughan's field placings in international cricket for some time. However, I will re-iterate here that the blame for a bowler losing his consistency in line and length during a game lies with him. If he was consistently bowling a certain line and length to a bad field I would not say that he bowled badly, however there has been no indication from anyone but yourself that this was the case.

One thing is certain for me, even if the fields were bad, I rarely saw Flintoff set good fields as a captain and would not trust him to out-perform anyone in that respect. That's why I'm thankful that he's just a team member now, and save for yesterday has bowled well in this World Cup.

Well I listeded to TMS - and the commentators never shut up about the stupid way Flintoff was playing to that packed off side field - not trying to bowl the batsman, or get a catch behind.

They say he was trying to get the batsmen trying to get caught on the boundary, they went on to say countless times that this was a silly ploy, and that "they should have been bowling a proper line and length with Bangladesh six wickets down".

Flintoff could have refused to bowl that line, it might have been his idea, but it was an impossible line to bowl in a correct way to, it was designed to induce a catch.
To be honest Colly I don't think Flintoff is that good a one day player - hey if he got dropped tomorrow from the ONE DAY side, I would not bad an eyelid.

His rankings as a bowler and all-rounder as a Test player are far superior than his one day rankings.

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Ern

ROFL...what the hell are you talking about? Since when is Pietersen the only batsmen in the team? I said that the "English batsmen" were batting over-cautiously, since when has the phrase "English batsmen" only refer to KP, have you forgotten that KP isn't even English. Also please due tell me Nostromo when did I state that Pietersen decided to "struggle" against Bangladesh.

Look at the scorcard from yesterdays game, and see for yourself if this was over-cautious batting or not.

Ian Bell: 0 from 10 balls
Vaughan: 30 from 59 balls
Struass: 23 from 36 balls
KP: 10 from 26 balls
Collingwood: 23 from 74 balls
Freddie: 23 from 21 balls

As you can see apart from Freddie, all the England batsmen were batting over-cautiously. To score 23 runs from 74 balls in an ODI match against a Bangladeshi side is dreadful.

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CC

Not as bad as making a ten ball duck.

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Bill Ponsford - The only one who could play in Bradman’s company and make it a duet.

Let us forget comparisons and look at what happened in this game. When England were 130 for 6 with 14 to win with plenty of overs to spare, Nixon (forgot himself?) hit a straight six off Rafique to make it 136 for 6. The batsmen then met on the pitch and there were no runs scored for the next 23 balls despite some ordinary bowling on a placid wicket. Collingwood played defensive strokes to balls that sat up and begged to be hit, but he did not seem worried in the least. If that was not part of a plan (quite legitimate and acceptable, mind), I don't know what else is.

Yes it is pretty funny.

What gets me is how many people suggest that Collingwood is becoming one of the truly great English cricketers.

Poppycock!

One of the journalists remarked yesterday how "an out-of-sorts Collingwood" scratched around for 23 off 74 balls.

What do they mean by "out-of-sorts"?

That is how Collingwood always plays against Bangladesh. He is one of the truly great scratcher-arounds of English cricket.

And yes he might make a decent one-day captain... hardly inspirational... but unlikely to drink seventeen pints and fall out of a pedalo.

But he is not true class.

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Red-it, Red-it, Read it and wept