With the series tied at one apiece, and the West Indies holding the upper hand following a 61 run victory on 4 July at Edgbaston, we could be in for a good day's entertainment starting at 1045 BST today. Weather forecast is fair - "sunny intervals" according to the BBC with afternoon highs around 19C (chilly for July). Comments in this thread, please.

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Money won't buy you friends. But it gets you a better class of enemy.
Spike Milligan

After taking an early wicket and breaking a threatening Gayle-Chanderpaul partnership, then taking Gayle's wicket just before the 40-over mark with the run rate at 4.4. England have thrown runs at the Windies through poor fielding and (I must admit) some poor decisions from Collingwood. Bringing himself on to bowl medium pace when Bravo and Morton were getting going (thanks to poor fielding and poor bowling from Broad) was not a good decision, and Panesar really should have bowled more in the middle overs. Plunkett bowled well but we look to have let the Windies get away with it again. Prior dropped a very easy chance off Morton when Mascarenhas was bowling and will have to make up for that with the bat, he has kept poorly.

Broad has just gone for 19 runs from his final over and 7.88 runs per over from 9, Windies now 275/4 after 49 overs having been about 160/4 after 38/39. Shocking.

Edit - Bravo goes for 43 from 24!!! A stand of 92 in 7.5 overs.

Not impressed.

Yep, pretty ordinary stuff. As I write England 30 odd for 3. Same old same old from England in ODIs; now I guess we'll see Bell get 40 from 100 balls!! Despite a change of captain and coach we still look clueless against lets not forget a very ordinary side. West Indies are about the only major nation on our very low one day level and they looked an utter shambles in the tests and yet we are going down to them.

We just dont seem to have an idea what we doing.

Thats what I've said for a while. At the moment Broad is nowhere near to interantional standard. At medium pace bowling a wide long hop will cost you 4 runs

From what I've seen this past year and especially with our batting we dont have a clue. Whats even worse is that we seem unable to learn from our mistakes.

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Mark.

WI beat England by 93 runs in the end. Nice to see the Windies have a genuine reason to celebrate at last. Brings back memories of the days that once were. Fidel Edwards is definitely improved as a bowler and properly used, could be a force to reckon with.

England were once again unconvincing at ODI level. I don't think they will catch up with the likes of OZ, Sri Lanka and South Africa is the foreseeable future.

When England employ a one day set up, and seriously want to do well - then if they pick one day specialists, then they might become a force again in the next two or tree years.

Other nations seem to be able to mix one day cricket with test cricket - I think this latest disaster shows England CAN'T.

Old one day players like Loye and Nixon - showed what could be done.

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Ern

As the managment and players still cant see where they are going wrong then we will never catch up with the likes of Oz, SA, SL, NZ......

Fair play to the Windies though, they looked like a differant team in the ODI's.


We need still to look at the ODI team and the tactics. Our batting is woefully predictable. We get bogged down and lose a few early wickets, then mount a recovery and lose another few quick wickets....

Prior needs to drop down the order and we need a proper ODI opener. Cook and / or Bell need to go, they clearly cant play the ODI game.

I'm fine with Pieterson, Colly, Shah, Flintoff (if fit), Monty and Anderson. The likes of Mascharanas and Plunkett are fine squad players and we need another slow bowler - but not rubbish like Dalrymple or Yardy!

Broad needs to spend another couple of seasons in county cricket and the coaches should ignore all of the hype, he's even made Plunkett look accurate, who incidently looks like doing a bit of an "Anderson" - looking woeful in tests but looke fine in ODI's.

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Mark.

I would prefer Lewis back in the side to Sidebottom.

Trescothick, Loye, Shah, Pietersen, Collingwood, Flintoff, Nixon, Plunkett, Lewis, Anderson, Panesar.
spares - Bopara, Broad, Read, Schofield

What is all this fuss about? England were cruising this last game for long periods: they had the WI where they wanted them at 133/3 after 30 overs.. and were right on track in terms of the chase when they reached 137/4 at the start of their own 30th over.

Cook? He got England off to a good start and was scoring at the same rate as Chris Gayle. Bell? Ditto. Shah and Collingwood did even better: four out of the top six batted absolutely superby to get themselves into good positions... and it's not as if the dismissals were poor - on another day, any two of that quartet might have ridden a bit of luck and posted the highest total of the match.

Vic Marks is arguing on today's Observer that Prior "looked a makeshift opener as he sparred at a bouncing delivery outside his off stump" so maybe he needs to drop down to 6 (or better still, take a hike) with everyone shuffling up a place... and Pietersen should probably be dropped for a game or two to get him focussed on applying his great talent rather more... but in essence the batting looks good.

On the bowling front... Marks notes Panesar's inexperience and lack of variety: Mascarenhas was blocking one end up very nicely (8-0-29-0 is great middle-overs bowling from a reserve bowler)... but if he and Panesar are to bowl in tandem, Panesar needs to providing a sterner challenge the other end - but the kid has played just 19 ODIs and his domestic experience is a paltry 29 games.

Panesar's improvement is surely just a matter of time and good mentoring... as, one hopes, is that of Broad and Plunkett.

When Flintoff and Bopara are back in place of Mascarenhas and Broad the side will look good, right down to the reserves. Maybe not Australia-level good... but more than good enough to compete against all comers in the short run and with every prospect of maturing into something special given the relative youth and inexperience of all bar Flintoff and Collingwood!

I personally feel that it is a mistake to use a technically correct and very good batsman like Alistair Cook in any form of ODI game. I know that ODI players are not exactly coming along on a conveyer belt, but that is not a reason to compromise a promising specialist Test batsman. Cook's whole game is based on his technique and he looked awful yesterday trying those atypical across-the-line hoicks in his short stay yesterday's ODI.