England hit Twenty20 rock bottom
The ICC don’t keep a world Twenty20 table. SPIN does. So where do England rank after Sunday’s six-wicket defeat to West Indies in Trinidad?
You’re ahead of us, of course. Given the gloom surrounding the team’s results this winter, it’s no surprise that, having been knocked over for 121, they find themselves ranked eighth in SPIN’s Twenty20 world table.
This places them below every major team in world cricket, above only Bangladesh and Zimbabwe.
Twenty20 internationals are still so randomly scheduled that stattos may argue about the value of a ranking table.
Yet England’s six wins from 15 outings are meagre on any terms, their win percentage (40) comparing poorly with New Zealand (43) and West Indies (45) and especially the top two teams: Pakistan (75) and Australia (61).
Steven Davies, who top scored with 27 on his debut, is the eighth wicket-keeper England have used in those 15 matches. Even allowing for the fact that the games cover a four-year period, this seems to show the level of indecision both about the keeping spot and about the approach to T20 in particular.
They have used a total of 42 players in all. Just four of the players who started the Stanford million-dollar game last November appeared in Trinidad. While Andrew Flintoff and Graeme Swann were both injured, Ian Bell, Matt Prior, Samit Patel, Luke Wright and Steve Harmison were all dropped.
No-one knows what England’s first-choice Twenty20 team is. And there’s two games to go before the World Cup.
The gaps between games and the fact that T20s are still seen as a novelty hors d’oeuvre to full ODI or Test series do mean that it’s hard for a team to maintain continuity and develop team spirit and tactics. There’s also the sense that a T20 cap is cheaper and a player can be given an international run-out to see what he’s made of. Maybe T20 is taken less seriously than other forms.
And Twenty20 can hang on a single delivery: in Trinidad Pietersen was given out leg-before to a decision that looked suspect to the naked eye – and very suspect indeed on Hawkeye.
But England can’t rely on KP all the time. Strauss looked more up for improvisation and working the field than critics of his appearing in T20 might have supposed. Even so 22 runs from 25 balls is pretty much a losing innings in Twenty20, where a run-a-ball strike rate is the very least that’s generally required.
Davies and Bopara looked a potentially inspired choice as an opening pair: Davies’ 27 off 21 showed a willingness to hit cleanly over the top; Bopara can do the same and, if he stays in, work the ball around wristily after the Powerplays.
But once they had gone, with the usual quota of hapless run-outs – three, as hesitant/panicked English batters came unstuck against golden-arm Windian fielding – the bowlers simply weren’t left with enough enough to bowl at. That said, Jimmy Anderson managed three wides in his first over, only to be replaced, frying pan/fire style, by Amjad Khan… who went for three fours.
The nub of it all seems to be this: T20 merely provides a harsh shop window for a team’s wider failings. Without Flintoff and Pietersen, England struggle in any form of the game; and even with Strauss’ own development as an attacking batter since becoming skipper, the batting lacks intent and confidence when it counts in Test match cricket, never mind T20.
At least they didn’t pick Alastair Cook this time. Which, with just two games to go before the ICC World Twenty20, is – alongside, possibly the new opening pair – a step in the right direction.
But there are not too many other positives for Strauss to take as his team languishes at the bottom of the T20 table.
