Finally a win and thank god it is over!
The summer of cricket is over, and we are not the first side to lose a series 7-0, as we finally took an ODI game win, although we sure didn’t make it too easy for ourselves. The riverside was definitely favouring the bowlers so when England won the toss and we sent the Aussies into bat, we certainly took full advantage.
We bowled superbly, with the Aussies all out after 45.5 overs for 176, with Graeme Swann taking 5-28 off 10 overs. Anderson, Onions (on his ODI debut), Shah, Bresnan and Collingwood also bowled well. In fact the only player not to bowl well was Bopara who bowled 0-7 off only 1 over.
When we went in to bat we started fantastically, with openers Andrew Strauss and Joe Denly clearly having read my previous blog post, and sticking around and playing cricket shots (to be fair to Strauss he has been the only English consistent batting performer) rather than going for the big slogs and trying to force the rate. We made it to 106 before losing the wicket of Strauss but that was where the typical English trouble began. We fell to 6-162 with another shaky and inconsistent middle order. However needing 15 to win Collingwood and Bresnan kept their heads and guided us home.
So a better performance today but not hiding from the fact we lost the series 6-1. This is Jack Sargeant signing off the 2009 summer of cricket, and thank god it is over!
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