England
It was a hard decision whether to place Srilanka and England lower down my pecking order. In the end I chose to place England above the lankans purely on the question of team morale and confidence. England was a team that had sunk to its lowest ebb in the beginning of February 2006, but they came up with 4 phenomenal performances and sunk the Kiwis and the Aussies to go on to win the CB tournament. What more can a team ask to boost its morale and confidence?
However morale and confidence alone cannot win the world cup for them. Theirs is a team which wears a totally unsettled look. Why, they are not even sure if their captain is going to be Vaughan or Flintoff. I personally feel that England would be better served by Freddie the player rather than Freddie the captain and hence would hope for their good and Vaughan is fit to play and takes on the captaincy. If it were not for captaincy I doubt if he would even have a place in the team but then he has been chosen and the team needs to live with that.
Bowling seems to be their weakest link and is probably going to be their achilles heel in this world cup. Their bowling line up will probably read as - Plunkett, Mahmood, Flintoff, Anderson,Panesar, Collingwood & Dalrymple. None of these names with the exception of Freddie are proven performers. Good performances from Plunkett and Collingwood got them the CB cup but you just cannot rely on that. There isnt much bench strength either with just Bopara and Jon Lewis the options. It is going to be very tough for England to win this world cup with this bowling attack.
Their batting looks much much better and they will infact have a problem of plenty if Vaughan is fit to play. It will be interesting to see if they drop Strauss or Joyce, the former is more experienced while the latter has put in some impressive performances recently. Ian Bell has been pretty consistent and provides solidity to their middle order. Collingwood is in simply superb form as he showed in the CB cup. Dalrymple has come up with some important knocks and can be a dangerous player. Flintoff is a worry, he hasnt been in great touch with the bat and England will hope he can get going in the World cup. But the key to England's batting and to their hopes in this world cup lies with one man alone - Kevin Pietersen. Returning from injury all English supporters will be praying he can continue where he left off. A definite matchwinner as he has shown many times, he can certainly destroy any attack and can leave an impression on this world cup. I would love see him in full flow and the small ground in the Windies are certainly not going to prevent him from raining sixes!!!
England have more negatives than positives. Their wicketkeeper is pretty inexperienced to add to their woes. They will be hoping for some miracles like what happened at the CB cup to win the world cup.
Final Word: Watch out for KP.
However morale and confidence alone cannot win the world cup for them. Theirs is a team which wears a totally unsettled look. Why, they are not even sure if their captain is going to be Vaughan or Flintoff. I personally feel that England would be better served by Freddie the player rather than Freddie the captain and hence would hope for their good and Vaughan is fit to play and takes on the captaincy. If it were not for captaincy I doubt if he would even have a place in the team but then he has been chosen and the team needs to live with that.
Bowling seems to be their weakest link and is probably going to be their achilles heel in this world cup. Their bowling line up will probably read as - Plunkett, Mahmood, Flintoff, Anderson,Panesar, Collingwood & Dalrymple. None of these names with the exception of Freddie are proven performers. Good performances from Plunkett and Collingwood got them the CB cup but you just cannot rely on that. There isnt much bench strength either with just Bopara and Jon Lewis the options. It is going to be very tough for England to win this world cup with this bowling attack.
Their batting looks much much better and they will infact have a problem of plenty if Vaughan is fit to play. It will be interesting to see if they drop Strauss or Joyce, the former is more experienced while the latter has put in some impressive performances recently. Ian Bell has been pretty consistent and provides solidity to their middle order. Collingwood is in simply superb form as he showed in the CB cup. Dalrymple has come up with some important knocks and can be a dangerous player. Flintoff is a worry, he hasnt been in great touch with the bat and England will hope he can get going in the World cup. But the key to England's batting and to their hopes in this world cup lies with one man alone - Kevin Pietersen. Returning from injury all English supporters will be praying he can continue where he left off. A definite matchwinner as he has shown many times, he can certainly destroy any attack and can leave an impression on this world cup. I would love see him in full flow and the small ground in the Windies are certainly not going to prevent him from raining sixes!!!
England have more negatives than positives. Their wicketkeeper is pretty inexperienced to add to their woes. They will be hoping for some miracles like what happened at the CB cup to win the world cup.
Final Word: Watch out for KP.
posted by Raj at 6:57 pm
2 Comments:
Yeah true Kevin is the man to watch. Its been a trend I have been noticing that atleast one player comes to party every worldcup. It was Sachin 1996 and 2003, it was Klusener in 1999. But some how this seems to be a good stage for Kevin Pieterson to show case his calss if he clicks England have a chance to go all the way.
One more thing I feel abt England bowling attack is Jon Lewis is the dark horse. I have seen him bolwing and he is a pretty good one at that.
They nare good allround side, Freddie has been bowling really well and if he comes to party with bat too and couple that with KP and Paul, well they llok good dont they ?
Well yes there has been one player who stands out in each world cup, but it was not because of that player alone that the teams did well. So KP cannot do it on his own, he needs to be supported.
Another thing is that they are in the same group as the kiwis and group points are carried over so its going to be difficult for them.
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