ICC Cricket World Cup 2015

I am not remotely surprised by this latest World Cup humiliation.
England have paid lip service to one day cricket for too long.
While other nations have moved the one day format forwards with attacking, innovative thinking and execution England have stubbornly been stuck in the past playing an attritional, dull and rabbit in headlights form of cricket.
All aspects of England's ineptitude have been ruthlessly exposed in this tournament.
The bowling has been too short, misdirected and shoddy.
The ground fielding atrocious, the dropped catches unacceptable.
And the batting........ Strewth.
Countless batsmen getting stifled. Utterly unable to pierce the field and rotate the strike.
Realization set in as did panic.
Daft shots in sheer desperation leading to ridiculous dismissals time and again.
The sheer scale of the England incompetence is so huge, so monumental and so utterly abject there are barely words that can really do it justice.
The selection policy was nonsensical.
Too many of England's best batsmen left out of the team or not even in the touring party.
Stubbornly sticking with the same losing side up until the match against Bangladesh where England were in the last chance salloon.
Expecting Hales and Jordan to save their bacon.
Too little too late.
The two of them had received no World Cup match time and ultimately it showed.
The cricketing culture of an obsession with Test Cricket and in particular The Ashes has cost us dear.
Test cricket is becoming of secondary importance to the point of a near irrelevance in some other test playing nations.
The IPL and Big Bash etc have seen to a cultural shift in the game that other nations have embraced and England have not.
The consequence is an inability to deal with the demands of the modern ODI game in terms of power, strategy, use of power play overs, death bowling and strike rotation.
English cricket has not moved with the times.
Yet another World Cup has passed England by and all Moores can say is that he needs to look at the data.
Does he not realize what a bungling bureaucrat he sounds like.
It is as if mere shufflings of paper and processing of statistics will produce a remedy.
Looking at every replay of every ball, shot, toss and run will NOT ascend us from the hole English cricket has dug for itself.
It is about more than that.
It is about selecting the wrong captains for the wrong reasons at the wrong times.
It is about intransigence in the face of criticism of blatant errors of judgement and strategy.
Refusal to admit even a hint of trouble until the threat of doom is imminent.
It is about discarding natural talent for reasons that the powers that be are not even prepared to explain with clear and specific evidence as to why.
It is about foolishly maintaining a culture of bungling Yes men to satisfy the faceless bureaucrats of the ECB and grandee toffs of the MCC who don't want to rock the boat.
And it is about going back in time to methods that don't work and former coaches that have already failed once already.
The time for a revolution in English cricket is long, long overdue. The focus has moved away from the bigger picture and towards prioritising a form of the game that most other countries are really not bothered about anymore.
It is a sad state of affairs that test cricket is imo dying a slow death in all but The Ashes by name.
Cricket is fast turning into a wam bam, wack it and slam game of bowler bashing, home run derby proportions.
However as sad as that is there is no excuse for England to have ever continually treated ODI cricket with such apparent distain to the point where they continually embarrass themselves in World Cups due to blatant and unforgivable failings.

^Wonderful stuff mate my sentiments exactly.. but when you say we should be prioritising a form of the game are you saying we should focus more on Test cricket? and getting that back to a point where it is more important than ODI?

(09-03-2015 17:27 )Charlemagne Wrote:  England's hit a new all time one day low
They can't even beat a team of the quality of a poor county team

Please come home now. Your an embarassment

I'm sure there are welsh people who are quick to point out that they even beat us in a ODI if I remember rightly!!

India beat Ireland by 8 wickets today.

India were always winning this one, but Ireland got a respectable 259 in their innings and it could have been more. Although having said that another 100 or so would have been needed to give Ireland's bowlers a chance of defending a total against the batting line-up that India have.

(09-03-2015 19:04 )snookered147 Wrote:  there is no excuse for England to have ever continually treated ODI cricket with such apparent distain to the point where they continually embarrass themselves in World Cups due to blatant and unforgivable failings.

Don't say that England haven't prioritised ODI cricket or treated it with disdain! The whole test match schedule was rejigged to avoid having the Ashes and the World Cup in the same winter. So we went and played a silly back to back Ashes to make sure England had the best possible chance in the World Cup. Not to mention that we had no test cricket at all this winter and played 6 months of ODI's before this World Cup.

(10-03-2015 09:52 )William H Bonney Wrote:  Don't say that England haven't prioritised ODI cricket or treated it with disdain! The whole test match schedule was rejigged to avoid having the Ashes and the World Cup in the same winter. So we went and played a silly back to back Ashes to make sure England had the best possible chance in the World Cup. Not to mention that we had no test cricket at all this winter and played 6 months of ODI's before this World Cup.

6 months? Wow .
What about all the years before that?
And if England had been serious about prioritising ODI cricket why on earth has the playing style not been adapted to the demands of the modern game in these last 6 months or indeed at any time previously? No meaningful attempt to do this has been apparent imo.
The England thinking is outdated.
Australian legend Shane Warne along with many others has summed it up better than I ever could regarding England.
England have played ODI cricket as if it were a test match and been made to look unbelievably out of touch in the process.

(10-03-2015 13:48 )snookered147 Wrote:  And if England had been serious about prioritising ODI cricket why on earth has the playing style not been adapted to the demands of the modern game in these last 6 months or indeed at any time previously?

That's a question for the players and coaches, but you can't say they weren't given every possible assistance. You want test matches abolished for a longer period than 6 months? Do you want more coaches too? England had a total of 85 coaches for this World Cup. That's almost 6 coaches for every player. However badly England got things wrong, you can't say they weren't trying or they weren't interested in doing well. Every possible assistance was given to the England team to help them succeed, but when it came to it they just weren't good enough and they didn't have the right approach either.

^

I don't recall making any accusations of 'not trying' or indeed of 'not being interested in doing well'.
I suggest you read the bit of my post you quoted again.
The question I asked was why the playing style had not been adapted to suit the demands of the modern ODI game.
That is not the same as hurling accusations around of not trying or caring. I don't doubt for one minute that the players and coaches did their best with the obviously flawed strategy used and even more flawed team selections.
I am merely pointing out my opinion that England has not made sufficient attempts to modify their approach to the demands of modern ODI cricket and I stand by that.
This is what I was also referring to in my 'lip service comment'.
As for test cricket....... nobody is more disappointed than me that test cricket seems to be dying a slow death. It is the purest form of the game with a proper test of technique, skill and mind.
Limited overs cricket is fast turning into something akin to baseball and I find that heartbreaking.
I would like to think this sentiment came through towards the end of my initial post.
But England simply have to move with the times and with the rest of the cricket world.
Limited overs cricket puts bums on seats more than most test cricket does (The Ashes aside). I am not suggesting the abolition of test cricket. What I am suggesting is that a reduction in the test schedule overall may be required.
I don't like saying that but it is the way the international game is heading around the world.
More focus on 50 over and 20/20 and less on test matches.
England have played ODIs in a test match style and stubbornly refused to admit that this approach has ever been wrong.
In this they have been and continue to be in a minority of one while the rest of the world have adopted strategy fit for the modern game.
In this sense England have been disdainful and bloody minded to the point where no other competing country will feel the slightest bit sorry for them and nor should they.

I think they have to be really embarrassed about their performances to be honest, I wonder how many central contracts will not be renewed when they get home? They have been total jokers..