Elementary My Dear...Woakes?

Eight in a row. It doesn’t have the resonance or significance of, say, Australia’s sixteen consecutive test victories, but it’s a record and worthy of celebration. It would be pushing it to say that England have mastered Twenty20 cricket, but their strategy, fielding and strength in depth are admirable, although not everyone agrees: on my daily trawl through the cricket blogs I found a poster on cricinfo conversations (strap line ‘Home of the One Eyed and Deluded’) who stated that England were the worst Twenty20 side in the world. There’s just no pleasing some people.

This was unquestionably the hardest that they have been pushed on their record breaking run, however. Having engineered a comfortable position they were then stung by a fabulous bowling performance from Shane Watson, who had earlier starred with the bat, and looked to have thrown it away, only for Chris Woakes, on debut, to hold him nerve with the élan of a long established player and drag them over the line in a thrilling finish.
Australia can take considerable heart from their performance, but they are still dogged by familiar problems. Their fielding is way below the standards that they have set themselves in the past, their strategy looks flawed and they have continued their unfortunate habit of failing to take advantage of winning situations. England’s batting has considerable depth, with number eleven Ajmal Shahzad averaging twenty-nine in first class cricket, but even so a side which has the opposition needing fifteen from two overs with eight wickets down should win more often than not. Brett Lee, the experienced spearhead of the attack, leaked eleven runs from a dismal nineteenth over and not even Shane Watson’s excellent last over could pull the game back.

The obsession with pace looks outdated. Tait and Lee conceded eighty-one from their eight overs and both conceded unhealthy numbers of runs at the end of the innings, with Tait suffering the ignominy of being swatted for six by Woakes. The successful bowlers in Twenty20 cricket have tended to be medium pacers or slow bowlers and while Tait can be devastating on his day he can also be a liability. International batsman aren’t especially bothered by pace, rather they are discomfited by movement and by bowlers who bowl awkward lengths. Like Mitchell Johnson, Tait’s action has too many flaws in it for him to be consistently effective and Australia may want to re-think their strategy for future matches.

For England, Ian Bell looked impressive at the top of the order, although he did benefit from a horrible dropped catch first ball, Kevin Pietersen hit the ball very hard and provided some startling momentum early in England’s innings and Eoin Morgan continued to impress – it is a measure of how far he has come that both he and England’s supporters will be disappointed that he didn’t go on to finish the job. Chris Woakes, though, deservedly captured the headlines – Andy Flower is said to be very impressed with him as an all round cricketer with a view to getting him involved in the test side sooner rather than later and it’s easy to see why: his bowling was decent without being spectacular but his batting showed both skill and a sound temperament, as did his very relaxed post match interview. He could become a very significant player for England, but they are in the happy position of being able to ease him into the side. The future looks bright.