England cricket team ready to for Bangladesh and Pakistan tours
England Captain Collingwood returned to London along with his team mates after winning the T20 World Cup in the West Indies. The team is still going through the warm feelings of the win after convincingly beating Australia in Barbados. They are happy because this is the first global trophy that England has won after a gap of 35 years in international cricket. Craig Kieswetter, Eoin Morgan and Kevin Pietersen after performing well in the T20 World Cup, have been asked by England captain Paul Collingwood to maintain the same performance in the next 12 months.
England’s upcoming series will be against Bangladesh and Pakistan at home. England will then travel to Australia to defend their Ashes title that they won in the last edition. T0he ICC 50 over World Cup in February will also test the capabilities of England in the shorter version of the game. Collingwood remarked, "The one thing we want to do is become well and better and if you stop and be happy with what you achieved then you don't move anywhere."
It seems as if the skipper was addressing his team members in order to keep the players on their toes in the coming matches. He was hopeful that with consistent performances like the ones in the West Indies, the team will succeed in winning more silverware in the future.
For the test matches, Andrew Strauss has been selected as the captain of the English team. He will be returning to international cricket after an absence of four months from the International Cricket. Now he has to boost up his capacity to play against Bangladesh for the test match. Collingwood is confident over his performances and is ready the upcoming test matches.
However, performances by Andrew Strauss have been unimpressive in the domestic circuit. The 50-over game that he played in the county season has made it very tough for selectors. The competition for the opening slot rages on between the South African-born duo of Kiesweatter and Michael Lumb – both batsmen who have outperformed Strauss in the county season. However, Collingwood seems to be very positive of his performances as he does not see any pressure on him. He thinks that Strauss is a fantastic leader. Strauss has installed a lot of values and skills in the team along with Andy Flower over the past years. Although Collingwood thinks that the brand of cricket that England played in the T20’s was the main reason why the team won the World Cup.
Collingwood has expressed his feelings by saying that the World Cup will be played on the subcontinent the for which Captain Andrew Strauss and team director Andy Flower will take care of with full responsibility. Collingwood is hopeful of winning the 50-over World Cup in India as well.
Collingwood said, "It's only another 30 overs on top of what we have been playing in the last few weeks so I'm sure that if we can go out with the same mentality we will go out and scare a lot of sides with the way we play."
Flower, on the other side has shown a lot of confidence in Andrew Strauss. Andy Flower is confident that the team is in full-swing and he can see the World Cup in 2011 coming back to England.
Tags: