England’s senior batsmen crumble against http://www.senore.com/Cricket/Western-Australia-c865
England most certainly were not expecting a rough second day against Western Australia when they came out to play. Having done considerably well on the first day, they must have been thinking to run over Western Australian’s side in a jiffy.
None of the top-order batsmen were able to score freely in front of the robust Western Australian bowlers. As England were in trouble during the morning session after giving away wickets cheaply, slipping to three wickets for just twenty-seven runs while
chasing 242 runs.
Then came the much awaited arrival of Kevin Pietersen, who brought a halt to the falling wickets and stood his ground for quite some time. Pietersen was playing the ball nicely in his first outing in Australia and scored fifty-eight runs indicating that
his form with the bat is returning.
Earlier, before coming over to Australia, Petersen had rushed back to http://www.senore.com/Cricket/Graham-c60529 Ford, who coached Kevin as a youngster. Seemingly the advice of Ford has paid off and Kevin is on his way to recovering his lost form. But
other than Pietersen, the rest of the senior batsmen failed to give an impressive show with the bat.
After the dismissal of Petersen it was then the effort of the tail-enders Stuart Broad (53 runs off 48 balls) and Graeme Swann (37 off 25), that stopped Marcus North’s boys from annihilating the visitors. At the end of the days play Western Australia led
by 128 runs with 9 wickets remaining. The English bowlers will have to give an impressive performance by bowling the Western Australian side quickly in order to give their batsmen a fighting chance to chase the target.
Paul Collingwood, who has been phenomenal for England with the bat, needs to shine soon before the Ashes, because he is the key batsman, who can take the English to victory. The classy middle order batsman has the ability to score big runs when they are
needed against any opposition in the World.
Another man to watch out for is the English skipper, Andrew Strauss. He needs to score some big runs before he gets to bat against Ricky Ponting’s eleven. Whenever he gives a good start while opening the batting, England always end-up scoring huge totals.
Strauss should be pretty sure that in order to beat the Australians he and his batsmen need to put huge totals on the board.
This start is definitely not what England were looking for, such a lack lustre performance by the English batsmen leads one to think that if a club side can cause problems for the tourists imagine what the Australian national side will do once the Ashes
gets underway.
Even though Ricky Ponting’s side is not in the best form, they can still be a formidable side and the English tail-enders can’t always manage to bail out the team once the batsmen have failed.
The senior batting order needs to take responsibility, and the sooner they get the hang of scoring big totals the better, otherwise they might lose the best chance they have in defeating the Australians in Australia.
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