Strauss relieved at end of tumultuous summer of cricket
The five match ODI series between England and Pakistan ended with a comprehensive win for the hosts at the http://www.senore.com/Cricket/Rose-c86842 Bowl in Southampton.
With it the match brought to an end one of the most absorbing yet controversial summers of cricket at the home of one of the most widely followed sports in the world.
English captain, Andrew Strauss was a relieved man after winning the series, which followed the win in Test and T20 series for his team, amid the on-field action the series provided fireworks off the field as one controversy after
another rocked the game.
There was more to follow at the end of the Southampton match as the English paper claimed that fast bowler Shoaib Akhtar was found tampering with the ball during the English innings.
However, the umpires officiating in the match as well as the match referee have not reported any untoward incident, which clearly proves that the host media had a vendetta against the tourists and were h**l bent upon disturbing them
in every possible way.
Strauss felt that the match was a big one for his team and they were elated with their wonderful performance especially after the unnecessary media attention that surrounded the last match.
"It was a huge game of cricket really", he said. "It's been a very tough series at the end of a long summer. We've been to some pretty unpleasant places as a team over the last few days, and we've had to show a lot of unity and togetherness.
We came out today determined to finish the series on a high, and you could see how much it meant to us when the final wicket went down.
"Motivation wasn't a problem for us, we were absolutely determined to win this game," he added. "The Lord's game was a tough one to play, and I thought [the guys] were tremendous to come through it in the way they did, but to have
gone from 2-0 up to 2-2, we wanted to get something out of this series."
He added that his team were ready for the decider and knew they could not afford to lose the big match after surrendering a 2-0 advantage with back to back defeats at The Oval and Lords.
The http://www.senore.com/Cricket/Middlesex-c817 opener praised the performance of Irishman, Eoin Morgan, who stroked a brilliant ton to help his team claw back into the match after they lost three early wickets against a rampaging Shoaib Akhtar.
"We had to switch on pretty quickly, and make sure we came out in exactly the right sort of mind-set today. It wasn't an easy game to play. Batting wasn't that easy first up. We had to get a competitive total - and for a while there,
it looked like we were going to struggle to do that. But Morgs' innings was an outstanding one and put us in a good position to finish them off".
Strauss also stressed on the international cricketing community and the governing body of the game, the ICC, to get to the depth of the match and spot fixing scandal that threatens to bring a bad name to the game.
He was left fuming after the Chairman of http://www.senore.com/Cricket/Pakistan-c755 Cricket Board claimed that he was informed by certain bookies that the English team was involved in match fixing and threw The Oval match, where they sensationally collapsed to lose
by 23 runs.
Later the ECB asked for an unconditional apology from the former test cricketer and PCB Chairman, and threatened legal action if he failed to submit one.
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