Sunday, August 31, 2008

England ODI Victory, 4-0!

Today saw England face South Africa at Lord's in the fourth ODI. It is pretty much a dead series in that England have won and South Africa seem to appear to have given up. The match was greatly interrupted by rain and sadly i could only see a few overs of it as i was playing today myself (scoring a half century so perhaps not so bad!)

The start having been delayed to rain and then rain throughout the South Africa Innings, batting first, meant they could only bat 32.1 overs making 183 for the loss of 6 wickets with a great innings of 74 by Gibbs (so i am told, having not seen it myself). Further rain and Duckworth Lewis intervetion gave England the target of 137 from 20 overs; to them that probably didn't sound too hard, especially with recent form of both them and South Africa (or lack of in their case). For the loss of only 3 wickets they ended up doing it relatively easily, even if it did come down to the last few overs - Shah batted well for his 44*, as did Flintoff for his 31*; these two finishing off the fourth ODI giving England victory.

The rain is always a pain in the backside with cricket and this summer has seen some terrible weather in England. As mentioned previously Pro40 has been greatly affected, but this was clearly a match where rain will have dampened the victory for England, but all the same a victory is a victory.

Taking the series to 4-0 in to the last game at Cardiff means that England have only one match to win to give them the ICC rank of second best in the world; whether that truly respresents the team is questionable as this is a new era and just the start of it, perhaps even just the honeymoon period of it? Who knows - we can only hope and be the loyal England fans we are, over the last decade the team has gone through a lot, great highs and GREAT lows. Personally i say bring on the next test series and lets see how we do there, real cricket for a real challenge - good luck to them, just the small issue of all that bloody money over in the West Indies to deal with too; silly stuff really.

Fingers crossed for a Cardiff victory!

Saturday, August 30, 2008

Pro40 News

Obviously i cannot cover everything going on in the Pro40 competition at the moment as a lot of cricket is being played but several matches really caught my attention and were a good watch in the past few days or so.

Today Worcestershire took on Gloucestershire in the Pro40 competition. The highlight of this match really was Steve Davies innings of 119, continuing his rich vein of form in this competition and his marvelous half century against Somerset earlier in the week.

Somerset have been batting well with Trescothick averaging in the 80's in the competition, like Steve Davies, with his massive 183 the other day against Gloucestershire. I'm keeping my eye on Somerset at the moment as another keeper/batsman with promise (like Steve Davies) is Kieswetter, their 20 year old who followed up a beautiful century against Gloucestershire with a great half century against Worcestershire - he hits the ball hard and is great behind the stumps.

The Pro40 competition has been good this year despite great interuptions from the rain we've had in England - runs are being scored by the truck load and matches are going down to the wire, a love it!

England One Day Triumph

Having lost the four match Test series to South Africa 2-1 England have regained some pride and taken victory in the five match ODI series winning the first three matches. After a relatively close first match England took South Africa apart in the second winning by ten wickets, then in the third showing another great performance - Flintoff getting his second fifty in as many matches, Bell also reaching the 70's and Patel taking a well earned five wickets; the first English spinner to do so since Ashley Giles back in 2001.

Matt Prior continued to do well but as is common with him he got out having got a start. It was disappointing to see KP go for only five but no one is perfect, after his great innings in the first ODI he can be forgiven of course! For the third game in a row an all round good team effort; i feel slightly sorry for Luke Wright at the moment, a great player who is being under used in both batting and bowling departments in my opinion.

Well done England, i look forward to the remaining two matches, the first of which is tomorrow at Lord's.

Welcome

Hello and welcome to The Popping Crease, a new cricketing blog. I am a keen cricketer in my teens and have been playing cricket since the age of 4 or 5 and following it intently. I am a huge England fan and follow their every move. Surrey are my favourite county team but i will watch as much county cricket as i can.

I have started this blog to spread my knowledge and love of cricket to as many people as possible, to spread cricketing news and my views on that news. I hope you enjoy my blog, please do not hesitate to leave comments or e-mail me.

Thankyou,

T.