No 5-0 Whitewash for England!

Not great news but we'll take the 4-0 victory that we were able to achieve. Yesterday England were only able to bowl three overs of the 5th and final ODI of the English Summer. England therefore take the series victory but remain below South Africa in the ICC rankings. If they had won 5-0 they would have over-taken the South Africans.

South Africa made 6 for 1 before the heavens opened once more; unfortunately they stayed open and play didn't re-start. Matt Prior took a second magnificent catch off Stuart Broad (who has bowled beautifully throughout the series) to go with his one handed dive in the second ODI. Sadly England are not now second in the world as mentioned and they remain below South Africa - it makes little sense as we did just take them to the cleaners in this series.

Kevin Pietersen has now had five matches in charge, five victories; four ODIs and one test match. His captaincy has looked great, a different style to the relaxed/laid back Michael Vaughan, a fresh new approach to captaincy that looks set for the future. I know full well that he will make mistakes and hard times will come, especially in India later this year, but he has started as well as anyone could hope for and has not let anyone down; he treats the players well, he knows how to get them to perform, his mind is constant cricket and he's even good at attracting players back to the big scene. Steve Harmison has come back with a bang under KP and rumours say that Simon Jones (Ashes 05 hero) is the next target despite his present recovery phase following injury.

England did great, KP did great and long may it continue. Tonight i drink to England and the fine job they have done. Others, Aussies in particular, may disagree with my view on KP but let me say this; what team in the world would not pick Kevin Pietersen as their number 3/4 batsmen (the answer is no one is stupid enough to not have him in their team, he's WORLD CLASS).

Also in the news; Surrey will not benefit from the bowling of Shoaib Akhtar for the remainder for the season due to Visa problems. Surrey have been appauling and this attempt at some form of a recovery has failed before it even started, not that it would necessarily have been succesful with Shoaib's record.

Once again, well done England! (5-0 would have been nice but oh well!)

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!

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.