Mind out! This England team is reversing.
Beep beep beep. Despite the veritable moratorium having been opened up all over England’s sorry arse, which promised to figure out exactly went wrong during this tour, England still managed to dip further into their depression by getting stuffed in the first one-dayer, reinstating Micheal Vaughan as captain and opening batsman, and to cap it all off lose Kevin Pietersen for the rest of the tour thanks to a Glenn McGrath-induced broken rib. In fact, KP’s 82 was about the only sanity in England’s performance, as Vaughan looked out of sorts with a bat in his hand and was unable to work any magic with a confidence-lacking bowling attack.
Vaughan’s recall to the side feels as dirty as Ashley Giles’ recall earlier in the tour. Both players were horrendously out of form, neither had played any decent cricket for year and both were struggling with injuries. Perhaps there is not a better captain in the country at the moment, but arguably the captain is still a man in the XI and on his current form there’s no way he would be playing. Not that the entry requirements for England’s one day side are particularly high, but there are at least better players than Vaughan. So the question is whether Vaughan can make his impact as captain and hope his form picks up. My gut feeling is no, and he’ll be out of the side soon due to a recurrence of his injury.
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1 opinion for Mind out! This England team is reversing.
SixandOut.net - The International Cricket blog » Vaughan out; Flintoff captain
Jan 17, 2007 at 7:35 pm
[…] What was I saying about this team being in reverse? No sooner was Michael Vaughan back in the team after being out through injury, he is again back out of the team through injury - apparently he’s torn his hamstring. Now, I know that “tearing a hamstring” tends to sound considerably worse than it really is and nowadays modern physiotherapy practices can have him up and dancing in no time at all, but in this instance he won’t be fit for this Friday’s match against Australia and England have renamed Andrew Flintoff as captain. Once again I’m struggling to comprehend the decision of the selection panel. It seems the decision was made more to to not hurt Flintoff’s feelings other than anything else. He has already demonstrated that a) he’s a rubbish captain and b) as captain his own performances suffer and so, it seemed like a no-brainer that the captaincy would go to Andrew Strauss. […]
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