Pakistan tour finally comes to an end
I for one am quite pleased for this tour to end. It seems like it’s gone forever. This is most likely due to the long summer of cricket that has been played, which over the last year has included Pakistan, India, Sri Lanka and Pakistan again, with varying levels of success. And I suppose blogging the whole bally lot of it is bound to make it drag on a bit.
So with England’s second win on the trot, the one-day series was levelled at 2-2 and across the face of it is probably a fair result. Maybe not. Pakistan were by far the better team and England scraped through by the skin of their teeth (again). The boys did look a lot better in the final couple of matches, with two fairly convincing wins, but it was, once again, too little too late.
Many odd things have arisen out of this, and of course, the spirit of the tour will be muddied by the ball-tampering affair at The Oval. That is yet to be completed, with a “trial” for Inzamam-Ul-Haq set for the 27th of this month. It was a shame that Bob Woolmer blamed his sides demise on it:
“Coming back from a terrible week to play so well in four games - including the Twenty20 - took a lot of energy and it finally petered out. There was no fuel left in the tank - it’s been a big emotional drain. It was tougher to bat in the morning than the afternoon,” Woolmer added. “Saying that, we bowled beautifully and when suddenly we had a bit of a sniff of getting England out, the boys showed what they can do in those situations. We are disappointed because we had a pretty good chance to win the series. We played well in the Twenty20 and the first three one-dayers but failed to continue that. But we’re not going to make excuses and say we were tired after a long tour - England played the better cricket in the last two games.”
Sounds like you’re making excuses to me, Bob. In fact, that’s EXACTLY what you were saying. Perhaps the benefit of the doubt is in order, particularly as an end of tour would normally be marked by getting hideously pissed. There won’t be any of that until the scandal is cleared up.
England will take plenty away from the one-day series, and will feel the Summer was overall quite successful. We’ve long known that the one day side was pants, highlighted by the 5-0 drubbing from Sri Lanka. So to win two games against possibly the best one day side in the world is an achievement for the new look side. Strauss has a good record as captain, even if he’s not yet totally convincing. And he needs to work on his speeches too… “Look, we looked at the boys, looking at the looks from the onlooker and look, we looked.” Listen out.. Sajid Mahmood got a token morale booster in the form of man of the match, even though he was shite for the rest of the series. I hope Trescothick has his feet up and is resting and that he doesn’t end up on “Celebrity Fire Eating”.
Ultimately, though, everyone will want to let memories of this tour quietly fade away and look forward to getting the ICC Champions Trophy out of the way and get to the Main Event - The Ashes.
Tags: andrew-strauss, England, icc-champions-trophy, One-Day-cricket, pakistan, Stumps, The-AshesRelated Stories
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