In Hambantota, they say funny things can happen. And England need something unexpected to happen to their ODI cricket, some jungle juju to reinvigorate a stumbling side
Alan Gardner02-Dec-2014In Hambantota, they say funny things can happen. You might include the creation of a 35,000-seater stadium out in Sri Lanka’s southern boondocks among them. When it comes to far-flung places, the Mahinda Rajapaksa International Cricket Stadium is further flung than most, a rural vanity project named after the president and dropped into the forest, the calls of wild animals echoing beyond the boundary.Pressure is mounting on Alastair Cook•Getty Images
England need something unexpected to happen to their ODI cricket, some jungle juju to reinvigorate a stumbling side. They have not played at this ground before, so perhaps that can help to provide a freshness to their approach – although the heavy downpour that wiped out their pre-match practice for the second time in a row did not bode well for a change in fortune.It would be unwise to imagine that whatever is in the local air will inspire England to toss their plans into the campfire and include, say, Alex Hales and James Taylor in the side. At least not yet. The underperformance of the senior batsmen is the most obvious cause for concern as Alastair Cook bids to end a run of seven defeats in the last eight ODIs but past experience suggests they will continue to back players such as Ian Bell and Eoin Morgan to produce.The pressure on Cook has been almost unrelenting over the past 12 months, aside from the three-Test bounce against India over the summer. It is easy to forget that he is England’s most successful one-day captain, with a win-loss record to stand alongside his most recent predecessors – better than Andrew Strauss and Nasser Hussain, slightly worse than Michael Vaughan. And, as Steven Finn said before the third ODI, Cook should not have to carry the can on his own.World devastated by Hughes death – Finn
Steven Finn said that the cricket world had been “devastated” by the death of Phillip Hughes. Finn played alongside Hughes at Middlesex in 2009, when they were both 20-year-olds, and described him as “a great man”.
“I got to know him relatively well,” Finn said. “It is a very very sad tragedy that has happened and I don’t think there is a cricketer in the world who hasn’t shed a tear for Phillip over the last week.
“I only played with him for six weeks to two months at Middlesex and played against him a fair amount for Australia, but he was an amazing guy. He is going to be sorely missed by lots of people because he touched so many and I know he did to everyone at Middlesex. Everyone has been in a real bad place about what happened and everyone is really sad about it, particularly myself.”
England’s third ODI with Sri Lanka will be played on Wednesday, coinciding with Hughes’ funeral in Australia. The ECB is expected to send a representative to a later memorial service in Sydney and Finn said the players would get on with the game and pay their respects when they could.
“I’d imagine anyone who is playing cricket anywhere around the world who had come across Hughesy in any shape or form is still trying to come to terms with it,” he said. “It still feels very surreal what has happened and the funeral is on Wednesday and everyone will step aside and think about him and pay their respects in their own way. I know everyone in the England dressing room will do. And it is important we do that because we’ve lost a great man.”
“Look, we’ve had two games of cricket over here and we’ve had two innings and Alastair is not the only one who has struggled for form in the team,” Finn said. “The pressure on him is a little unjust at the moment. We’ve still got five more games of cricket to go out here. Everyone in the dressing room fully supports him. He is an incredibly impressive man to be leading us and we are most definitely behind him.”It is as much Cook’s stubbornness – his “inner steel” – that has made him a lightning rod for criticism. While doubts about his suitability as a one-day opener will persist until he produces a significant score – it is nearly two-and-a-half years since his last century – it is also true that very few of his players are taking matches into their own hands. Even then, as with the efforts of Moeen Ali and Ravi Bopara in the first match in Colombo, that does not guarantee victory.Between them, Cook, Bell and Morgan have made three half-centuries, with a top score of 56, in 32 innings since the start of England’s home season, when Peter Moores took over as head coach. In the same period, only four times has a bowler achieved a four-wicket haul – one of them against Scotland in a game reduced to 20 overs – with the most recent being Chris Woakes in the India match at Cardiff in August.Finn has only played four times since returning from almost a year in a peculiar wilderness all of his own but he issued a strong call for the team to start producing.”I think we need to keep showing balls. I think we need to front up and get out there and face everything that is put in front of us,” he said. “If we can bat the way we did in the first ODI, that is a great template for us moving forward and as bowlers we need to adapt to conditions better. In fact as a team we need to adapt better.”That is something we can keep improving on and working on. It is about being smart when you’re out there on the pitch and training smart beforehand for the conditions you’re going to face. We are definitely moving in the right direction.”England went backwards during Saturday’s eight-wicket defeat, after the initial encouragement provided chiefly by Moeen in the first rubber. While it could be said that succumbing to spin on a slow Colombo track should not dramatically alter their planning for the World Cup in Australia and New Zealand, the way the team misjudged the situation ought to provide a valuable lesson. “When you go out onto the pitch you have to communicate about the conditions and work out what is a good score and how we’re going to go about making it,” Finn said.England have a maximum of 10 ODIs before they begin their World Cup campaign – assuming the weather in Sri Lanka continues to show clemency – and they must soon start showing signs of life if the tournament is to be confronted with any enthusiasm. Some people head off into remote parts of the world in order to find themselves. It is about time England did so.”If you put it all together we’ve got 10 games, which is 1000 overs of cricket to play until the World Cup so we’ve got a good amount of time to get ready,” Finn said. “It is about increasing as we go through with how good we’re getting, so that when it comes to the beginning of the World Cup, we hit the ground running. We don’t want to be losing games we want to be winning, but if we take everything in our stride now and keep improving then I think we’ll be in a great place come the World Cup.”