Leg Side Filth

Paul Collingwood is “very disappointed” at being stripped of the Twenty20 captaincy.

Stuart Broad, his replacement, has said, “It’s a huge privilege to be named England Twenty20 captain and form part of a leadership team that I’ve no doubt will work well together with a great deal of synergy,” craftily using management-speak pablum to repeat himself in the same sentence.

Alastair Cook, England’s new ODI captain, looked like a Chinese water deer in the sights of one of his own shotguns as he proffered some flannel about how his one-day form for Essex has improved even though he hasn’t been a part of England’s one-day side “for a while” – not since March 2010, to be exact.

One can understand Andrew Strauss relinquishing the One Day captaincy and retiring from this form of the game. He, along with Andy Flower, have been the prime movers in England’s recent Ashes success but both men have recognized the need to pace themselves. There is the suggestion that Flower, in extending his coaching contract with England, will be able to sit out selected tours, and Strauss, who will be 38 at the time of the next World Cup, understandably wishes to concentrate on Test cricket and the captaincy job he has performed so admirably.

The message today’s split-captaincy announcements seem to send out is that, with the Test team settled, the 2015 World Cup is now the next item on England’s agenda.

The only problem is, neither of these captaincy appointments is ideal and smack of a makeshift approach because of a lack of other options.

Cook’s form in Test cricket is unquestioned. But for a man who has played only 3 ODIs in the last two and a half years to not only be shoehorned into the team but also given the captaincy sounds like desperation. It suggests that since Cook is Test captain-in-waiting he was the only option.

He may very well turn out to be effective in the opening position Strauss has now vacated – I doubt he will perform any worse than Matt Prior did – but leading the team to victory in one series against Bangladesh hardly suggests a CV with any great depth in the captaincy department.

I have bigger problems with Stuart Broad as England’s new Twenty20 captain.

Cook may have captained England in five matches already; Broad does not even have that.

At the start of today’s press conference, England managing director Hugh Morris referred to Broad’s “leadership credentials”. What those are, exactly, remains unexplained. Broad, while being of undeniable value to an England team in terms of his bowling, will hardly be of much use to his country if he is watching from the sidelines because he has clashed heads with officialdom.

Broad, while earning plaudits for his bowling and batting in the series against Pakistan last year, won himself rather fewer fans with his on-field behaviour, and there were many, myself included, who believed the penalty levied against him for petulantly hurling the ball at Zulqarnain Haider should have been considerably stiffer.

Broad says he has “learned from that” and wants to “set a good example and play the game in the right way,” but I am yet to be convinced.

I’m always wary when it comes to setting up sportsmen as paragons of what examples to the young should be, but it’s the idea that the England management have confused petulance with competitiveness – and worse, leadership potential – that worries me.

Personally, I’d like to have seen Kevin Pietersen given another shot at captaincy – in either format – but despite what KP might say regarding being in large part responsible for England’s renaissance after the removal of Peter Moores (and I’d be inclined to agree with him), the fact that Andy Flower was also in his sights no doubt remains a black mark against him.

So now, England will take on this summer’s visitors Sri Lanka and India with two inexperienced captains, a new ODI opening partnership and a bowler-captain who is rightly praised for his ability to take wickets but not for his maturity or anything that would suggest statesmanship or tactical nous.

This has been brought about because the England management have decided there are no other options: hardly a ringing endorsement for the two new incumbents.

Andy Flower has admitted the appointment of three captains is a gamble – “over the next few years we will see if that works or not,” and referred to it as “the most effective use of our resources”.

Such as they are.

England: you unpredictable, inconsistent, crazy, mad bastard of a side.

I’d come to terms with the fact they’d be going out of the World Cup in the group stages. I was sad but resigned. Hell, I was even taking a leaf from Michael Vaughan’s book and looking for the dreaded “positives”.

Bowlers who needed a rest. A big summer of cricket to prepare for: Sri Lanka in May, India in July. And England still have the Ashes. ODIs – well, who gives a shit about them anyway.

And yet. Part of the deal that comes with being an England fan is you pretend not to care. You are punch-drunk with continual beatings and shambolic performances to the extent where you find solace in criticism. A good rant can be therapeutic. It’s healthier than turning to drink.

And yet somehow we’ve come through all that, and hope – thankfully –  has a habit of springing eternal.

There were a couple of results that needed to go England’s way, but they helped themselves by beating the West Indies in a match which was in turns infuriating, bizarre, topsy-turvy and finally, heart-stopping.

“Do you enjoy captaining this England team?” Andrew Strauss was asked at the post-match presentation. “No,” was his commendably direct answer. Let’s hope England afford Strauss a little more job satisfaction at the Premadasa, where they will face Sri Lanka on Saturday.

And let’s also hope England win the toss, because 66 per cent of the day-nighters that have been played at the ground have been won by the team batting first.

Whether or not James Tredwell and Luke Wright will be retained after their match-winning efforts against the Windies remains to be seen. I’d like to think Strauss’s selection process will be guided more by cold logic than sentimentality, but it would be difficult to drop these two after they saved England from an early flight home.

Nevertheless, Sri Lanka, with dynamic opening duo of Tharanga and Dilshan and double class-act of Sangakkara and Jayawardene, will be the overwhelming favourites. England are more battle-weary than battle-hardened, and while all the quarter-finalists have shown chinks in their armour, England’s looks less like it has chinks in it than it looks composed almost entirely of rusty old frying pans and welded together by some bloke called Dave in a south London chop-shop. Whether this will be enough to see off the likes of Ajantha Mendis, Lasith Malinga and some chap called Muttiah Muralitharan is anyone’s guess – because really that is as accurately as you can forecast an England performance these days.

But, somehow – defying logic, common sense, and the form-book – England have made it this far. Any match from here on could prove to be the final curtain, but given their gloriously roller-coaster campaign, at least they can say they did it their way.

Before that, though, there is much to look forward to. Pakistan versus the West Indies should be gloriously anarchic; we will most likely be waving farewell to the boys from the land of the long white cloud; and Australia will be out for blood against the mighty India in the wake of their defeat by Pakistan and the rumours that say Ricky Ponting’s days as captain are numbered.

It’ll be a surprise if anyone other than South Africa, India, Sri Lanka and Pakistan go through to the semi-finals, but in a World Cup that’s proved vastly more entertaining than its 2007 counterpart, none of this should be regarded as being set in stone.

England have been beaten by Bangladesh and Ireland. They have tied with India.

Graeme Swann’s pissed and moaned about having wet balls, Jonathan Trott’s been criticised for his scoring rate and been blamed for the national debt, global warming and the fact Wagon Wheels are not as big as they used to be, and Kevin Pietersen’s had enough and fucked off home.

If England do not beat the West Indies tomorrow, their 2011 World Cup is over.

It’s all gone horribly wrong. But to be honest, I’m having a real problem getting steamed up about it because that would presuppose I ever thought England had a real chance in this tournament anyway.

Paul Collingwood said the other day only 4 wins stood between England and WC glory. I love you, Colly, with an indecent passion reserved for gritty ginger Northerners, and am mourning what looks to be the last days of your England ODI career, but this is less a case of “cheerful optimism” as “having a fucking laugh”.

It’s not all bad, of course. Eoin Morgan marked his return to the side in the match against Bangladesh with a palate-cleansing 63. A batsman who thinks outside the box and takes the bowling on, it is good to have him back. His compadre in England’s only notable partnership in that match, Jonathan Trott, has proved England’s most consistent scorer, yet still receives criticism – unjustly – from some quarters for not scoring quickly enough.

Aside from that, it is easier to list where England have been woeful.

Jimmy Anderson has not just hit the wall: he has crashed into it full tilt and brought the whole edifice down on top of him. The seemingly endless stream of leg-side wides he bowled at the end of Bangladesh’s successful run-chase was excruciatingly tough to bear for an England fan; it was like watching a man whose foot is nailed to the floor but who has no idea why he is going round in circles. He looks gaunt, exhausted, and a shadow of the bowler he was in the Ashes.

Kevin Pietersen showed signs of starting to gel with Andrew Strauss at the top of the order, and his departure from the tournament to seek an early date with a surgeon to fix a hernia has seen Matt Prior return to the opening spot – with the result being as underwhelming as it was when he was in the role previously. There has been the suggestion that Ian Bell or Ravi Bopara may be pushed up the order.

And it’s not just fatigue that is sweeping through the squad – Stuart Broad is another who has shipped out because of injury, but not before being stricken down by the usual, delicately-termed “stomach complaint” and twice at that, losing 5kg in the process. Within the last couple of days Andrew Strauss and Graeme Swann have been similarly afflicted, and now Ajmal Shahzad as well.

Strauss is recovered, Swann was at training today though not yet one hundred per cent, and Shahzad is a serious doubt for tomorrow. This is a real blow, given that England got the ball to reverse swing at Chennai when they played against South Africa.

The form is dodgy, the omens  – and players – are ill; England have ensured that by failing to string together a convincingly coherent performance with both bat and ball that their fate is not only in their own hands but in those of others.

Ultimately, should day 27 of this World Cup prove to be their last, they will have no one to blame but themselves.

Oh, Bengaluru.

First, you give us a thriller that ends in a tie. Then you give us this.

Kevin O’Brien (big lad, ginger, knows how to hit a cricket ball) out Kieron’d Pollard, out Viru’d Sehwag and eclipsed both Sachin Tendulkar and Andrew Strauss in cracking the finest innings yet seen at this World Cup, and the fastest World Cup ton ever scored, off only 50 balls.

O’Brien fell for 113 and it was left in the capable hands of John Mooney (who also took four wickets) and Trent Johnston to finish it off with 5 balls to spare. Alex Cusack also deserves a mention – his sixth wicket partnership with O’Brien was worth 162 and set Ireland up for the win.

Cue much rejoicing, and probably a fair few sore heads this morning.

This is two matches in a row that England have scored over 300 and failed to win. It’s not the batting that is the problem – though the mini-collapse at the end of yesterday’s innings was slightly worrying – but the fielding and bowling have been beyond diabolical.

Dropped catches, lousy fielding, “gimme” balls served up on a plate for batsmen to paste all round Chinnaswamy Stadium – the daft thing is, they played exactly like this against the Netherlands before raising their game against India. No doubt they’ll pick themselves up, dust themselves down and give an account of themselves against South Africa on Sunday more in line with expectations that usually surround an Ashes-winning team.

Whether it be tiredness, complacency, or a mixture of both: England cannot keep fucking up against, what is, on paper at least, lesser opposition.

Should they make it to the quarters they will not have the luxury of being shit one match and then perfectly up for the challenge the next.

But focusing on England’s failings is to unfairly take away from Ireland’s street-fighting victory. Kevin O’Brien is one tough bastard. He spent one season playing Twenty20 for Nottinghamshire but it didn’t take; before that, though, he was Ireland’s hero in the 2007 World Cup, chipping in with bat and ball and helping his side to a famous win over Pakistan.

This team is up for a fight and they know how to scrap. They were 111-5 at one stage and Strauss admitted “things were looking pretty comfortable”. Not for long. Give Ireland a chance to get back in the game and rediscover the have-a-go hero inside them, and you will be in the shit. They will take you on and if you let them, they will rip your testicles off, and then smear them all round the ground. If you want to help them out with some shitty bowling, and Barnum and Bailey Big Top fielding, well, that’s fine – thanks very much.

But in the great scheme of things this doesn’t mean a heck of a lot when it comes to advancing the cause of Associate cricket in this tournament, certainly not where the ICC is concerned.

I’ll agree, the “minnows” have, based on results, not exactly provided much in the way of an argument to the contrary.

The Netherlands may have given England a scare recently, but they were rolled comprehensively in their match against South Africa today. Kenya seem to have gone backward since making the semi-finals in 2003. Canada and Zimbabwe have had brief moments where they’ve had their opponents on the back foot, but in the unforgiving cauldron of 50 overs against Test-playing nations they have struggled.

The ICC obviously regard the Associates as a diseased limb that needs to be excised from the main trunk of the tournament to maintain its health. They point to criticism of the 2007 event, which was regarded as too long and with too many meaningless matches.

But when you look at the change that has been made for the next World Cup in 2015, this is transparent bullshit. The teams will be reduced from 14 to 10, but this will not mean the tournament will be dramatically shortened – 49 matches will be played this year, 48 in 2015 – so the idea that the tournament will be “streamlined” is patently nonsense.

A sop was thrown to the Associates with the announcement that the Twenty20 World Cup would be expanded to 16 teams in 2012. For most cricketers, though, their ambition is to play Test cricket, still the pinnacle of the sport, and no nation will ever be promoted to Test status on the back of its Twenty20 results.

The international 50-over format is currently the only way Associate nations have of advancing towards Test status. From 2015 that will exist no longer. When the decision to reduce the teams was made back in October of last year, the ICC “announced it had asked its governing council to examine the issue of qualification for ICC global events, as well as opportunities for Associate members to play ODIs, and make recommendations to the board”. So far, nothing has come of this, and one could be excused for thinking this does not seem to rank very highly on the ICC’s ladder of priorities.

What does seem to matter, however, are full stadiums, as little chance as possible of India exiting the tournament early, and a Full-Members-Only Club that is closed to outsiders who constitute too much of a gamble when it comes to providing publicity or ticket sales.

There are those who would say that being bludgeoned into the ground by stronger opposition does the smaller teams no good, that they will learn nothing from being comprehensively outplayed. Sri Lanka’s Mahela Jayawardene disagrees: “The more games they play at this level, the more they will improve. For us, it is always good to have these countries playing in big tournaments. That was how we learned. Hopefully, they will do the same”.

The development and growth of Associate cricket is essential for the sport. In 2015, the ICC has virtually ensured it will be all messed up and with nowhere to go.

Andrew Strauss wasn’t kidding when he said England tend to raise their game against bigger opponents than the Netherlands. Only trouble is, he may as well have added, “We are England, so nothing is ever that that straightforward”.

It seems appropriate that this game against India would end in a tie, given the similarities between the two sides with both bat and ball. Sehwag gave three chances in the first over and then got out for 35; Tendulkar, making history yet again, made his 5th World Cup ton (his 98th international hundred – age shall not dim him, the years not weary him). India were past 300 before Tim Bresnan took 3 quick wickets and they were all out for 338.

In England’s reply, they were level on runs with India after five overs. Pietersen, still working on his strategy as an opener, made 31, while Andrew Strauss played a captain’s innings and then some with a magnificent 158. We were treated to Ian Bell bizarrely playing the Yuvraj role  – chipping in with an aggressive half century and providing able support for his team’s top scorer.

Just when it seemed an England victory was nailed on, and Indian fans were streaming from the ground – the fools – Zaheer Khan steamed in to take three quick wickets and turn the match. A desperate, almighty six from Ajmal Shahzad straight down the ground, two needed off the last ball, and throats being screamed raw at the Chinnaswamy as Shahzad and Graeme Swann ran like Forrest Gump stricken with the shits and sprinting for the nearest khazi. (Which reminds me – get well soon, Stuart Broad.)

All this, and we’re still only in the group stage.

India will be worried by the fact they could not defend 338. Andy Flower, judging by his expression while those around him on the balcony clapped and cheered, will be wondering why the hell England didn’t win.

We are nine days into this World Cup, and while only yesterday I was musing that this tournament has yet to bore me, now, it is properly exciting me.

Is this thing switched on? Why yes. Yes it is.

Before today’s game, Andrew Strauss said of England’s opposition: “The Netherlands have nothing to lose. We need to play smart cricket. You cannot afford to slip up.”

Prescient words by the England captain. With debate already raging about whether the so-called “minnows” of international cricket have a place in the World Cup, the Oranje did indeed play like they had nothing to lose, with star batsman Ryan ten Doeschate batting quite magnificently to make 119 out of an eventual total of 292 and give his team heart.

The slip-up, however was all England’s, and it very nearly cost them.

While ten Doeschate – South African-born, plays for Essex, sadly no desire to qualify for England – gave a wonderful display of beautiful, calculated aggression, England came apart. Jimmy Anderson, finding no swing, allowed frustration to get the better of him and began bowling beamers. A catch that should have been easily taken fell harmlessly to grass between two fielders staring helplessly at each other in wordless blame.

Filth was served up, the short-ball over-used against batsmen quite capable of countering it; Stuart Broad’s two wickets were, in contrast, from deliveries that were full and straight. Michael Yardy was bafflingly left out for Ravi Bopara, who, equally bafflingly, batted in Matt Prior’s erstwhile number six position.

Thankfully, on a pitch conducive to runs and against a standard of bowling at odds with the batting that had preceded it, England got home with eight balls to spare.

This isn’t T20, in which associate teams are more likely to pull off upsets (see Lord’s 2009 between these same two teams), where isolated moments can change the game dramatically and David has a chance to send Goliath crashing.

England had all the time that should have been required to bowl the Dutch out or keep them to a modest total, and perhaps, in truth, they believed they could do so easily. Perhaps it was this underestimation that helped boost Dutch courage and helped ten Doeschate to play with the glorious freedom he has so often shown for Essex.

Whatever the reason, sloppiness infected the fielding side like a virus, and India, England’s next opponent on Sunday, will have been watching this with considerable interest.

The World Cup may have started for England, but it seems they are still to get out of first gear.

Ah, opening ceremonies, god love ‘em.

Synchronized activities involving a local mode of transport; slightly sinister mascot; off-key musical number by a washed-up rock star paying the mortgage; more money than the national debt of Venezuela going up in smoke in a gloriously over-the-top fireworks display to put a merciful end to the cringe-inducing proceedings.

I bloody loathe ‘em. But then there will only ever be one Fatso the Wombat.

More importantly though, now that that’s over, we can concentrate on the meat of the action  – though unfortunately, that comes after the group stages, which Mark Waugh has predicted England will not advance beyond.

This is because England are failing abysmally in giving the impression they know what the hell they’re doing when it comes to 50-over cricket.

“Their form has been ordinary,” Waugh says. Oh, it’s been worse than that, mate. The CB series – well, who gives a rat’s proverbial about some limited overs series after the Ashes? Hang on, there’s a World Cup just around the corner? Thank Christ we were able to leave the country with that little terracotta thingy.

Waugh also helpfully added: “I think Eoin Morgan is a huge loss for them; he’s their best one-day player.”

Ouch. Yeah, y’see, about that… Morgs, trying to be the brave little soldier, insisted it was merely a bruise and played another two ODIs. England decided it was rather worse than that, and decided the stricken digit would need surgery. Last week, Morgan announced on Twitter the injury was not that bad and no operation was needed. “Pretty much healed..will be back sooner than expected!!”

Cue red faces at the ECB and one hell of an own goal all round. Having said this, Morgan’s form in the Australian one-dayers, even allowing for his injury, was someway below his scintillating best. Now, though, the only opportunity he will have to show he is still the one-day side’s most devastating batsman is through injury to a current member of the squad.

But that’s only the half of it. Unfortunately, two batsmen are needed to open; a source of much hand-wringing for England over the years. Matt Prior was the latest poor sap to be “volunteered” for the position of opener, with decidedly mixed results.

In their warm-up match against Canada on Wednesday, Andrew Strauss opened the batting with… Kevin Pietersen. An England spokesman announced just before the match started that this was to be their strategy for the World Cup. Alrighty then!

KP didn’t quite get round to hitting the ignition switch – he was out for 24. But after the boggling in disbelief finally subsided, this move by England makes a bizarre kind of sense (if you discard completely the sneaking suspicion this was an act of knee-jerk desperation of the “We’ve lost Morgs; Matty’s not cutting the mustard at the top of the innings; Jesus, we are doomed” variety).

Pietersen is struggling for runs and confidence. Spin is the factor that will win a World Cup on dustbowls that would test Rommel. Spin, especially of the left-arm variety, has a tendency to make Kevin a bit twitchy. Matt Prior has been a fish out of water at the top – he has never looked comfortable and usually gets out with a rash shot because he feels he has to get the scoreboard moving.

KP opening, however, just might work. He denies he has been given the role of pinch hitter, but after a week in which rumours abounded that he was planning to retire from one-day cricket after the World Cup – eminently plausible but which he denied – this could be the galvanising factor needed to kick-start his comeback, both as regards his talent and his ego.

I love opening batsmen. They are the first in the line of fire, the ones who go over the top, who face everything an angry quick hopped up on aggression can throw at them. It is a challenge tailor-made for Pietersen, and with Morgan absent, something drastic was needed to shake up England’s currently moribund batting. So I’ll be watching this latest experiment with interest.

Pietersen might not have made an immediate impact in his new position, but Matt Prior’s innings of 78 at no. 6 saved England from an even bigger embarrassment than beating Canada by a meagre 16 runs.

This is where Prior should be batting – he is excellent at judging a match situation, responding to it, and saving it. While wickets fell at the other end, he cracked on at a brisk rate to get the England total more in line with expectations that accompany a match against a perceived minnow.

The minnow gave the bigger fish a bit of a scare, though. I confess feel partly responsible for this: before this match started I’d picked Canada as my chosen Associate nation (read: gutsy underdog, not a hope in hell) to support in this World Cup. While Rizwan Cheema was going berserk and scoring 93 out of his side’s eventual 227, it did wearily cross my mind that it was typical that Canada would have one good match, and bloody inevitable that it would be against England.

I’d like to be more optimistic about England’s chances. Maybe that’s a good thing though, as I won’t be disappointed, and I will be able to pen at least a couple of expletive-laden rants about it.

In other, more encouraging news, Leicestershire’s own little Little Master, James Taylor, continues his march towards an England place. Narrowly missing out on a double ton for the England Lions against Barbados, following on from the 96 he made against the Leeward Islands, it is surely only a matter of time.

England’s next warmup match, against Pakistan, is on Friday. It is not against an Associate nation, so England should be okay, though I have the sneaking feeling Pakistan could go on to win the whole damn thing. We will see.

England’s run-chase at Perth ended 57 runs short, with Jimmy Anderson skying a top edge that plopped obediently into the gloves of Brad Haddin. And so this interminable ODI series ended, with a tired whimper of the “please make it stop” variety.

If ever England needed a salutary reminder that Australia are better than they are at the one-day stuff, this was it. But on the evidence of this Chinese water-torture of a series, that really isn’t saying much. While the hosts may have won 6 games to England’s solitary Australia Day victory at Adelaide, the standard of cricket on show from both sides was – with the exception of isolated individual performances – pretty damned excruciating.

In terms of England’s preparation for the World Cup, this series seems to have achieved nothing aside from crippling half the team, muddling team selection, and filling us all – players and fans alike – with a leaden sense of weariness at the prospect of a World Cup tournament that presents more of a chore than a challenge.

And that is just the start of a crazy, fucked-up international schedule more over-crowded than a Mumbai commuter train and dreamt up by some sadistic lunatic at ICC Towers yelling “more cowbell” while manically trying to shoehorn yet another meaningless one-day series into the one or two gaps left on his “Future Tours of Doom” spreadsheet.

I’m as guilty as the next man who, on waking up at some godforsaken time in the morning, wistfully ponders the possibility that there must be a cricket match going on somewhere in the world, and is duly rewarded with the thrill of impatiently stabbing the refresh key on a sporadically-updated scorecard of Ireland vs. an Uzbekistan XI. But then I’m not the one who has to schlep round the world doing this for a living while being spared the odd couple of days reacquainting myself with the wife and kids who have forgotten what I look like before I jet off half way round the world for the next tournament.

It is very easy to react with scorn, as many do (Ian Botham, to name but one) to players’ fears of burnout. “Whining, overpaid bunch of prima donnas”; “playing for one’s country should be a privilege”, etc, etc.

But this is ignoring the bigger picture – one of quantity over quality, of TV rights and quick-fix entertainment, of players burning twice as brightly but only half as long before their ailing, over-extended bodies land them on the international scrapheap, or  – worse still – depriving us of young talent that needs time to bloom, and, in cases of injury, to heal.

Eoin Morgan is a case in point. Disappointing in the series just gone, he will now not play a part in England’s World Cup campaign due to a broken finger sustained during the 4th ODI in Adelaide. That he continued playing must have been not only through the determination to play through any discomfort in the belief the injury was not serious, but surely, it must also have been motivated by the biggest fear a young player can have: that of being dropped from the team. As it turns out, the finger was not merely bruised: he will now need surgery, and Ravi Bopara will take his place on the subcontinent. As Andy Flower said during the announcement: “No one is irreplaceable”.

Morgan aside, the roll-call of England’s injured runs thus: Paul Collingwood (back spasms); Tim Bresnan (calf strain); Chris Tremlett (side strain); Ajmal Shahzad (hamstring) and Graeme Swann (knee and hip). Stuart Broad, whose side strain was not incurred during the Commonwealth Bank series, also faces a race against time to be fit.

Not that Australia have fared much better. Nathan Hauritz and Mike Hussey have been declared hors de combat due to injuries suffered in the ODIs. Hauritz, finally readmitted to the side at Hobart, went down with a right-shoulder dislocation while fielding, and Hussey is recovering from surgery to a hamstring ruptured while batting at Melbourne. Other ODI injuries currently being monitored are Brad Haddin (knee) and Steve Smith (groin).

They at least have the consolation of a rejuvenated Brett Lee and the fact that Ricky Ponting is confident he will be fit (though whether Ponting is still the one-day player he once was is another question entirely).

But for England especially, the prospects of World Cup success look distinctly bleak.

Kevin Pietersen, never backwards in giving his opinion,  has already expressed his dissatisfaction over the over-crowded international schedule, and the elongated format of the World Cup in particular.

“It’s far too long. How can the England team play once and then in six days’ time play again, and then in six days’ time play again? It’s ridiculous but there’s nothing we can do about the schedules. I wouldn’t say we’re going to be knackered because it’s going to be the World Cup and we all want to win this World Cup.”

Knackered, though, they will be. And while Pietersen may try to sound like he is not complaining, it does not exactly give the impression of a team firing on all cylinders and relishing the challenge ahead.

A weary England team arrived back at Heathrow this afternoon. On Saturday, they fly off again, to Bangladesh. While the important fact remains that England have won the Ashes, and that no one will really remember the 6-1 drubbing that followed, it’s the long term consequences to the well-being and success of the international team that will prove the most worrying.

Enjoy those three days on the couch, Kevin. They are the last you will enjoy for some considerable time.

I wouldn’t say the afterglow of England’s Ashes victory has faded, but it’s been tempered slightly by two consecutive losses in this ODI series.

The comedown was perhaps inevitable. England losing two on the trot was not.

After all the joy, the celebration, the glitter cannons, the starry-eyed dream of climbing up the Test rankings, we return to a format at which England are a bit shit.

Not that Australia have been all that great shakes at it either in these two matches, though the results may suggest otherwise. At no time has it been particularly obvious, at Melbourne and at Hobart, that you were watching the no.1 ODI side in the world, and the team that won the Ashes.

Shane Watson won it for Australia in Melbourne; Shaun Marsh, filling in for a hamstrung Mike Hussey, won it for them in Hobart. Both were superb performances. Watson’s knock has, rightly, been hailed one of the great One Day innings, and the inevitable cries of “where has he been?” accompanied Marsh’s century celebrations. There are probably more than a few Australian fans who are hoping Mike Hussey stays stuck in rehab for a bit longer.

Aside from that, it’s mostly been a case of the mediocre versus the barely competent.

England were all out for 184. Their batting was diabolical. Those who performed with the bat at Melbourne failed at Hobart. Steven Davies was dropped in favour of Matt Prior, who coach Andy Flower has decided will keep wicket in the World Cup. Matt Prior went for a duck. What Davies thinks about all this is unrecorded.

There was no way Australia should have been allowed to win with a total of 230. With the exception of Marsh’s brilliant innings, the bar was set low and England still couldn’t get over it.

England’s total batting first at Melbourne was 294 and they didn’t win there, either. The well oiled machine from the Tests, translated to this format with some tweaking, is looking slightly creaky.

It’s true that England are approaching this series as a working laboratory with an eye to selection for the World Cup. So far it’s not really going to plan.

Michael Yardy, picked for the WC squad, sent down dross at Hobart for the most part but ensured ongoing selection confusion by taking two wickets. Chris Woakes, hero of the Adelaide T20, should have played at Hobart instead of James Tredwell. Tredwell is in England’s World Cup squad. The man with the best bowling figures in this match, Chris Tremlett, is not.

Speaking of the World Cup squad, Ravi Bopara must be wondering whether he will ever play for England again, and it looks like management still have no idea what in the world to do with Adil Rashid.

None of this is really filling me with any confidence. Sometimes I wonder whether my growing antipathy towards the ODI format is because England have never been particularly good at it. Perhaps if I was an India fan, I would feel differently.

There are five more matches in this series to go. My patience is running out with these ODIs and there have only been two of them. It would be nice if England could win the next one.

The bloated behemoth that is the World Cup is now slowly heaving its unwieldy corpus over the horizon, blotting out the sun and laying waste to TV schedules and sleep patterns everywhere for the next two and a half months .

God help us all.

Days don’t come much better than this.

This morning:

This afternoon:

These were my two main reasons for coming to Australia: to see the England team make cricket history, and to pay homage at the grave of a man who was cricket history.

It has been an emotional day, and I am very tired.

I am also very happy.

I wonder whether it is even possible to have another day that could possibly be better than this one.