England Vs Sri Lanka

The thing with SL is that always fight. It is hard to say the same of England at times. The shoulders drop, the chat in the field stops and the game runs away from them. This game, however, was different. I have to say that the England performance in the field was the best I have seen in this competition. To restrict a team like SL to 235 is a great feat. And to bowl them out is massive. But...(there seems to always be a but when talking about and England performance)...as I said in my previous post, there is trouble at the top.

If you had offered Virgil 235 all out and a decent(ish) pitch to bat on he would have bitten your hand off. So what went wrong? First we need to look at the top order. The general consensus is that you put your best suited batsmen in first. Ok, so why isn't KP opening? He is certainly in form and obviously a class above Joyce. Why not open with him and Strauss? Then Virgil, Freddie and Bell. Leave Collingwood & Bopara as pinch-hitters down the order. When batting is tough England have a middle-order that withdraws inside their shell. I know that when I play at the weekends if we are facing a bowler who is taking the pace off the ball and restricting runs then the thing to do is to take them on. Hit them out of the bowling attack. But once again we saw part-time spinners like Jayasuriya and Dilshan hold us up. Things need to change. Virgil needs to find form. I know he has a good record batting against Australia but stats won't help on Sunday. Drop Joyce (for now - we will need him later) call up Strauss. Anderson doesn't look on top of things so bring in Stuart Broad - who really should have played from the start.

Sunday is a must-win. We know how to beat these guys. We just need to step up our game.