Don't panic yet if you're an England fan
It's always worrying when a team fails to defend 333 but despite sliding to their fifth defeat in six against Australia Lawrence Booth, writing in the Wisden Crickete r blog, insists there is still hope.
Sahil Dutta
25-Feb-2013
It's always worrying when a team fails to defend 333 but despite sliding to their fifth defeat in six against Australia Lawrence Booth, writing in the Wisden Cricketer blog, insists there is still hope.
All, weirdly, is not lost. By piling up 333 against an attack in which Australia’s big three seamers – Brett Lee, Shaun Tait and Mitchell Johnson – produced the combined figures of 25-1-168-4 – England at least answered some questions about a batting line-up that had been curiously frail in three of the previous five games.
The sentiment is echoed by Andy Bull, in his entertaining Spin newsletter in the Guardian.
As hangovers go, this is a bad one. England look shot. Spent. Burnt out. They have a thick layer of grey fuzz on their tongue, and their bloodshot eyes seem to be sitting above deep, saggy bags of pallid flesh.
Meanwhile in the same paper Rob Bagchi looks at Eoin Morgan, the star who England's ODI fortunes seem to rise and fall on.
It has been such a shame to see Eoin Morgan struggling in the first five one-day internationals of this gruelling marathon series in Australia because over the past five years for Ireland and then England he proved himself a master "finisher", a true heir to the punchy prototype Neil Fairbrother and his team-mate in toil, Paul Collingwood.
Sahil Dutta is an assistant editor at ESPNcricinfo