One-day positives for England amid chaos

Steve James, in the Daily Telegraph, says it may just be, amid the assorted calamities, that England have achieved their primary aim this summer: improving in one-day cricket.

They would have quite liked to have kept their No1 Test ranking, their Test skipper and their best batsman, and they will be doing their damnedest to retain their ICC World Twenty20 crown very soon, but there has been a clear, if not publicly declared, focus on ODIs this year.

... Ian Bell has simply been a revelation. And Jonathan Trott trots on. Last winter I was having dinner with Atherton, Andy Flower and the team analyst Nathan Leamon. We got on to one-day cricket and Leamon might just have been about to explain England’s unique method of analysing players’ worth in ODIs when Flower piped up with “Don’t tell them that!” I did, though, ask Leamon where Trott scored in that reckoning. “At the top” came the instant reply. When Trott scores runs, England usually win. Enough said.