Australia Retain their Trophy and England Fluff it Again

Well the England cricket team seems to enjoy making us think that they could actually become a good One Day team, just to then throw in a ridiculously poor performance and get knocked out of the competition despite beating both the pre-tournament favourites of Sri Lanka and South Africa.

It all started badly against New Zealand as we lost the last group game which meant that we would have to face the Winners of the other group and after Australia beat Pakistan in their last group match it meant that after a 7 match series, which we lost 6-1, again we had to face Australia.

On a pitch that was supposed to be the best batting pitch of the whole tournament England won the toss and batted first and after a poor start reached 100 for the loss of 6 wickets, only Tim Bresnan and Luke Wright managed to get any runs and in the end we could only muster a score of 257 All Out, Bresnan the highest scorer with a composed knock of 80 of 76 balls.

Hope was there as Graeme Onions removed Tim Paine in the first over but from then on it was all Australia as both Shane Watson and Ricky Ponting hit centuries as they chased down the target finishing on 258-1 with over 8 overs to spare. In the other Semi Final things were a lot closer as New Zealand edged out Pakistan by 5 wickets to progress through and meet Australia in the final.

The final again was a one sided affair with New Zealand posting a meagre 200-9 off their 50 overs with Australia chasing it down whilst losing only 4 wickets, with Shane Watson again the hero hitting 4 maximums in a brilliant innings of 105 Not Out off 129 balls, although he was dropped by Wicket Keeper Brendan McCullum when he was on just 15 which could have made all the difference.

So that brings us to a break in the Cricket Season with the next England game being the tour to South Africa which starts on the 20th November with the First One Day International, but I will still be blogging and next week we will be looking at the winners and losers of the County Cricket Season 2009.