Australia batters England

By Ted Corbett

MANCHESTER, JUNE 15. Duncan Fletcher, the England coach, on Friday announced plans for a trip to Zimbabwe in October to sharpen its one-day international skills. Although Fletcher has been working on these plans ever since his men lost five out of six one day games in Pakistan and Sri Lanka this winter, the need for such a rehearsal ahead of the 2003 World Cup in South Africa was thrown in sharp focus on Thursday night when it was beaten for a record ninth time in a row after making just 86, the lowest score in its none too glamorous one day history.

Fletcher complains not just about the results - after all Pakistan, Sri Lanka and Australia have for a long time been in the first division of one day cricket while England has mainly languished in the relegation zone - but about the quality of player he has to choose from and their knowledge of the finer points.

That stems for the low priority given to international one day cricket in this country where, until a couple of years ago, three home matches and sometimes a dozen in Australia were the limit of England's ambition.

Now, under Fletcher's direction, England is beginning to see that one day matches are not simply devices for filling grounds but a necessary part of its armour.

It is not just that the games were regarded with disdain, that Sharjah was thought of as a home for rogues and vagabonds and that one captain after another chanted ``who remembers the results of one day matches;'' the rest of the world revelled in the short form of cricket and, urged on by spectators who responded to the thrills, looked on limited overs games as being as important as Test matches.

The debacle against Australia proved the point nicely. Good bowling and some of England's best fielding kept the Aussies to 208 for seven and the strange anomalies of the Duckworth Lewis mathematics after rain meant it had to score 211. After 18 searing overs from Glenn McGrath and Jason Gillespie it was 40 for five, including Alec Stewart and Michael Vaughan out to successive balls from Gillespie for nought apiece. Shane Warne and Andrew Symonds, both claiming exaggerated turn, mopped up the rest.

England had the worst of the conditions, but if the ball had spun sharply in its bowling spell there was no one to exploit the pitch; Robert Croft, its only spinner, was watching from the pavilion and in county cricket there is no one else competing for his place.

So England is out of the competition with only half the matches played which means an Australia-Pakistan final on June 23 and a huge loss of interest in the remaining five matches. (It will, incidentally, be an ideal opportunity for Lord Condon and his team to look into the theory that matches played after a rubber is decided are the breeding ground for the more nefarious tricks of the bookmaking trade. One British sporting newspaper has been issuing what it calls health warnings about such matches and several are already under investigation).

What England's early demise does to crowd figures, team morale and the composition of the side remains to be seen but a tournament that finishes at the half way point loses credibility.

It gives Pakistan the hope of putting up a better performance at Lord's against Australia next week-end than it did in the World Cup final in 1999 and its clash can be expected to provide a high-grade example of the way the limited overs game can be played.

England should be dragged to the match and forced to observe the niceties but whether it will be able to absorb the lessons by the spring of 2003 is still in doubt.

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