England under UTBash

[DaveK93]

Finn is proving to be quite the bowler for both of us!

[UTBash]

Finn is proving to be quite the bowler for both of us!

Sure is! My bowlers are having a bit of a tough time and seem to have been outperformed but still we're in the series! Just about to start the final test! Wish me luck

[UTBash]

3rd test vs SA

Team News: Bairstow for Broad. De Lange for Tsotsobe (SA).

I accidentally deleted everything I wrote up til day three so the first three days will be vague...

We won the toss and batted.

Day 1, 2 and 3
We reached 489 all out early on the third day and had South Africa 8 down by the end of day three, some way off passing the follow on mark.

Day Four
Perfect start for us as we bowled them out for 282 and enforced the follow on. We could smell blood! Swann took 6-50 and carried on his form! We bowled well and SA finished the day on 313-5, 106 ahead, we hope for a few early wickets on day five to try and finish the game off and win the series.

Day Five
We lost half the day due to rain which made sure a result wasn't reached. South Africa finished on 382-5 as the game ended as a draw.



Series Result: 1-1 draw.

Batting Award: Mr Strauss once again. Led the way with another great captains knock.

Bowling Award: Graeme Swann, again! A good 6 fer but unable to back it up in the second innings. Maybe the wicket eased up

Stats will follow tomorrow

[GrahamB]

Doesn't surprise me at all to see Strauss and de Villiers starring for their respective countries. They're massive in this game.

[DaveK93]

Doesn't surprise me at all to see Strauss and de Villiers starring for their respective countries. They're massive in this game.

Hopefully Strauss will start to perform well for me soon then!

[UTBash]

Test Series VS SA (STATISTICS)

Top 5 English Batsmen (Runs & AVG)
1. A Strauss - 346 runs @ 69.20
2. K Pietersen - 295 runs @ 59.00
3. J Trott - 260 runs @ 52.00
4. I Bell - 211 runs @ 42.20
5. A Cook - 132 runs @ 26.40

Top 5 South African Batsmen (Runs & AVG)
1. J Kallis - 435 runs @ 87.00
2. J Rudolph - 304 runs @ 152.00
3. AB De Villiers - 256 runs @ 51.20
4. H Amla - 236 runs @ 39.33
5. G Smith - 230 runs @ 38.33

Top 5 English Bowlers (Wickets & AVG)
1. S Finn - 13 wickets @ 41.77
2. G Swann - 12 wickets @ 32.25
3. J Anderson - 11 wickets @ 40.73
4. T Bresnan - 6 wickets @ 69.00
5. S Broad - 3 wickets @ 60.00


Top 5 South African Bowlers (Wickets & AVG)
1. V Philander - 18 wickets @ 23.44
2. D Steyn - 13 wickets @ 37.00
3. M Morkel - 9 wickets @ 44.78
4. L Tsotsobe - 7 wickets @ 43.14
5. G Smith - 1 wicket @ 32.00


Series Awards

Batting Award: Andrew Strauss. He's finally found his Test match form after going away to the first class scene. Scored his 7th first class century of the season in this series and played some big knocks in the last two tests.

Bowling Award: Graeme Swann. He was our best bowler really, most economical and best average.

SUMMARY

We picked up a good world ranking point to move us into 2nd in the rankings. I still think we haven't played our best test cricket yet and know we can do better, which is good really, as we managed to draw with the world number 1 without perfoming to our best. I feel they gave all they had to offer with Philander and Steyn being their stand out players. Rudolph was the surprise. We have a lot more to offer in the bowling department than we have shown thus far. Bairstow struggled in his only innings, reaching 29, however he will probably get another chance in India.

[UTBash]

ODI Squad VS South Africa

I've kept a similar squad to the Australia series, but Tremlett and Bopara miss out this time. Bairstow and Taylor join up with the one day squad for the first time this year.

[UTBash]

South Africa finally play a spinner! I think we match up pretty similarly, but also think we have more depth in our batting.

[UTBash]

1st ODI VS SA

We won the toss and bowled.

Amla and Smith handled the overcast conditions well, putting on 160 in 35 overs before Amla (71) was finally dismissed by Bresnan. Smith decided it was time to have a go when the powerplay arrived, and he personally hit most of the runs as they went 10 an over in these 5 overs. 209-2 with 10 overs left and the South Africans were in a good position. Smith fell when they were 237 from 44.1 overs for a massive 140. With 2 new men in now we needed to restrict them as much as possible. We did this pretty well as their fragile middle order was exposed, they lost wickets but still managed a very good 271-8. 221 runs were scored between 2 batsmen!

We lost the early wicket of Cook for 1, and Trott came in and smashed 40 off 26. After 10 overs though, we were 64-4, with Steyn claiming all four whilst going at 7.6 an over. We had our work cut out with Bresnan and Bell in. It was time for Bresnan to repay me for promoting him. He scored a handy 27 but didn't manage to make a push on. Similarly, Prior made 35 and when he fell we were 167-6, needing 105 from 20.4 overs. The powerplay was our saving grace and we managed to get the run rate under 4 an over in this period. However Bell and Patel fell and we were 237-8. It got worse when Swann went on 239 and we were fearing the worst. But an amazing unbeaten partnership of 33 between Finn (21) and Anderson (10) took us over the line! what a win for us!

Once again a team win and not just individuals for us!


Series State: England lead 1-0 with 4 games remaining.

Batting Award: Ian Bell. Scored at a run a ball and batted almost all the way through.

Bowling Award: Steven Finn. Most economical and took the most wickets, he stood out the most for us.

[UTBash]

2nd ODI Vs SA

Team News: No change for England. South Africa replace Robin Peterson with leggie Imran Tahir. Alviro Peterson comes in for Jacques Rudolph.

We won the toss and batted.

We never really recovered from being 57-5 to make a big total, although we managed to consolidate to a half decent total to give us a chance. Prior top scored with 49 and we reached just 206-8.

Smith and Amla once again came out with confidence, this time putting 105 together. They cruised to a 7 wicket win and I've not much to say apart from that we massively underperformed.



Series State: 1-1 with 3 games left.

Batting Award: Matt Prior. He was the best of an average bunch of scores.

Bowling Award: Tim Bresnan. By far our best bowler but wasn't given much of a chance or support by anybody else, with bat or ball.

[UTBash]

3rd ODI vs SA

Team News: Bairstow replaces Taylor. Robin Peterson replaces Tsotsobe.

South Africa won the toss and batted.

Tsolekile made his maiden international half century as South Africa struggled to 204-7. It was Swann who cause most damage finishing with figures of 4-26, making sure Amla and Smith didn't cause too much damage after putting on 48 in this game.

We once again lost early wickets, and were 42-3 from 10. Morgan and Bairstow consolidated and took us to 170-4 before Bairstow fell for 71. Bresnan and Morgan finished the job easily as we restored our confidence in this third fixture and took a relatively easy victory, a good comeback.



Series State: England lead 2-1 with 2 games remaining.

Batting Award: Jonny Bairstow. He scored faster than Morgan did in this, his 2nd innings under my management.

Bowling Award: Graeme Swann. He took apart their top order early on to put the pressure on from the 10th over.

[UTBash]

4th ODI VS SA

Team News: No change for England. Tsotsobe in for Tahir for SA.

We lost the toss and were put in to bat.

We started off well and were 68-1 from the first 10, Cook the only man to go. Trott and Bell were 2 of 4 half centurions as they took the score to 108 before Bell was out. Despite a small stumble, leaving us 149-5, Bairstow and Prior passed the fifty mark aswell and Patel played a supporting role making 29 not out at the end. Our hard hitting approach paid off as we reached 289-6. Steyn was carted around for 82 from his 10.

Amla went first ball and this gave us a massive boost. Graeme Smith continued his form and all he needed was one real supporting innings and they would've probably cruised to victory. No South African batsmen managed to set themselves in the way he did. The 3 that passed 20 were striking at over 100 but those under were very slow and wasted balls. We secured a 50 run win easily in the end and the series.



Series State: England lead 3-1 with 1 game left.

Batting Award: Matt Prior. Helped us finish the innings off to take us to a very good score.

Bowling Award: Tim Bresnan. It may look like i'm being biased but his 8-1-38-2 is better than Jimmy's 6.3-0-37-2.

[UTBash]

5th ODI VS SA

Team News: 4 changes for the final game. Kieswetter, Hales, Taylor and Broad in. Cook, Trott, Morgan and Anderson out. Tahir in for R Peterson for SA.

We won the toss and batted first.

An average innings. Kieswetter and Bell batted decently at the start of the innings. We never really managed to kick on despite another good Bairstow knock in the middle.

It was the Graeme Smith show once again as he passed 100 for the 3rd time in 5 innings. Amla put 136 on with Smith and they were the only batsmen to score some real runs, but it was enough when chasing the smallish total we set. We bowled well but didn't get enough runs. Broad went for 22 off his 10 and impressed me.



Series Result: England win 3-2.

Batting Award: Jonny Bairstow. The youngster did well once again and is staking a claim to be included in the world cup.

Bowling Award: Stuart Broad. 10-1-22-1, very good figures!

[UTBash]

ODI Series VS SA (STATISTICS)

Top 5 English Batsmen (Runs & AVG)
1. I Bell - 258 runs @ 51.60
2. J Bairstow - 189 runs @ 63.00
3. M Prior - 151 runs @ 50.33
4. J Trott - 101 runs @ 25.25
5. T Bresnan - 100 runs @ 25.00

Top 5 South African Batsmen (Runs & AVG)
1. G Smith - 455 runs @ 113.75
2. H Amla - 224 runs @ 44.80
3. T Tsolekile - 85 runs @ 42.50
4. AB De Villiers - 83 runs @ 20.75
5. J Kallis - 71 runs @ 14.20

Top 5 English Bowlers (Wickets & AVG)
1. S Finn - 8 wickets @ 25.50
2. T Bresnan - 8 wickets @ 30.25
3. G Swann - 7 wickets @ 31.29
4. J Anderson - 5 wickets @ 40.00
5. S Patel - 4 wickets @ 60.00

Top 5 South African Bowlers (Wickets & AVG)
1. D Steyn - 12 wickets @ 24.83
2. V Philander - 8 wickets @ 28.62
3. I Tahir - 5 wickets @ 26.00
4. M Morkel - 5 wickets @ 41.20
5. L Tsotsobe - 3 wicket @ 60.00


Series Awards

Batting Award: Ian Bell. Turning into a dangerous aggressive opening bat for us in the shorter format. His strike rate in this series was 108.

Bowling Award: Graeme Swann again! Most economical and just one behind leading wicket taker for us.

SUMMARY

Another one day series where we've showed no fear, batting aggressively. We'll look to carry this into the T20 series and world cup.

[UTBash]

T20i Series vs SA Squad

Just one change from the winning one day squad. Matt Prior misses out to allow Simon Kerrigan to display his talent ready for the upcoming world cup.