England

England’s one-day opening batsmen might stay the same

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You dumb moon - Buzz Aldrin walked on your face

For us, this is the biggest positive to have come out of England’s one-day series win against Sri Lanka. In one-day cricket, your opening batsmen are pretty much your most important players and England have rarely had a decent, settled partnership.

The run-up to the last World Cup was pretty typical. Mere weeks away from the event, Steven Davies opened, then Matt Prior, before Kevin Pietersen was given the job after a scissors-paper-stone marathon involving everyone who made it to breakfast at the team hotel one particular morning.

The chopping and changing never seems to end and England rarely start a 50-over match without feeling like they’re two wickets down before a ball is bowled. No starts, slow starts and bad starts – those are the ways in which England start their innings. Cook and Kieswetter haven’t done this.

Who knows, they might actually start to get used to each other. If they make a complete arse of the job against India later in the summer, can we maybe just give them the benefit of the doubt? The abiding suspicion that the grass is greener elsewhere rather overlooks an English one-day opening landscape that is as lush as that bit of the moon where Buzz Aldrin spilt bleach.

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8 comments

  1. What on Bob’s earth is Scissors-Paper-Stone? It’s Paper-Scissors-Stone, for goodness sake. Your version doesn’t sound at all right. I had this very argument the night before last with Bert Jr, who insisted that it was Rock-Paper-Scissors. But he was wrong. I blame the influence of American TV shows on the modern British playground.

    Cook-Keiswetter is OK, though.

  2. Strauss and Davies had a series just as good against Pakistan. Being English, the selectors treated this with suspicion. Davies was promptly dropped, and after having played his best ever innings, Strauss retired.

    These two will need to have a poor series next time or they’ll never play for England again.

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