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Changes need to be made in One Day Format!

Despite a spirited fightback in the previous two tests, England have lost the one day series in New Zealand but what needs to be done to change their fortunes?

While other countries are effective in the early order batting, for example South Africa with Graeme Smith and the effect Adam Gilchrist had with Australia, England seem to struggle and this is echoed by Jonathan Agnew's blog, " I hope England learn some important lessons from this experience. The first is that, in order to score quickly at the start of the innings, you do not slog.

"Adam Gilchrist does not slog, and neither does Graeme Smith, but Philip Mustard aimed a dreadful cross-batted swipe in the second over and gifted New Zealand a confidence-boosting early wicket."

Also if we are to improve Agnew also argues a change in the batting order needs to occur. He stated: " This brought Ian Bell and Alastair Cook together, and regular readers of this blog will know that I have a problem with these two in the top three. Both are fine batsmen, don’t get me wrong, but they are one-dimensional and incapable of innovation in one-day cricket – it just isn’t the way they bat. There is room for one of them in the same one-day team, but not both, and I think Kevin Pietersen should be batting at number three."(http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/tms/2008/02/england_pay_for_batting_uncert.shtml)

So if England are to improve changes have to be made because the cricket which they are producing is just not suited to the one day game and leaving the inexperienced bowling attack with little to defend.

England's Tour of New Zealand

After it finally seemed England had got to grips with 20-20 cricket, impressively defeating New Zealand on two occasions, you could have been forgiven for thinking the England cricket team were coming into form.

However, just like it was in the World Cup, England have failed to build on the platform theses two victories should have given them, and once again disappointed in the one day format of the game.

After losing the first one day game by six wickets, after some abysmal batting, England were looking to make their mark in the second match of the series, but once again they failed to deliver.

Batting first England looked to be in a good position at one stage being 90-2 but a horrendous batting collapse meant England were all out for 156 on an excellent batting wicket and had it not been for Alastair Cook’s 52 you begin to wonder how bad it could have been.

New Zealand then made the most of the excellent batting wicket with the impressive partnership from Jesse Ryder, who hit 79, and Brendom McCullum, who hit 80 from 47 balls, which meant England suffer their heaviest defeat in the one day game, losing by 10 wickets.

Although New Zealand are the third best team in the world at the one day format, England would have been expecting to perform a lot better than have so far and England captain Paul Collingwood will be certainly looking for improvement especially from the big players like Kevin Pietersen, to give their inexperienced bowling attack a chance to defend a bigger total to win the match.

All in all, England will know improvement needs to made if they are going to compete with teams at the top of the game, but if they don’t stop the silly mistakes such as the three run-outs in this match, they will be punished by teams of the quality of New Zealand and it will be interesting to see how they perform on Friday in the third match of the series.