Excellent chase from SL, and been thinking how it went wrong today for England. Of course there's the usual debate that will rage on about Bell, Cook and Trott as a top three, even Cook by his own admission in the after match interview suggesting his struggles today perhaps cost England around 20 runs. But we had a very decent platform, unfortunately none of the top three could make a significant match winning total and so it was down to a Morgan or a Buttler or as it turned out, albeit a tad late, a Ravi Bopara to really up the run rate. These guys won't always come off when they're going in with only a few overs left, had they done so we'd have probably made around 320. It's not like the top three were utterly sluggish, they were ticking along at just over five an over when Trott was out. I don't think there was a massive fault with the batting, or speed of it today.
Bowling wise, there was no reverse swing about, not helped by a ball change after 20 overs or so when they'd been working hard on it. We still lacked a genuine threat when the partnerships were set, Sanga and Jayawardane had a period where we really couldn't stop them scoring and they were comfortably milking 6/7/8 an over. Can we be a bit more aggressive with our field placings to stop these ones and twos ? We do have Steve Finn waiting in the wings who on today's performance would have been more penetrative than Stuart Broad, but that's a hindsight selection. More than likely he will come in for NZ on Sunday. I also thought our fielding was pretty dam good today on the whole.
Huge credit to Sanga though, thought he was superb today, a controlled innings full of typical elegance and ease of strokeplay, showing there is not always a need to bludgeon the ball to the boundary when a timed caress will suffice.
All in all, yes there are areas where we could have done better, but definitely one of those days where we were beaten by a side who chased down a decent total pretty professionally, and by a player who played to his world class capabilities.