Richard
Cricket Web Staff Member
Thanks to all these bloody Kiwi quickfire posters... ...It's certainly the worst England performance, catching aside, that I've come across for a very long time indeed. By that, I mean taking into account the supposed quality of players available, standard of opposition and playing conditions. I ca't be arsed to check the last few pages, but I hope no-one's gone down the 'lets blame the selctors for chopping &chaging the side' line. Apart from Ambrose, the guys who didn't perform have played a heck of a lot of test cricket and have virtually been fixtures in the side. As ever with English cricket, compacency begat underperformance, which in turn begat abject surrender, and now we're looking well and truly stuffed yet again.
As I said here (recommend you read that post TBH, and my few before it ), I think the most accurate way to put it would be "taking into account the assumed standard of opposition". What pretty much everyone in this corner of the Atlantic seems to have neglected to notice is that New Zealand performed a damn sight better than pretty much everyone from over here was expecting.
Honestly, some of our performances in the summer of 2001 were worse than this one. Don't just look at the names on the card, look at the actual performances FFS.
All something we've thought before, is it not?Astonishly, there are still people with any sort of faith in Harmison. The one good thing to come out of his particular horror show is that it should immediately bring about his departure from the side rather than continuing to hold up the development of someone who actually wants to be there. Surely the fact that Vaughan only gave him four overs as 2nd change in the 2nd innings says it all, despite the captain's vaguely supportive noises in the post match interview.