Yes a pretty dismal effort from England yesterday, althoguh great credit for the way they struck the ball so cleanly, must go to Bosman and Smith. England struggled to find their yorkers, and at times were some way from the required length, yet SA barely missed an opportunity to deposit them well onto the grassy hills. From that point on it was pretty much game over. On the England bowlers front, it is difficult to find any that will be pleased with how they bowled.
The two seemingly coming in for the criticism is Saj Mahmood and Adil Rashid. With Rashid, it was obviously going to be difficult coming on to bowl at two set batsmen on a small ground with minimal spin. I certainly didn't think it was a particularly bad decision before the game, with Swann being out, it is always nice to have a spinner, but Smith got hold of him, which can happen in this form, and that was that.
Mahmood, I'm going to continue to support him and hope he improves in the ODI's. It is difficult to judge in this slogfest of a format, and should he be treated with such disdain in the 50 over games then maybe I'll re-assess his ODI credentials. Perhaps too many slower balls for me, I'm aware he does possess a good change of pace, but the SA batsmen were picking him, why try a bouncer at 70mph when you can deliver one in excess of 90mph ?
The batting never really got going, and it was always going to be beyond us to knock that off. Frustrating then that our main matchwinner KP (although a lack of game time may have neutralised his usual threat) did not get in till half the overs were gone, and Morgan, match-winner from the first T20, did not arrive till near the end.
Trott's was a decent innings, but we needed much more in terms of strike rate to realistically chase the total down. He seemed content to work the ball around. when overs of 15 runs were needed. Perhaps it was a case of writing this particular game off and getting some time in the middle before the more serious business of the ODI's gets underway. Probably fair enough.