Morning:
8°c
England must be congratulated for showing great character in their remarkable victory over New Zealand but I am becoming increasingly worried that Michael Vaughan's team are setting their sights dangerously low.
You only need to read some of the quotes from the England camp at Old Trafford to see what I mean.
Vaughan called it a "special victory" and "an unbelievable achievement". Andrew Strauss, who looked much more like his old self in the second innings, called it "one of the most special days he has had with England".
Anyone reading that would assume we had just won the Ashes again, rather than scrambling a victory over one of the poorest teams in world cricket whose inexperience and lack of nous had more to do with the outcome of the Second Test than anything else.
Had New Zealand managed to enforce the follow-on - which England avoided with just one wicket to spare - or scored 200 in their second innings, they would be one-up in the series now, not England.
Strauss and Monty Panesar played significant roles in pulling the game out of the fire, and while I fully understand Vaughan publicly praising his team in the immediate aftermath, I really hope he and the coaching staff are seriously analysing the manner in which England have performed in both Tests of this summer, and accept that it is not good enough.
Part of the problem is the balance of the team. Only when you have a couple of genuinely world-class bowlers can you happily go into a Test with just four bowlers. Ryan Sidebottom is enjoying a tremendous year and falls into that category, but James Anderson is inconsistent and Stuart Broad is a beginner.
Before New Zealand's second innings at Manchester, even Panesar had been giving runs away too freely for too long. The pace attack is also too reliant on the ball swinging to be effective in benign conditions and it lacks a cutting edge.
Andrew Flintoff would change all that, and England can probably get away with it against New Zealand. But if Flintoff does not return for the South African series later in the summer, Vaughan might find himself searching for options against a team with a much more challenging batting line-up.
It would help if Vaughan, Kevin Pietersen and Ian Bell took their bowling rather more seriously than they do at the moment.
Paul Collingwood has a shoulder problem that is preventing him from turning his arm over and, coupled with his current poor form with the bat, looks vulnerable. Indeed, bringing the tall Chris Tremlett into the team instead of Collingwood is a serious option that England should consider at Trent Bridge.
That move might also produce some answers from Bell. There is no doubt he is a highly talented batsman, but he is starting to gain a reputation for only scoring 'comfortable' runs - in other words his big scores tend to happen when the foundation has already been laid by others. That might be very unkind - after all, if you bat at No6 there is a chance that someone above you has scored a century before you get to the crease. But moving Bell to No5 with an extended tail consisting of five bowlers behind him could be the spur he needs to get stuck in.
Before Trent Bridge, the powers that be at the ECB will meet to discuss their various proposals for a radical restructuring of the domestic game. This includes an extended Twenty20 tournament featuring teams from overseas and the possibility of reducing the amount of championship cricket played by splitting the 18 teams into three regionally-based conferences.
I firmly believe the cricket played by the counties should reflect what is played internationally, otherwise there seems little point. The cornerstone must be a robust and challenging county championship featuring as many four-day matches as possible, and certainly no fewer than 16 games. The World Cup is still played over 50 overs, so we need one of those while the rapid expansion of Twenty20 also needs to be reflected, and this will also help to bankroll the English game.
Three tournaments mirroring the three formats that are played internationally: what's the difficulty in that?
