The main point we made about England’s campaign in the Champions Trophy in February was that they do not know how to play 50-over cricket.<\/p>\n
That is not entirely their fault – they hardly play it. It is almost all T20 that these players play now, and 50-over cricket is a completely different game.<\/p>\n
Rebuilding innings – like South Africa had to do at Lord’s – is a skill you learn through playing the format.<\/p>\n
England’s players must learn how to pace it and how to restructure an innings when they lose quick wickets.<\/p>\n
On the past two showings, not too much has changed from the mindset that existed at the Champions Trophy.<\/p>\n
Yes, England beat West Indies 3-0, but they are not a strong team.<\/p>\n
This series against South Africa is a much better indicator of where England’s 50-over game is – and it is struggling.<\/p>\n
These one-day series matter because they are linked to World Cup qualification. England could be in the ignominious position of having to go through a qualifier against the likes of Netherlands, Scotland and the USA.<\/p>\n
England are eighth in the International Cricket Council’s one-day standings, which are used to determine qualification – the top eight, plus hosts South Africa and Zimbabwe, qualify automatically for the 14-team tournament.<\/p>\n
It is not a good position to be in because, after the South Africa series and the T20 tour of Ireland, England head to a tough series in New Zealand.<\/p>\n
With the Ashes coming up a few weeks later, it is going to be quite hard for them to be focused on that one-day series.<\/p>\n
Having to face qualifying remains a realistic threat.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The main point we made about England’s campaign in the Champions Trophy in February was that they do…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":120423,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[564],"tags":[64,63,740,85],"class_list":["post-120422","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-cricket","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-cricket","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/120422","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=120422"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/120422\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/120423"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=120422"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=120422"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=120422"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}