Second test reactions

Pieterson - awesome. Although I have to note that if he'd made a princely TWO, WI would still have followed on AND lost by an innings.

Sidebottom - inspired pick. And I hope Harmison and Plunkett were shamed into understanding their failings.

Vaughan - great comeback!

Harmison - is it just me, or does he bowl better for Vaughan.

Flintoff - apparently unlikely to be fit to bowl in a four person attack for the forseeable future... That's not fit, as far as I'm concerned, period. None of the present batsmen deserve to be dropped, so... sorry Freddy.

There are two types of starts to a cricket career...

...as discussed with my good friend Jeff yesterday.

There are those who step up onto the big stage, and go "whoa, f***! what am I doing here? Help!". And never really get to grips with it, even if they're given allowance for first-time nerves. Classic examples - Graeme Hick. Mark Ramprakash. Ian Salisbury. Sadly, Owais Shah.

And then there are those whose whole demeanour says 'This is where I'm meant to be. Bring. It. On.'

I think, over the past two days, we've seen a couple of players who look born to be up there. Alistair Cook and Matt Prior.

Time for a fresh start

Both for this blog, and more importantly, for the England team.

That has to rank amongst the more abject bowling and batting performances I've ever seen, I think. The wagon wheel for the first five overs of England's innings summed the batting up pretty well - two solitary scoring shots. Strauss made something of a return to form with the bat, I guess, and Bopara shows promise, but the rest? Pretty dismal. Bowling wise? Not much better, really, although to be fair I'm not sure what they could have done with Smith in that mood.

The future, then?

I have to say, I think Fletcher's time's up. The tactics he's been mandating for this competition plain do NOT work - no-one else is using them, and quite frankly without Trescothick to start the innings? Not a prayer.

What'd I do?

Sack Fletcher. I'd have loved Woolmer for England, God rest his soul, but in his absence it's tough to know who to pick. Tom Moody, perhaps?

Get Tresco's head straight, get him back in the side ASAP. Wrap him in cotton wool so it doesn't happen again.

Drop Vaughan, send him back to Yorkshire until he remembers how to bat. Give Strauss the one day captaincy. He did a pretty decent job last summer once he settled into it.

Forget Mahmood till he can land it on a good length and line at LEAST five balls out of six.

Oh, and pay Troy Cooley whatever the hell he wants, and pay someone who understands /proper/ spin bowling to teach Monty about variation and having the balls to toss it up in ODIs.

[composed and posted with ecto]