The Hindu : Sport / Cricket : NatWest series: England starts favourite

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Thursday, Jun 24, 2004

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Sport - Cricket

NatWest series: England starts favourite

By Ted Corbett

LONDON, JUNE 23. One of the fascinations of the NatWest one-day international series, which begins at Old Trafford on Thursday under floodlights, is to see how England, West Indies and New Zealand deal with the problems that afflict them before a ball has been bowled.

As Englishmen are clearly the in-form team and have the advantage of unlimited reserve power and a stream of good results behind them they are the obvious favourites. "We expect to win," says Duncan Fletcher, the coach, and the architect of their recent improvement after five years in charge.

But England starts with injuries to Andrew Flintoff and Marcus Trescothick — two of its most experienced and successful limited overs players. Flintoff seems unlikely to play in the opening games after picking up a foot problem during a fierce bowling spell late in the third Test against New Zealand but Trescothick is still uncertain whether his hamstring injury will allow him to play in the opening game even though he had a fitness test last night.

The selectors have called up Rikki Clarke of Surrey and the uncapped batsman Michael Powell of Glamorgan. Michael Vaughan, the England captain, says: "We will see how these two exciting talents measure up to international cricket if a chance comes their way."

It has been suggested that Flintoff should play only as a batsman but England regard his all-round skills highly and would rather he was fit for the later stages of the competition than risk damaging him further in the early games.

Trescothick's injury will mean a new chance for Robert Key who had a wretched time last summer after losing his England place but who has scored 1,000 runs already this summer and is in exceptional form as an opener for Kent.

New Zealand staggered from one injury crisis to another during the Test series, which ended in an England clean sweep and its captain Stephen Fleming has said that his main task during the one-day series is to restore their self-belief. New Zealand has lost the fast bowler Shane Bond and its slow left-arm spinner Daniel Vettori is still struggling with the knee injury from the Leeds Test and its form in one-day practice games has been poor.

"We have picked ourselves off the floor before," says Fleming, "and we must regard our present run of ill luck as an opportunity to show how we can respond."

West Indies, beaten 3-0 by England in the Test series in the Caribbean, went on to draw the rain-hit one-day event which revealed that it has plenty of raw, young players but it will have to rely for regular runs on Brian Lara, the captain, Shivnarine Chanderpaul, Chris Gayle and Ramnaresh Sarwan.

West Indians have had a disastrous time in their warm-up matches, having been beaten by Ireland, although Chanderpaul said recently that he expected the side to improve rapidly once the international series began.

The experiment of playing under lights will be tested once again at Old Trafford, Chester-le-Street and Headingley — early in the tournament — but it is difficult to understand why.

The long English summer evenings mean that it is still half light at ten o'clock, which cuts down the effect of the floodlights. It is also strange that the England and Wales Cricket Board have chosen to play the early games under lights and in the northern cities where daylight continues longer than in the south. But whatever the feelings of the players about these matches, the spectators continue to fill the grounds from the new Hampshire venue of the Rose Bowl on the south coast to the most northern English Test ground at Chester-le-Street.

The series will be an indication of form ahead of the ICC Trophy, which is to be played in England in late September, and it will also set up the Test series between England and West Indies during July and August. After a match against the unknowns from America, New Zealand has to tackle Australia in one of their preliminary matches while England, drawn against Zimbabwe and Sri Lanka, appears to have an easier passage to the semifinals. West Indies plays Bangladesh but then find itself up against much tougher opponents in South Africa.

None of the sides will be able to complain that they are out of touch by the time that Trophy matches begin but England has the added advantage of a three-match series at the beginning of September against India.

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