Thursday, January 25, 2007

CWB series-England worry over bowling pair

One-day series, Adelaide: Australia v England
Match starts 0315 GMT Friday
The Live Scores of the match will be available here.

Opening bowlers Jon Lewis and James Anderson are both injury doubts for England going into Friday's one-day match against Australia in Adelaide.

Anderson (back) and Lewis (ankle) both missed net practice on Thursday morning, meaning Chris Tremlett, Sajid Mahmood or Liam Plunkett could play.

"The players who have come in are capable of stepping up to the plate," said veteran Paul Collingwood.

"Tremlett had a bit of an outing in Brisbane and looked pretty impressive."
Collingwood hopes a re-match with Australia at the ground where he hit a historic Ashes double hundred in December will help him overcome his own poor form.

Since then he has made 104 in six Test innings and only 63 more in four one-day matches.

"The form has tailed off but I am working as hard as I always do." he said.

"Every player goes through dips in form but you are only one score away from getting that back and that is what you have to keep believing."
Going into the Australia Day match, Collingwood's form has come in for scrutiny because of injuries around him in the batting order.

Captain Michael Vaughan (hamstring) is expected back for Tuesday's match against New Zealand in Perth but Kevin Pietersen (rib) is out for the rest of the tournament.

"I have obviously been thinking about it, trying to improve, trying to get some runs on the board and do my job for the team," said Collingwood.

"It is a good ground for me personally getting a big score like that."

Opener Andrew Strauss is also struggling, with an average of under 20 so far in the one-day Commonwealth Bank Series.

England's batting reached a low point at the ground on Tuesday as the tourists were bowled out for 120 in defeat to New Zealand.

They now probably need at least two wins from their four remaining matches to reach the best-of-three series finals.

"Embarrassed is the wrong word to use, we were pretty disappointed," said Collingwood of the 90-run defeat.

"We are bowling pretty well at the minute and as soon as we get both forms of the game in place at the same time hopefully we will win games.

"We need to stand up and be counted, simple as that - we are big enough and have played enough games to say we have to go out there and perform."


"You need someone in your top three or four to make big scores - we did in the first game, but haven't since then"

Ricky Ponting


The second Ashes Test, when Collingwood hit 206 in the first innings but was part of a batting collapse in the second, is arguably the closest England have come to beating Australia all tour.

Thursday's game will be their ninth international meeting in the last two months - after a 5-0 Test series whitewash, defeats in the Twenty20 international and the first two one-day meetings.

Australia's pace bowlers have been the stars of the one-day series so far, with Brett Lee, Glenn McGrath, Nathan Bracken, Stuart Clark and Mitchell Johnson rotating in the attack.

But captain Ricky Ponting wants his batsmen to overcome two poor outings and get back to their best.

In their past two matches, they were in early trouble at 48-4 and 77-4, with Mike Hussey coming in at number six to steer them to victory both times.

"We haven't been chasing big totals and we've managed just to scrape across the line," Ponting complained.

"We did in the first game, but haven't since then. You need someone in your top three or four to make big scores."

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