England put South Africa in reverse MyZA

Alastair Cook, bowling at Adelaide Oval cricket nets (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Old hat, one-paced – and in the final: not bad going for a team who are apparently bent on seeing out the summer playing their own travelling revivalist John Player League match.

For England, who beat South Africa by seven wickets to reach the final of the Champions Trophy, this was a match in which the tactical orthodoxies of the group stages were inverted.

On a humid day Plan B, which was previously Plan A, once again became Plan A as the new white balls swung early on and the old ball – in England’s hands, subject of much insinuation – did very little.

Instead, it was a high-pressure performance in the field, interspersed with some moments of sputtering, gasping South African self-suffocation, that effectively decided this semi-final before lunch.

There will be talk about South Africa again choking in a knockout match, but they are at least in the habit of actually playing in them.

For England this was the third post-group-stage 50-over match since the 1992 World Cup, and a second victory.

Never underestimate Alastair Cook seems to be the message.

A self-made ODI player who has built a team in his own pragmatic image – a Tredwell-ish, Trott-flavoured thing, with its own dedicated ball-maintenance man in Ravi Bopara – that might yet end up being the first England side to lift a 50-over trophy in the coloured-clothing era, the adventures in Sharjah in 1997 aside.

England’s husbandry of the ball was the subject of some discussion before this match, and it swung in Jimmy Anderson’s first over, the fifth ball of the day snaking in to evade the forward push of Colin Ingram and make the score one for one.

While for England this was a day for the more familiar virtues, it must be said that in helpful conditions they also found some very helpful opponents. – Barney Ronay