The Roar
The Roar

Advertisement

The Liebke Ratings: England vs Australia first ODI

4th September, 2015
Advertisement
Matthew Wade has made it back into the Aussie side, and should stay until the Ashes. (AFP Photo/William West)
Expert
4th September, 2015
12
1234 Reads

England and Australia faced off in the first one-day match of a needless five-match series. Australia won by 59 runs, showing once again why they’re the world champions in this form of the game.

Hint: it’s because they won the World Cup final back in March.

Here are the ratings for the first ODI.

Playing Conditions
Grade: B+

Since the World Cup final, there has been yet another change to the one-day international playing conditions. Because it’s not one-day cricket unless the ICC is tinkering endlessly with the rules.

However, the rationale for this particular change seems more solid than most. One of the major complaints during the World Cup was that batting blitzes had progressed to such a point that the ‘double your score after 30 overs’ rule of thumb was no longer working. Instead, you had to double your score after 33, 34, even 35 overs. And venturing down that profane and blasphemous path led to naught but madness.

So, in an attempt to once again don the soothing, well-worn cardigan of the 30-over doubling rule, the five-over batting power play has been eliminated, replaced by three sets of overs from 1-10, 11-40 and 41-50, in which the fielding team is permitted to have ever-increasing numbers of fielders outside the circle.

The name for these three sets of overs? ‘Power plays’. Which raises the question: if everything’s considered a power play, is anything really a power play?

Advertisement

Classic ICC philosophical conundrum.

Fresh players
Grade: B

Australia have been touring England for close to 19 months now, so it’s important for both teams to have a few new players in for the ODI series. After all, how will we miss you, Stuart Broad, if you never go away?

England cleverly tricked Australian selectors into selecting the same team that played the warm-up game against Ireland by giving their captaincy to the potato-eating, Guinness-drinking, pot of gold-wishes-delivering bundle of Irish stereotypes Eoin Morgan.

For Australia, Joe Burns opened the batting, cruelly confusing Shane Warne on commentary, who instantly mistook him for Alex Doolan.

Less confusing for the commentators was James Taylor returning for England, who remained a source of comedy, due to his amusing tendency to still be rather short. Strange, really, that he hasn’t overcome that technical flaw in his game.

And, perhaps freshest of all, was Adil Rashid, the England leg-spinner who took the first four wickets of the Australian innings. Those wickets included Doolan and Steve Smith, both of whom he captured with full tosses. Why on Earth he abandoned such a successful tactic, we may never know.

Advertisement

Matthew Wade
Grade: A

But of all the fresh players, the one who made the biggest impact was Australian wicketkeeper Matthew Wade, who made 71 not out off just 50 balls to guide Australia to a match-winning total of 6/305.

He also successfully ran Shane Watson out to bring Mitchell Marsh to the crease as early as possible. Great work from Wade, who deservedly picked up the man of the match award for his efforts.

Is Wade the greatest wicketkeeper-batsman Australia have ever had in one-day internationals? I don’t want to get carried away, but off the top of my head, I’m going to say ‘yes’.

Wicketkeeper-statsmen
Grade: D

While we’ve established that Wade is Australia’s greatest ever ODI wicketkeeper-batsman, he still has a lot to learn to become a decent wicketkeeper-statsman.

I’ve long maintained that the most important role a wicketkeeper needs to play in the modern game is that of helping the captain decide on DRS reviews. Currently, this is done by gut instinct. But the role needs to move beyond that.

Advertisement

A proper wicketkeeper-statsman would have studied the basics of probability theory and understand the nuances of Bayes Theorem. Using this, they could correctly combine the likelihood of the umpire making a mistake with the probability of the particular delivery evading umpire’s call and delivering an out verdict, weighted by expected future runs that the batsman might score.

With all these factors taken into consideration, they could make the optimal decision of whether or not to review. Maximising DRS success rates in a mathematically sound fashion would almost certainly be worth more than a few big hits coming in at number seven.

Sadly, Wade threw away the team’s only review in this match, not even consulting with captain Steve Smith before frantically reviewing an imaginary edge off the bowling of Glenn Maxwell.

The future is coming, Wade. You need to get ready for it.

England openers
Grade: A-

The England opening partnerships during the Test series were, in order, 7, 17, 0, 12, 19, 11, 32, 30, 19. That’s an average first wicket partnership of just 16.33.

The opening partnership in this one-day international? 70, off just 68 deliveries. It wasn’t enough for England to win the match, as the rest of the team stumbled their way to just 246.

Advertisement

But still, without getting carried away, and trying to avoid comparing Adam Lyth apples to Jason Roy oranges, there’s clearly only one conclusion to be drawn. Roy must open for the England Test team going forward.

Ideally, with Alex Hales as their new Test captain.

That’s just common sense.

close