da pinup bet： Andrew Strauss said the Champions Trophy had been a step forward after the debacle of the 6-1 defeat to Australia
Dileep Premachandran in Centurion02-Oct-2009
Andrew Strauss: “We’ve got to get better at our skills so that the percentages are more and more in our favour”•Getty Images
England came out swinging, went down for the count, rallied briefly andwere then knocked clean out of the ring. After Tim Bresnan and Luke Wrighthad done a sterling job of rebuilding the innings, England were undone bysome magnificent batting, with Ricky Ponting and Shane Watson adding anunbeaten 252 for the second wicket, an Australian record. Where England’stop order had gone for broke, Australia played the percentages, andwaltzed into yet another major final.”We were definitely keen to go out and play our shots on a good wicket,and unfortunately it didn’t come off for us today,” said Andrew Straussafter the game. “It’s one of those things. If you live by the sword, youdie by it. It’s frustrating. When you lose six wickets for a 100 runs onthat sort of surface, you’re always struggling. I thought Tim Bresnanplayed exceptionally well and Luke Wright supported him. We weren’tcompletely out of the game at the halfway mark, but I did think it was awicket on which 300 was the par score. We were still quite light, andneeded three or four early wickets which we weren’t able to get.”Strauss admitted the late-order revival had given him a little hope.South Africa and India had faltered while chasing targets in Centurionearlier in the tournament, but there were no such blips for Australia.”You always hope that under lights, it [the pitch] might misbehave a bitmore,” said Strauss. “And to be fair, there’s pressure chasing a totallike that. In order to make that pressure count in your favour, you needearly wickets. We were able to get one, but Ponting and Watson playedexceptionally well.”England came into this tournament with the mantra that they wouldn’t “diewondering”. When asked whether that approach had been taken to extremes inthe semi-final, Strauss defended his players. “Any time you play a shotand it doesn’t come off, you can be criticised for that. I think as atemplate going forward, we’ve got to keep playing our shots. That’simportant. We’ve got to get better at our skills so that the percentagesare more and more in our favour. That’s what we have to work on.”I think it was refreshing to see the guys going out there and expressingthemselves. I think they enjoy playing that way a lot more. To cope withthese teams away from home, we need to do it more and more. There’sobviously a case for playing the conditions a little bit better. But todaywas a good wicket, and it was just one of those days when the shots didn’tcome off for us.”After being beaten out of sight in the one-day series against Australia athome, Strauss said there were quite a few positives to take out of atournament in which they beat both Sri Lanka and South Africa. “The sevenmatches against Australia, I think we went backwards,” he said. “But overhere, I think we’ve come forward a bit. I think the guys have gained someconfidence and they have gone out and played in the right sort of manner.”We always said that at the end of this is a bit of a watershed, and we havegot to look at where we are as a side and how we can improve. We have gotthe five one-dayers against South Africa which will be a nice way to startthat forward progress. We can take a lot from what we’ve done in thistournament. There’s been some excellent cricket played by us. But if we’rehonest with ourselves, we’re not close enough to the top two or threeteams in the world yet. We’ve got a lot of hard work to do if we want toget there.”There was little hesitation when he was asked which team he now fancied topick up the trophy. “It’s hard to look past Australia,” he said. “They’reon a great run, they’re the defending champions. They’ll be hard to beat.Pakistan are capable of anything. They can beat anyone on their day, andNew Zealand have got some good shot players as well. For me, Australia arefavourites, but there’s a lot of cricket still to be played.”England are the only major cricket-playing nation not to win a World Cupor an ICC Champions Trophy, but Strauss insisted that such facts had been farfrom the mind when he turned up for Friday’s game. “This was a greatopportunity for us to go some way to putting that right,” he said. “Wewere really excited about playing Australia today. We’d obviously come offsecond-best against them in England, but we felt that with the type ofcricket we were playing out here, we had a good chance of challengingthem. But they were too good for us today. Their bowlers bowled veryattacking lines and lengths, and asked some questions of our batsmen.That’s one of the things they’ve got going in their favour. They’ve got alot of variety in their bowling.”England’s next assignment will see them back in South Africa in November,and this Champions Trophy campaign would have gone a long way towardsfinalising a squad for that series. “We’ll have to sit down with theselectors in the next couple of days,” said Strauss. “I think we’ve gotsome fairly strong ideas of where we want to go as a side. There may beone or two changes. I can’t imagine that there’d be wholesale ones.”The guys go off and have a well-earned break, but in the back of ourminds we’ll know that the tour over here will be a tough one for us. It’llbe a good gauge for where we are as a side, both in Tests and one-daycricket.”