Bowlers come up short by not adapting to the MCG track

Alarm bells should have been ringing for England during the interval yesterday when I interviewed mark Wood because he felt there was a lot more in the pitch than they had found.

Wood was very honest in his assessment and believed England were poor and did not have enough intensity. and for good measure I thought they bowled too short and didn’t adapt to the change of venue and opposition.

On a bouncy pitch with the dimensions of the Perth Stadium it was fair enough to bowl short at afghanistan but they appeared to have the same plan for Ireland at the mCG when what was needed was for England to pitch the ball up a bit more.

a Test- match length around the top of offstump would have been ideal but not only did England bowl too short they also bowled both sides of the wicket and did not get their lines or their lengths right.

England did drag it back well in the second half of the Ireland innings and I thought that liam livingstone and Wood himself were excellent.

But the way England batted on this pitch showed that 157 was a pretty decent Irish total. Dawid malan is usually good on these type of surfaces but he had no rhythm throughout yesterday and, when you look back at the afghanistan match, you can say that not many England batters have timed the ball in either game.

I also felt moeen ali was a little low at six. He was just about to pounce and had seemed to have picked the perfect time to attack the spin of Gareth Delany, hitting him for six, two, four off the first three balls of the over before they went off for rain. Then he was denied the chance to get England ahead of the Duck-worth-lewis-Stern par score.

But that call by the umpires was fair enough. I commentated on the game between South africa and Zimbabwe in Hobart which was also decided by rain and the important thing is for the umpires to be fair to both sides.

The players had started to slip yesterday when the officials decided to come off and five minutes later it was absolutely pouring down so England can have no real complaints.

But you have to give credit to Ireland. They played brilliantly and thoroughly deserved this victory. The one thing they will have to work on, though, is their catching because those two drops could have been extremely costly had there been five more minutes of play.

It wasn’t only in this game either. They dropped a few in qualifying for the Super 12s and on these big grounds that will cost them unless they sharpen up as they go on.

But the way they bowled in those first 10 overs was the deciding factor and that leaves England vulnerable. I said before the tournament that you cannot afford any slip-ups in such a short, sharp World Cup and it remains to be seen how costly this will be.

a week is a long time in a T20 World Cup. after New Zealand thrashed australia and England

beat afghanistan all the talk was of England having the chance to put australia out of their own tournament back here tomorrow.

That might still be the case but now defeat for England on what is likely to be a similar pitch in similar conditions will almost certainly eliminate them too. It’s a virtual knockout game and that is the nature of this tournament.

I still think England are a very good side. It’s just they have put themselves under pressure now and in front of a big australian crowd they will have to deal with that.

They have some australians in their dressing room — coaches mike Hussey and David Saker. They need to help them assess the conditions and get it right next time.