Shouting from the Hop

HAPPY CHRISTMAS to eveyone out there in blogworld.

In the immortal words of Dave Allen, who sadly passed away this year, "Good luck, and may your God go with you!"

Pedro45
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The England Cricket Teams tour of Pakistan finished today, with the last one-day international being played in Rawalpindi - England winning the match but losing the ODI series 3-2.

Overall, as the Test series was lost 2-0, and we lost the ODIs too, it hasn't been a very succesful trip. A number of key players suffered injuries during the tour and had to return home - Vaughan, Pieterson, Giles - and a number had niggly stuff that meant they couldn't always play to full potential - Harmison, Flintoff. With Strauss diving home for a paternity break, it was a very disjointed tour.

The euphoria that surrounded the summer Ashes series win has rubbed off a lot by now, and the forthcoming India tour after Xmas is not one that England can undertake with confidence. Indeed, the pitches will turn more in India than they did in Pakistan, and this area is where England are at their most weak.

Following Ian Blackwell's ODI games recently, he could be one option to replace Giles in the test team if the Warwickshire man does not recover from his hip operation in time to play. Blackwell does spin the ball, much more than Udal or Batty, and he can bat, which counts against youngsters Keeley and Penasar. A tough call.

The lads all come home for Xmas now, and a well earned rest. I doubt they will want to get any new DVDs as presents, having spent three months in Pakistan watching them over and over...

It has been, hasn't it? England started it with a bang last Saturday by winning the first ODI quite easily, after getting a lot of runs batting first. Charlton won too, so it made for good weekend.

Sunday was the day when the bang in Hemel Hempstead was heard by everyone for miles around; friends who live closer - but still twenty miles from Hemel - were woken and everyone had their own theory about what it was before the real news broke. It was a plane crash at Luton, a plane crash at Heathrow, a very big bomb somewhere... The fire in the petrol storage tanks (see pic left and below) raged for over three days, until foam was used to douse the final tank. Some of the tanks promptly caught fire again but not to the same extent, and they have been left to burn themselves out. It certainly caused the skies to darken for a few days, and luckily it didn't rain at all, or everyone would have had black soot to clean off their homes and cars! Thankfully, the friend who lives closest (about four miles away) was away at her boyfriends parents for the weekend, and their house wasn't damaged at all, unlike many others in the area.

My boss at work has been ill all week (migraines and no voice - male heaven!) so I've just been getting on with things. Lots of meetings and paperwork, but at least we are now starting to get somewhere in the different elements of the project.

England promptly threw away the second ODI by not scoring enough runs on Tuesday, and on Thursday they took a right old hammering as Pakistan scored their second highest ever one day score, and the highest ever against England. This led to Englands equal worst ever defeat. Three down, two to go, we need to win them both to take the series, but that is very unlikely given the bowling in the matches so far. I think their minds may have been on this little ditty!

On Wednesday evening my old cricket club had a christmas booze up - seven of the team made it along to the pub, and we had a very good time reminiscing! Next year is the thirtieth anniversary of our first ever match, and rumours persist that we may be asked to don the whites once more in a friendly game. The trouble though, will be getting twenty two players out - the reason we folded was because we couldn't muster eleven each week (in fact, only seven turned up for the last ever match!). We also plan to hire a venue and show a powerpoint type slide show of images from our illustrious past, which will be mightily embarassing I can confirm!

Last night we took a train to Chelmsford to see my girlfriends best mate who is getting married next year; we had a lovely chat with them, though the restaurant was exteremely average and the service appalling!

This weekend is busy - we are off to Manchester tomorrow morning to see a friend, though I am taking in the football at Wigan too. The cricket ODIs continue, and I also maintain my lack of doing any Christmnas shopping - I must try to fit it in sometime!

Hopefully, next week will be a little less frantic, and I can start to enjoy the festivities - I am still turkey-less so far this year - though I'm not holding too many high hopes.

It looks pretty spectacular, and the skies have certainly darkened with smoke over the last hour or so, but the huge explosion at a petrol storage facility north of London, apparently heard up to 40 miles away, failed to wake me this morning.

Thankfully, nobody has been killed, though a few people have been seriously injured, and many homes badly damaged.

It was a strange sky that welcomed us as we came out of the supermarket this morning; previous clear winter skies, had been replaced with a black hue, as the smoke drifted across London. It will disperse over time I guess, but it does look strange...

England crashed to defeat against Pakistan in the third test match in Lahore today, losing their last eight second innings wickets in just 70 minutes for 46 runs after lunch. Pakistan have therefore taken the series two-nil.

What happened at lunch time? 202 for 2, With Bell and Collingwood settled, having batted together all morning, it took just four balls in the afternoon session to claim the first wicket (Colly), and Kaneria also picked up Pieterson (1) and Flintoff (golden duck) in his next four balls! Bell (92), Jones (5) and Plunkett (0) all then fell to Akhtar slower balls, before Sami and Kaneria whittled out the tail (Udal - 25 and Hoggard - 0) in consecutive deliveries. Wham bam thank you mam! England lose by an innings and 100 runs!

I was pretty shell-shocked after Charlton's capitulation in the last fifteen minutes on Wednesday night, and this collapse hasn't helped my disposition much either!

The team, boosted by a couple of new arrivals, now have to pick themselves up for the one day series that starts next weekend.

Overall, the test side did not play very good cricket after the first couple of days of the series. The game in Multan could easily have been won with more application, and today's final test comfortably drawn if the batsmen had all really got stuck in properly.

Trescothick batted quite well over the series, though he was susceptable in the second innings to the new ball, falling very cheaply on two occasions. Strauss never got going in the first two tests and will be classed as a failure, as will captain Michael Vaughan (left), who missed the first test before making just one resonable score (58 in the first innings here in Lahore). Bell is the undoubted English player of the series, making good scores in each test, with a hundred in Faisalabad. Collingwood played in both defeats, but at least he made good runs here in both innings (96 and 80) after two failures at Multan. I still don't think he should bat at four. Pieterson made a hundred at Faisalabad but hardly anything else. He is still new to test cricket, and needs time to settle, though he still plays big shots too early in an innings for my liking. Flintoff bowled his heart out but was a failure here with the bat overall. Jones kept quite well in testing conditions, but didn't seem to have much luck with the bat, getting dubious LBW's on a couple of occasions (including today). Giles and Udal bowled fairly straight but didn't turn the ball much, and avaraged around 75 per wicket - not really good enough I'm afraid. Both batted solidly though. Hoggard, Harmison, and Plunkett all bowled with heart, and picked up more wickets than expected, but the pitches didn't suit for long periods and they struggled to shift certain Pakistani batsmen (Haq, Yousef, Butt, Akmal, etc).

A tour to forget then from a statistics perspective, but lessons must be learnt on the playing side otherwise we will get well beaten in India during the series that starts there in February.