Pakistan v England - 2nd ODI

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Discussion thread for today's ODI. Can England go 2-0 up to ensure at least a draw from this series, or will Pakistan make it all square?

Till next time gents!

What's with all the post match awards? Never seen awards given out for biggest six, most boundaries and best catch?

yeah lol and giving out huge(in size) cheques that are almost worthless in value- its all abit odd!

I think thats a bit of a carry over from the IPL circus isn't it? They have awards like that in the IPL, just another way to give a few more sponsors some coverage and rake in a few more squids.

very good performance from england

well bowled finny yet again, well play cooky yet again..

also well bowled Samit, another couple of wickets for him

Great ODI again today

Cook is on fire!

Comparing this series against the 0-5 drubbing to India is a joke. Pakistan's batting line up is dreadful. How on Earth did they win the Tests?

no limit to the overs - they always give their wickets away - they didnt need to rush so gave em away less than they normally do. Pakistan team is at its weakest for years - no seam bowlers to rely on, no batsmen of note apart from younis and he is too hit and miss. Afridi is a fab one day bowler but thats it. Keeper is crap, bowling is all over the place, fielding is crap and batting is unreliable.

Simply put, demon, because England's batting was even worse!

Cook, Finn, Bopara and Samit very much the form men at the moment. Well played, lads.

Just watched the Sky highlights having avoided the score all day, another great win! Pretty much a copy of the first game in terms of performances - Cook, Finn, Bopara and Patel excelled but it was nice to see Morgan spend some time in the middle and get a 6. Broad looked out of sorts, lots of poor deliveries shown. Trott and KP look out of nick but it was obviously a tricky pitch to score quickly on so it's hard to be too critical of scoring rates. Overall very pleasing.

Demon Racer wrote:Comparing this series against the 0-5 drubbing to India is a joke. Pakistan's batting line up is dreadful. How on Earth did they win the Tests?

Because their spinners were too good for us! The difference between this and the India series is their batting, as you say, we often got inroads against India but came up against Kohli and Dhoni in the middle order who were just too good for us. Our batting is steady and unspectacular so we will never win matches purely on weight of runs so it's always about how our bowlers do/how good the opposition batsmen are.

Still, our record in the subcontinent in ODIs is terrible so these 2 performances should be rightly praised.

Having watched the ODI highlights, have to say Cook's batting was well disciplined and constructed. Another fantastic innings. Makes you wonder where it went wrong for him in the Test matches. Bopara adding some much needed runs down the order. Again something that was missing in the Tests. Finn bowling superbly yet again. Line and length and you can't go wrong. Cook again in the field showing good captaincy. Rotating the bowlers and keeping the batsmen guessing. Didn't let them settle at all. Patel bowled very well. Was unfortunate to be slapped around by Afridi in his last over. Misbah looks unsettled when he has to take hold of the match and attack. Gave his wicket away when Afridi went. Anderson bowled well which was good to see. Bring on Friday.

Good competetive match - England's total was probably about 15 to 20 runs less than it should have been (we scored at slightly less than 6 an over for the last 10, with wickets in hand), but it appears to have been a difficult pitch to play really aggressively on.

Pakistan will be kicking themselves a bit this morning - several times they got into a position where they were edging ahead of the game in the chase but then lost a wicket. Afridi going was the final key moment - 2 or 3 more overs of his batting and they'd have broken the back of the chase, but instead he took a big swipe at the first ball of an Anderson over and missed while Jimmy hit. The big error though was that at that point Pakistan just needed to bat sensibly - the way Afridi strikes a ball, he's going to knock a few over the boundary without taking big risks, and MIsbah was doing a good job of nudging a single each time he got on strike. 7 or 8 runs an over shouldn't have posed any problems for those two, but was always going to be tough for the real tail enders.