A new era of English one day cricket?

I realised earlier that I hadn't blogged since the end of the Australia series. It seems like ages ago and since that time we've had the Bangladesh series. England won the series 2-1. Sure, another series win, that was always expected but the fact we lost a match to the minnows meant that we couldn't take all the praise from this series. I actually missed the game we lost as I was at the seaside, in the rain which wasn't great but that's a different story. After I missed it but stayed up to watch the highlights, I could see that we didn't play that well. So the final match came round and I was pretty excited. In the first over Kieswetter was bowled and I thought we were about to have a pretty awful day again. But Trotty came out to partner Straussy and I have got to say it was one of the most enjoyable innings I've ever watched. As soon as they both hit centuries I knew the win was never in question. It was a pleasure to watch them both bat. Once they were out batsmen Wright, Colly and Morgan went for below 10 scores but it didn't matter. We had the perfect foundations with Strauss and Trott's 250+ wicket stand and I knew that all we had to do was bowl them out. We did that of course, winning comfortably.

This new era of English cricket was set about by Andy Flower and I have really enjoyed watching him build up the team I know and love. I watched an interview with Andy during the interval of a cricket match and he was asked about fearless cricket - "I don't like the term 'fearless cricket', because it has the word 'fear' in it". This made me respect him even more. And that's just what he's done. He's instilled a mindset into these men that we have to go out there and hit big, just like teams like Australia do. He's bought in big hitters like Morgan and Kieswetter and made the whole team work as a unit. With the two one day series victories over Australia and Bangladesh and a World Cup win in the T20 side of the game, the future looks bright for the one day team. We still have areas to work on, but we are getting there and it looks like it's going to be great to watch for English cricket fans. We have a Test series against Pakistan coming up soon, which we need to win to take on momentum towards the Ashes this November. I hope we can take some of that one day mindset and carry it forward to the Test arena.