England cricket team

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The England cricket team is a cricket team which represents England and Wales, operating under the auspices of the England and Wales Cricket Board (ECB).

The sport of cricket evolved in England, and England is a founding Test cricket, One-day International and Twenty20 nation. England played in the first ever Test match in 1877 (against Australia in Melbourne) and also the first ever One-day International in 1971 (also against Australia in Melbourne).

Performances

England has traditionally been one of the stronger teams in international cricket, fielding a competitive side for most of cricket's history. After Australia won The Ashes for the first time in 1881-82 England had to fight with them for primacy and one of the fiercest rivalries in sport dominated the cricket world for seventy years. In 1963 this duopoly of cricket dominance began to fall away with the emergence of a strong West Indies team.

England failed to win a series against the West Indies between 1969 and 2000. England similarly failed to compete with Australia for a long period and the The Ashes stayed in Australian hands between 1989 and 2005. England struggled against other nations over this period as well and after a series loss to New Zealand in 1999 they were ranked at the bottom of the ICC Test cricket ratings. From 2000, English cricket had a resurgence and England reached the final of the ICC Champions Trophy in 2004 and regained The Ashes in 2005. The team is currently ranked second behind Australia in the Test rankings, but One Day performances have been very poor with England falling to 8th place in the ICC rankings.

In the 2006/07 tour of Australia The Ashes were lost in a 0-5 "whitewash" (see 2006-07 Ashes series) but England did succeed in clinching victory in the Commonwealth bank ODI Tri-series against Australia and New Zealand. The loss of The Ashes prompted the announcement by the England and Wales Cricket Board of an official review of English cricket amid much criticism from the media, former players and fans.

Eligibility of players

The England cricket team represents England and Wales. However, under ICC regulations^[3], players can qualify to play for a country by nationality, place of birth or residence, so (as with any national sports team) some people are eligible to play for more than one team.

ECB regulations^[4] state that to play for England, a player must be a British or Irish citizen, and have either been born in England or Wales, or have lived in England or Wales for the last four years. This has led to players of many other nationalities becoming eligible to play for England. England have been captained by a Scot, Mike Denness, and three South Africans, Tony Greig, Allan Lamb and Andrew Strauss. The South African cape coloured, Basil D'Oliveira, famously played for England during the apartheid era. In recent times Graeme Hick (Zimbabwe); Andrew Caddick (New Zealand); Geraint Jones (Australia via Papua New Guinea); and Kevin Pietersen (South Africa) have all played for England. Some players have played for another (non Test-playing) country as well as England, for example Gavin Hamilton who played for Scotland in the 1999 World Cup and later played one Test match for England, while Ed Joyce played for Ireland in the ICC Trophy before making his England ODI debut in June 2006 against his former team.

Recent Form and Future Prospects

Since the historic Ashes win, the team has suffered from a serious and ongoing spate of injuries to key players. Ashley Giles, Andrew Flintoff, Michael Vaughan and Simon Jones all suffered serious injuries that required surgery and it is still not clear when Vaughan and Jones will play again. Some have also claimed that they seemed to suffer from a lack of focus and 'killer instinct'. This can be seen in their 22-run loss to Pakistan at Multan in November 2005 (a match which they had dominated before the last day), and their failure to wrap up victory against Sri Lanka at Lord's in May 2006 after securing a first-innings lead of 359 and enforcing the follow-on. However, especially in the recent series victory against Pakistan in July-August 2006, several new players have emerged who have performed well and promise much for the future, leading to suggestions that even when the injured players recover, they may struggle to get back into the team. Most notable has been the left-arm orthodox spin bowler Monty Panesar, the first Sikh to play Test cricket for England. He has impressed with the excellence of his bowling (including match figures of 8-93 in the innings victory over Pakistan at Old Trafford in July 2006) and has also become a crowd favourite. He was one of the favourites to win BBC Sports Personality of the Year, but did not receive the award. Other new players of note include left-handed batsman Alastair Cook and fast bowler Sajid Mahmood. The injury crisis has also allowed previously marginal players Paul Collingwood and Ian Bell to consolidate their places. The outstanding recent performances of the team, albeit against a Pakistan side which was also weakened by injuries, mean that the 2006/07 ashes series was one of the most keenly anticipated of recent years, and was expected to provide a level of competition comparable to the 2005 series.

Their tour of Australia began badly with a one day defeat but, prospects for the Ashes itself looked good as England played well in the two three day tour games, with Andrew Strauss, Ian Bell, Alistair Cook, Kevin Pietersen, Paul Collingwood and Andrew Flintoff all looking in decent touch with the bat. However, England went on to lose all five Tests, the first Ashes whitewash in 86 years.

The team's form in One-day Internationals had been much less promising however; they are currently ranked 7th the world. They only narrowly avoided the ignominy of having the play in the qualifying rounds of the 2006 ICC Champions Trophy, and were humiliatingly defeated 5-0 by Sri Lanka in June-July 2006. The line-up has undergone many changes, both forced and unforced, in recent months, and performances, particularly by the bowlers, have been poor. Steve Harmison now holds the unwanted record of the worst bowling figures for England in ODI history (0-97 in the match at Headingley). There was some improvement in the latest one-day series against Pakistan in England, when England won the last two matches to record a 2-2 draw. A similar story unveiled in the one-day triangular in Australia, where England lost Kevin Pietersen to injury, and had won one and lost five of their first six games. Then, England won their next four games, scraping into the finals series before winning both finals and their first ODI tournament overseas since 1997.

In their first 13-man per team warm-up game against Bermuda, England scored 286/8 in 50 overs thanks to a quick 76 by Jamie Dalrymple & cameo innings of 46 by Bell and 43 by Pietersen. The Bermuda innings came to a close after just 22.2 overs with England claiming all 10 wickets with just 45 runs on the scorecard, with the highest runner getting 11. Jon Lewis claimed 3 wickets and gave just 7 runs in his 4 overs , with James Anderson taking 2/8 in 5 overs, Andrew Flintoff taking 2/3 in his 2.2 overs and Liam Plunkett managing 1/13 in 5 overs. Also, Monty Panesar took 1/1 in 2 overs and Sajid Mahmood finished with figures of 1/10 in his 4 overs.

In their first World Cup Group C match, England lost to New Zealand but won the second match against Canada.

Tournament History

World Cup

• 1975: Semi-Finals
• 1979: Runners up
• 1983: Semi-Finals
• 1987: Runners up
• 1992: Runners up
• 1996: Quarter-Finals
• 1999: First round
• 2003: First round
• 2007: Currently in Super-8 stage

ICC Champions Trophy

(known as the "ICC Knockout" in 1998 and 2000)

• 1998: Quarter-Finals
• 2000: Quarter-Finals
• 2002: Second in Group Pool 2
• 2004: Runners up
• 2006: Main Round

Coaching Staff

• Team Manager: Phil Neale
• Head Coach: Duncan Fletcher
• Batting/Assistant Coach: Matthew Maynard
• Fast Bowling Coach: Kevin Shine
• Spin Bowling Coaches: David Parsons & Jeremy Snape
• Computer Analyst: Mark Garaway
• Team Doctor: Dr. Mark Peirce
• Team Psychologist's: Dr. Steve Bull & Jeremy Snape
• Test Match Physiotherapist: Kirk Russell
• One Day International Physiotherapist: Dean Conway
• Masseur: Mark Saxby
• Fitness Coach: Nigel Stockhill

Recent Players

Current Squad

The following is a list of players that have been selected for the 2007 ICC Cricket World Cup

Other Players

The following is a list of players that have represented England, or have been in the squad, since the tour of India in 2006.

Records - Tests

Team records

• Highest team total: 903-7.dec v Australia at The Oval in 1938
• Lowest team total: 45 v Australia at Sydney in 1886/87

Individual records

• Most matches: 133 - Alec Stewart
• Longest Serving Captain: 54 tests - Michael Atherton

Batting

• Most runs: 8900 - Graham Gooch
• Best average: 60.73 - Herbert Sutcliffe
• Highest individual score: 364 - Len Hutton v Australia at The Oval in 1938
• Record partnership: 411 - Colin Cowdrey and Peter May v West Indies at Birmingham in 1957
• Most centuries: 22 - Wally Hammond, Colin Cowdrey and Geoffrey Boycott

Bowling

• Most wickets: 383 - Ian Botham
• Best average: 10.75 - George Lohmann
• Best innings bowling: 10/53 - Jim Laker v Australia at Manchester in 1956
• Best match bowling: 19/90 - Jim Laker v Australia at Manchester in 1956
• Best strike rate: 34.1 - George Lohmann
• Best economy rate: 1.31 - William Attewell

Fielding

• Most dismissals: 277 - Alec Stewart
• Most dismissals in an innings: 7 - Bob Taylor v India at Bombay in 1979/80
• Most dismissals in a match: 11 - Jack Russell v South Africa at Johannesburg in 1995/96

Records - One-day Internationals

Team records

• Highest team total: 391-4 (50 overs) v Bangladesh at Nottingham in 2005
• Lowest team total: 86-10 (32.4 overs) v Australia at Manchester in 2001

Individual records

• Most matches: 170 - Alec Stewart
  • England is one of only two Test-playing nations (the other being Bangladesh) to have no players over the 200-cap milestone in ODIs
• Longest Serving Captain: 56 matches - Nasser Hussain

Batting

• Most runs: 4677 - Alec Stewart
• Best average: 60.17 - Kevin Pietersen (as of 25 March 2007)
• Highest individual score: 167* - Robin Smith v Australia at Birmingham in 1993
• Record partnership: 226 - Andrew Flintoff and Andrew Strauss v West Indies at Lord's in 2004
• Most centuries: 12 - Marcus Trescothick

Bowling

• Most wickets: 234 - Darren Gough
• Best average: 19.45 - Mike Hendrick
• Best bowling: 6/31 - Paul Collingwood v Bangladesh at Nottingham in 2005
• Best strike rate: 32.2 - James Anderson
• Best economy rate: 3.27 - Mike Hendrick

Fielding

• Most dismissals: 184 - Alec Stewart
• Most dismissals in a match: 6 - Alec Stewart v Zimbabwe at Manchester in 2000

See also

• English women's cricket team
• English national cricket captains
• History of the English Cricket Team
• List of English Test cricketers
• List of England Test cricket records
• List of England One-day International cricket records

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