My England story.

[Ash2134]

Series Summary

Batting Award: Cook, It was close between him and Trott as they scored the lionshare of our runs for the series but Cook just edges it with his brilliant 154*.

Bowling Award: Finn, Bowled very economical all series long and took early wickets in most matches.

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Next up we head to Pakistan for a tour consisting of 3 test matches, 5 ODIS and 2 T20s. Here is the squad for the test series:

We choose to bring in Thakor after he finished as the leading run scorer in the CC. Arkwright is there as our second spinner and it is likely that we will want to utilise him in Pakistan, he is injured for 2 days though and will be back just in time to be considered for selection for the first test. Harris is injured for the next 3 weeks and will at least miss the first 2 tests so we take Topley with us instead. We will be looking for an improvement from Bell as he has been very disappointing under my management so far.

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Firstly on our tour of Pakistan we have a 3 match test series. Here are the teams for the first match:


Day 1: We lose the toss and are asked to bowl first on a pitch which is good for batting but offers something for the spinners. Finn and Anderson make the most out of the new ball and we have them on 31-4 after the first 14 overs. We continue to bowl well and have them all out for 174 they would have got a lot less but Rizwan played a great knock of 84. We end the day on 64-2 with Cook and Root getting out for 18 and 31 respectively.

Day 2: We lose Trott, Ballance and Bell in the first session of the next day and this pitch is proving to be tough for batting. We end up all out for 241 with Pietersen providing 75 of those runs and Woakes providing 50 too. We now have nearly the entire last session to try and take some quick wickets. They end the day on 62-5 with Woakes and Anderson sharing the wickets.

Day 3: We finish them off for 107 with Anderson taking 7 wickets, the batsmen just had no answer to him. We pick off the 41 runs required to win easily and make a great start to our winter tour.

Batting Award: Pietersen, a solid innings with batsmen falling consistently around him.

Bowling Award: Anderson, His bowling in the second innings was unstoppable and he ended up with 10 for the match.

Series State: 1-0 up with 2 remaining.

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Both sides name the same team for the 2nd test match.

Day 1: we lose the toss and will have to bowl first on a perfect batting pitch in sunny conditions. They were going strongly at 140-1 until Swann comes on and picks up a couple of wickets. We continue to bowl well and take wickets and are able to get them all out for 270 with 1 over left in the day. We get through the over at 1-0 and hopefully we can post a big score tomorrow.

Day 2: We lose Root early on and then Pietersen and Cook form a good partnership until Pietersen chips one up on 60 we then lose Cook a few overs later for 79 and are now looking to our lower middle order to post some big scores. We end the day on 264-4 after losing Ballance in the last over for 33.

Day 3: We lose trott quite early on for 67. We then bat through the day with Prior scoring a century and being supported by 40 from woakes and a half century from Swann. We now have a lead of 289 and will be hoping prior and Swann can build on it tomorrow so we don't have to bat again.

Day 4: Prior and Swann get out fairly early and we finish up with 602 all out. We start off well again and have them on 74-4 with Finn picking up 3 wickets. They end the day on 184-5 with Rizwan fustrating us by scoring 51 not out off 154 balls.

Day 5: Rizwan and Yasin continue to cause us problems until Woakes comes on and gets Yasin out and 1 more but Rizwan ends the first session on 101*. We struggled all the way though the second session until the last over where Swann manages to pick up 2 wickets and we need 1 wicket to win and they lead by just 14 runs. We manage to finish the game off quickly in the last session

Batting Award: Prior, an oustanding innings scored at a strong strike rate.

Bowling Award: Woakes, Bowled well in both innings and took key wickets too.

Series State: 2-0 up with 1 match remaining.

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For the final test We bring in Taylor, Thakor, Bairstow, Stokes, Topley and Arkwright and we drop out Pietersen, Trott, Ballance, Bell, Swann and Anderson.

Day 1: We lose the toss and are asked to bowl first on a pretty good bowling pitch, We start off well with Woakes destroying their upper order with some good bowling until Alam comes in and holds their innings together at one end. Arkwright fails to really have any effect but Topley then comes on and takes a few wickets with the 2nd new ball and we manage to get them all out for 260. We have 3 overs to face at the end of the day and we manage it without losing a wicket.

Day 2: We bat through the entire day and end up on 312-6 with Woakes and Stokes at the crease. Cook and Taylor provide most the runs with 2 good innings and they both deserved to reach the century mark.

Day 3: We end up on 417 all out thanks to Stokes making his maiden test half century. We bowl well throughout the day and have them on 167-5 with Finn and Woakes doing the damage.

Day 4: We find it difficult to get through their lower middle order with Alam once again proving difficult to get out and being supported by Khan. Finn comes on and finishes off their lower order once we get Khan out and we are set the target of 138 to win. We then are able to reach the target during the last over day for the loss of just 4 wickets.

Batting Award: Cook, A solid innings and was unlucky not to make a century.

Bowling Award: Woakes, His 5for in the first innings was very good.

Series State: We win 3-0.

[Ash2134]

Series Summary

Batting Award: Prior, Played some key innings when we needed him.

Bowling Award: Woakes, Consistent bowling in all 3 matches.

[Ash2134]

Here is my squad for the 5 match ODI series:

We make a couple of changes from our last few ODI squads. We bring in Craddock for Tredwell as Craddock has had a really good year with an Economy rate of just under 4 and averaging 16. We also bring Ballance in for Bopara after he averaged just under 60 in one day cricket this year and he seems like the complete package of an international player.

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Here are the teams for the first match:


First Innings: We lose the toss and are asked to bat first on a good pitch in great weather. We start off roughly as we lose Pietersen and Root early on and find ourselves 45-2 after the first 10 overs. We get to the 40 over mark on a decent foundation of 175-4 but we just lost Trott who was going well on 75. We have a terrible last 10 overs and fail to really push on and end with just 208 all out.

Second Innings: We fail to take a quick wicket as i was hoping for and after 10 overs they are 40-0. We struggle to slow them down and they 101 off 20 overs before we take our first wicket. We fail to improve our bowling and they coast onto victory.

Batting Award: Trott, A good innings but his got out a awful time.

Bowling Award: Finn, Bowled his overs with a good economy rate.

Series State: 1-0 Down with 4 matches remaining.

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We make one change by bringing in Stokes for Broad who was awful in the last match.

First Innings: We lose the toss again but this time we have to bowl first on a pitch and in conditions identical to the last match. We make a good start and they are 29-2 after the first 10 overs with Anderson and Finn bowling well. Stokes and Swann then bowl brilliantly and keep them scoring at just over 2 an over. They then manage to score an unreal 80 in the last 10 overs and push onto 227-7. If we had have bowled better at the end we could have kept them below 200.

Second Innings: We start off at a really strong run rate but once again we lose Root and Pietersen early on and after 10 overs we are 58-2. We continue to go strongly and need 30 off the last 10 overs with Trott on 80* and Bell on 35*. We then get the remaining runs easily.

Batting Award: Trott, A great innings that he looked untroubled throughout it.

Bowling Award: Stokes, Bowled very well took a couple of key wickets and went for under 3 runs per over.

Series State: 1-1 with 3 matches remaining.

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Both teams name the same team for the 3rd ODI match too.

First innings: We win the toss and select to bat on a good batting pitch. We lose Cook straight away but then Root and Pietersen start off strongly and after 10 overs we are 55-1. We lose Root later for 46 and are 89-2 after 17 overs. Then Pietersen plays an outstanding innings and is supported by some fast scoring from the rest of our batting lineup and we end up we a big total of 320-7 with Pietersen finishing up on 149* from 124 balls.

Second Innings: We take 2 quick wickets but then they go along at a strong rate of over 6 an over and after 15 overs they are 88-3 with Alam on 40 from 28. Then Alam plays a innings equally as good as pietersen but isn't supported by any of their other batsmen and eventually we get them all out 50 runs short of our total.

Batting Award: Pietersen, who else?

Bowling Award: Anderson, Some strong bowling and took key wickets including that of Alam.

Series State: 2-1 up with 2 matches remaining.

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Both teams name the same team for the 4th match.

First Innings: We win the toss a decide to bowl first in overcast conditions. They start off steadily and after 10 overs they are 36-0 and carry on going steadily until Stokes comes on and takes some quick wickets and out of nowhere they are 65-3 after 20 overs. We continue to take wickets and keep scoring at a fairly low rate and after 40 overs they are 180-5. We manage to contain them from getting a high score with some great death bowling and they end up with 217-8 a score we should be able to chase down.

Second Innings: We make a good start and after 10 overs we are 44-0. We then lose Root, Cook and Trott really quickly and are 95-3 after 22 overs but then Pietersen and Bell form a great partnership and take us to 212 from 42 overs until we lose Pietersen for 60 but the pair had already done the damage and we finish off the match comfortably to wrap up the series with 1 match spare.

Batting Award: Bell, A solid innings of 72 from 71.

Bowling Award: Stokes, Some destructive bowling after they had made a good start.

Series State: 3-1 up with 1 match remaining.

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We bring in Craddock and Ballance for Trott and Swann. I wont go into too much detail for this dead rubber as usual.

First Innings: We bat well with Pietersen and Ballance forming a good partnership until they both got out in consecutive overs then Bell contributed a very fast 43 and we ended up with a good score of 289-6.

Second Innings: They start off quite strongly with Zaman yet again batting impressively but we got into a position where we looked most likely to win but somehow there number 10 Abbas managed to score a ridiculous 59* from 40 balls and they win the match.

Batting Award: Pietersen, a great innings scored at a run per ball.

Bowling Award: Stokes, Some solid bowling in terms of wicket taking and was the cheapest too.

Series State: We win 3-2.

[Ash2134]

Next up we have a 2 match T20 series, Here are the teams for the first match:

We name the same team as we played against Australia in the T20 series and although Patel is now back from injury Rashid was impressive in the Australia Series.

First Innings: We win the toss and decide to bat first on a spinners pitch. We get a good start and after the powerplay we are 43-1. We finish up with 139-5 after not being able to push on as much as we should have been able to due to some good bowling from Pakistan.

Second Innings: They finish the first 6 overs on 43-2 mainly due to Broad going for 18 runs in the 6th over. They end up needing 27 from the last 4 overs with 6 wickets in Hand and Rizwan at the crease on 39 and we will need to bowl very well to win from here. Rashid and Swann then bowl 2 good overs and take 3 wickets and they end up needing 21 from the last 2 overs off of Finn and Broad with 3 wickets in hand. They both bowl great overs and we pick up the win.

Batting Award: Hales, A really strong innings just a shame he couldn't continue it for longer.

Bowling Award: Rashid, Had a decent economy rate and took the wickets of Rizwan and Shehzad in the 17th over which was probably the difference between winning and losing.

Series State: 1-0 up with 1 match remaining.

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We make one change by bringing in Morgan for Tong and they name the same team.

First Innings: We win the toss and decide to bat first. After the first 6 overs we are on a good 48-2 with Bell having scored 36 of those runs! We make a decent total of 157-3 with Bell making 94* and Pietersen contributing 50 too. We were going at 8.5 an over up until the last 4 overs where we struggled a bit yet again.

Second Innings: We start off well with Broad taking 3 wickets in the first 6 overs and they are 38-3. They go at a good strike rate but we continue to take wickets and get them all out 29 runs short.

Batting Award: Bell, A brilliant innings and was unlucky not to be the first English batsmen to make an international t20 century.

Bowling Award: Broad, Some lethal bowling at the start of the innings.

Series State: We win 2-0.

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Next up we have the series i have been waiting for as we head to South Africa who have just been beaten 3-0 by India in a test series and I would love to beat them that easily too! The series consists of a 4 match test series, a 5 match ODI series and 2 T20 matches. Here is the squad selected for the test series:

Harris returns to the squad in place of Topley who did not make the most of the opportunity given to him.