Defeat again

Lord's Second one-day international

Preview

Come on, England. What happened on Friday at the Oval is simply not good enough. The efforts of the tail put the top six to shame. They look so feeble without KP you wonder if they are possibly be a Champions Trophy success. Just tell them that Andrew Strauss; it really is time for the big stick and not even the smell of a carrot It will be most instructive to see how the team get on without Stuart Broad who is injured. He has inherited the Spirit of Flintoff - that is, he is worth more than the sum of his batting, bowling and fielding - and there seems to be no-one else with that life force.

Australia innings

Having put Australia in - as they did at the Oval - it looked for a long time as if England had produced another above par performance - as they did at the Oval. But just as Mitchell Johnson arrived at the crease the stats-happy noted that the average score at Lord's in the last ten odi first innings was 218. Johnson, whose odi average is an incredibly low eight, proceeded to hit 43 off 25 so that Australia finished on 249-8, setting a total that was a couple of inches too far away.

England innings

As England collapsed to lose by 39 runs you might have thought there could not possibly be any more bad news. But right on cue it came. Andrew Flintoff has developed a deep vein thrombosis - with the potential for all sorts of damage - in the leg on which he had his recent operation. Ironicaly, the idea of the op was that he would concentrate on one-day cricket in future. Once again the England top order failed to consolidate a decent start made by Andrew Strauss and Ravi Bopara, once again the middle order looked feeble and I suppose they missed Flintoff. Oh, and just in case you feel that things cannot get any worse, Ricky Ponting will be back for the fourth match in the series on Saturday.