Cricket:"When hopelessness hits you, it is the fixtures and fittings that finish you off." If the American actress Angelina Jolie had it right about that, England should have felt like trashing their hotel rooms in a manner to make a heavy metal band blush.
This was a dreadful performance designed to make even the most equable tourist want to tear down the curtains, smash the TV and empty the minibar in despair.
England's target of 211 was challenging on a slow and uneven pitch, but their response was pitiful. With four of their eight matches completed in the triangular series, they now lie bottom behind New Zealand thanks to the concession of a bonus point last night, with the Kiwis achieving a run rate more than 1½ times England's. They must beat the Kiwis in their last two matches, or pull off an unlikely win against Australia, to revive their chances of reaching the final. Don't hold your breath. This is a desperately poor one-day side.
New Zealand were 67 for five and recovered to reach 210, empowered by 86 from 89 balls by the 6ft 6in Jacob Oram, who had been described by one Australian newspaper as "a poor man's Chris Cairns" on his return after a hamstring injury.
For their part, England were 92 for five and capitulated, losing their last five wickets for 28. As Stephen Fleming, New Zealand's captain, shrewdly remarked, indifferent pitches in this series have made life hard for the top-order and put the onus on the middle order to fashion a recovery. England, Andrew Flintoff apart, have a middle order incapable of getting the ball off the square. The absence of Kevin Pietersen has exposed their World Cup plans as entirely inadequate.
Oram is a good pro but no world beater. He took his 100th one-day wicket - Paul Nixon, whose decibel reading is in direct contrast to his batting average, adjudged caught at the wicket off his thigh - but it has taken him 88 matches. He also made his highest one-day score, rousing himself against England's spinners, first Jamie Dalrymple then Monty Panesar. When his hitting was at its height he gave two chances which England failed to get a hand on - Ed Joyce being slow to react at deep square and then Flintoff losing a skier at mid-on, and failing to get within a foot of it.
England's attack had begun productively enough. Five bowlers had struck by the 24th over, before Oram and Brendon McCullum, who has been demoted from the opening position after waiting three years for the opportunity, added 120 in 23 overs for the sixth wicket. Flintoff returned for a second spell in an attempt to break the stand, but by the time he returned a third time, to bowl McCullum off an inside edge, the spinners and Paul Collingwood had been dispensed with and New Zealand were back in the game.
England's response was a succession of ill-advised shots. James Franklin, an incisive left-armer who took three wickets with the new ball, and Daniel Vettori, who finished with four for 24 and thoroughly outbowled England's spinners, were the main beneficiaries.
Joyce played crisply in his best England innings to date, 47 from 70 balls, but Collingwood, a lost soul since his double century in the Adelaide Test, sweated for 37 balls over 10 before missing a slog-sweep at Vettori, Flintoff charged Vettori to be caught off the inside edge and Joyce, in desperation, holed out at long-on.
It was dismal stuff. Has four years of planning for the World Cup, with a support staff large enough to fill a small hotel, produced nothing better than this?
