Buzzin Cricket

Kevin Pietersen hits another superb hundred as one-day cricket soldiers on.

On the eve of Sunday’s first one-day international between England and New Zealand, Kevin Pietersen claimed that the 50-over format wasn’t going to be around for much longer. After playing so beautifully to record his 6th one-day hundred and helping England to a huge 114-run victory, he might now be hoping that this isn’t the case.

Let’s talk about the game first. It was an almost flawless performance from Paul Collingwood’s men. After much debate surrounding the negativity of the England one-day side, this team looks much more postitive and aggressive.  Despite Luke Wright and Ravi Bopara failing to make an impact, the top order looks a lot better. Kevin Pietersen responded to batting at three well as did Ian Bell who was asked to open the batting. He made a fluent 46 to follow up his unbeaten 60 in Friday’s Twenty20 international.

Paul Collingwood even managed to get some runs. He made a run-a-ball 64 and seems to suit batting at five in this form of the game very well indeed. In a very honest post match interview with Michael Atherton, Collingwood stated that he ‘hadn’t scored a run yet this season’ and hopefully this one-day series can help the Durham batsmen get himself back into form. He also, unlike Michael Vaughan in the test series, backed his own bowling. A decision which proved worthwhile – he picked up 4 wickets in just 17 balls to polish off the Kiwi innings.

I have spoken about England’s bowlers a lot recently. They were impressive once again in this game. James Anderson and Ryan Sidebottom were solid enough and Stuart Broad was very economical in picking up 2 wickets. I will single out Graham Swann though. He bowled beautifully and is starting to cement his place in this team. He dismissed Scott Styris and Daniel Flynn and only conceded 45 runs in 10 overs.

Now – the future of one-day cricket. I think the potential development of Twenty20 cricket will threaten the 50-over game much more than it will the five-day game.  Kevin Pietersen even believes that one-day internationals will be a ‘thing of the past’ in a couple of years. I would bet on Twenty20 cricket being around for a long time, but I’m not so convinced it will effect the one-day game quite as drastically as KP thinks.

Just look at Sunday’s game between England and New Zealand. Chester-le-Street was packed out, the sun was shining (most of the time), exactly 500 runs were scored and 15 wickets were taken. The crowd even got to see a marvellous hundred from one of the world’s most exciting batsmen – hardly a bad day out was it?