The bully boys batter the Boks

How lovely to see Andrew Flintoff and Kevin Pietersen batting so freely in harness this afternoon. Coming together with England 118 for three in the 29th over against South Africa, England's bully boys put on 158 in 127 balls to turn the game England's way. Chasing 276 under floodlights will be a formidable ask for South Africa in this first ODI, especially if Graeme Smith's tennis elbow flares up.

Some will tut-tut about Flintoff and Pietersen's approach to batting, but if it was aggressive it was also controlled and some of the straight-driving in particular was textbook. It's just a shame that we have so rarely seen them bat for long periods together. Here comes some tradmark Kidd geekery...

Pietersen has shared 15 partnerships with Flintoff in Test cricket (more than with anyone bar Collingwood), but only one of them yielded more than 80 runs, 103 against the Aussies at Edgbaston in 2005 (and how crucial were those runs...). They have had three other stands of between 50 and 80 and six of less than 25. In five of the six cases, England were under the cosh when they came together and could have done with something more substantial (19-4, 102-4, 119-4, 101-4 and 98-4 respectively).

In one-day cricket, Flintoff and Pietersen have batted together 12 times, but their innings today was their highest by almost 100 runs. The previous best was 60, against India in 2006. The next best was 38 and seven of the other ten times were less than 20. You have less time to build a partnership in one-day cricket, but you would still hope that your fifth-wicket pair could take you almost to the finishing line. Today's stand, when Flintoff fell only in the final over, was the first time Flintoff and Pietersen have batted together past the 44th over and only the second time that they have batted on past the 36th.

Partnerships win one-day matches, not individual innings. I imagine these two probably enjoy batting together, but for England's sake they need to stay out there longer in each other's company.

Comments

[Andrew Gardener]

Don't mar your normally excellent work with incorrect headlines - Proteas,not Boks.