Alec Stewart's England Diary

October 14, 2000

With his vast experiences with the bat, gloves and captaincy, there is no one better placed than Alec Stewart to give an expert view of England's performances. This winter, Alec will be writing exclusively for CricInfo, and in his first dispatch, he explains what went wrong in Nairobi

When it comes down to it, we had a bad day at the office in Nairobi at the ICC KnockOut tournament.

We were expected to win against Bangladesh and did, winning well and doing everything right that day. Then came South Africa - a side that we competed well against last winter in the one-day series - and after our success in the Nat West triangular Series our hopes, and those of our supporters back home were pretty high.

As it was, we underperformed. We underperformed from ball one through to the last ball that went for six. The South Africans bowled very well at the start, pegging back both myself and Marcus Trescothick when we are usually free-flowing batsmen.

When we looked up at the board and saw that we had five runs from the first eight overs, the tone of the innings had been set. With hindsight, one of us might have taken the attack to them a little earlier but having said that we have a team policy of trying to have wickets in hands at the back end of the innings.

Eventually we broke the shackles and then went on to score at about five an over for 36 overs but that is not much use when you are bowled out in 44. The real disappointment was to see four batsmen, myself included, caught on the boundary edge when the fielder did not have to move. Those were soft dismissals .

We have a policy which says that you do not get caught out in the deep until at least the 40th over but we had one of those days when we picked it up reasonably cleanly but straight to the fielder. Then there were two run outs that could be put down to superb fielding but which were silly nonetheless and if you make basic errors like those we were not going to beat one of the best one-day sides on world cricket.

It was all very disappointing because we had arrived in Kenya with the objective of winning the tournament. We had one good game and a poor one and that was that under the rules of this competition. Not that I mind this. It is a mini world cup without the possibility of another chance if you get it wrong in any match.

That makes it exciting to play in and, I should imagine, exciting to watch as every game is of the utmost importance. I did not know what to expect when I arrived here because I had not been to Kenya before. However the wickets have been just right for one-day cricket and all credit must go to the groundsman Andy Atkinson.

All in all, it has been an outstanding competition and well worth taking part in. Now that we must put our failure to progress to the later stages behind us and not carry that disappointment with us to Pakistan.

We must take the attitude that we are embarking on a new tour and rise to the definite challenge awaiting us. Make no mistake, this is going to be a tough tour. Pakistan are never easy to beat anywhere, let alone at home. They have a number of world-class players and if we want to achieve the sort of success for which we are all striving, we shall have to be at the top of our game. It should be an experience to savour.

© Cricinfo

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