? England lose second ODI against Australia by 46 runs
? 'We will have to regroup pretty quickly for Sydney'
The England captain, Andrew Strauss, said his team were a seam bowler short as they slipped to a second one-day international defeat to Australia in Hobart.
Shaun Marsh kept Australia's innings together after they threatened to fall apart at various points, hitting 110 in a total of 230, to which the tail-ender Doug Bollinger contributed an excellent run-a-ball 30. Bollinger then took the wickets of Strauss and Kevin Pietersen as part of a four-wicket haul as Australia sealed a 46-run victory, which leaves the hosts 2-0 up in the seven-match series heading into Sunday's third match, in Sydney.
England lined up with the spinners Michael Yardy and James Tredwell in their attack with a view to giving them match practice ahead of the World Cup in the subcontinent, but Strauss accepted in hindsight that had probably been an error.
"We will have to regroup pretty quickly for Sydney," Strauss said. "We were probably a seamer short to be honest. We have to look at what we did wrong today. We might not have set the field so far back for Marsh at the start of the powerplay. You always look back at things when you have lost. Ultimately we put ourselves in a good position with the ball and we should have been better with the bat as well.
"The World Cup is in the back of our minds, there's no doubt about it, but we've got to pick the right team for the conditions and we probably didn't do that today."
England's attack had the hosts on the rack at 33 for four and again at 142 for eight but the combination of Marsh and Bollinger helped them to a defendable total, and Strauss felt England lacked anyone able to exert a similar influence in the reply.
"When you're chasing 230 you need one guy to get 80-odd and you're there and none of us did that," he said. "The run rate was creeping up as well, so we weren't as busy as we could have been and that created pressure later on.
"It's disappointing from our point of view. Shaun Marsh played exceptionally well. We still could have chased 230 but we didn't go about it very well. We lost early wickets and none of our batsmen played that anchor role that Marsh did for Australia."
Bollinger said of his match-winning display: "[The most enjoyable part] was definitely the bowling ? being an all-rounder is too much work, you've got to be fit! It doesn't happen like that for me very often so I'll take it."
Marsh modestly heaped the praise on Bollinger, who came in when Australia were on 142 for eight, telling Sky Sports: "I had great confidence in Doug, he came out and gave us a chance and we came out and bowled really well. Dougie led the way and it was a great win.
"Doug was OK on his own, he did a fantastic job today."
Source: http://www.guardian.co.uk/sport/2011/jan/21/england-australia-andrew-strauss
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