England beat Scotland in rain-hit game to give Peter Moores winning start

http://www.theguardian.com/sport/2014/may/09/england-scotland-peter-moores-winning-start

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Even in a damp and patience-testing start to his second spell as England's coach, Peter Moores collected a couple of handy reminders. First, Alastair Cook is not a natural Twenty20 opener. Second, Ian Bell may well be – many would say that he should have been for some time, not least when he was an unused squad member during the mostly miserable World T20 campaign in Bangladesh.

This was supposed to be a 50-over international, of course. But it was a credit to the positive attitude of both teams, and the umpires Mark Hawthorne and Ian Ramage (an Irishman and a Scotsman respectively), that there was some cricket to enjoy for the 2,000 who were either committed or curious to experience an historic occasion in the Granite City.

When the rain that had fallen steadily through the morning finally gave way to brighter skies soon after lunch, damp patches remained which might have provided sufficient reason for an abandonment on another occasion – Cook described the conditions as "the wettest I've played in", with "standing water at mid-off".

But perhaps inspired by the example of Ken McCurdie, the pocket battleship of a groundsman who had returned to work with his left arm in a sling after suffering a dislocated elbow when readying the Mannofield ground for practice the previous day, everyone agreed on a 4pm start which meant a 23-over match.

Then, after play had continued for more than 10 minutes in heavy drizzle during which Bell reached a 34-ball 50 and was then bowled, Cook and his opposing captain, Kyle Coetzer, declined another opportunity to call the whole thing off, this time reducing the game to a de facto Twenty20.

At that point Cook had scored 32 off 35 balls, not a great strike rate in either 20- or 23-over cricket, and he ended with 44 from 47. He started brightly enough on a painfully slow pitch, pulling his first boundary off the occasional Derbyshire seamer Alasdair Evans in the second over. But as the opening partnership progressed, the contrast grew between Bell's effortless accumulation and his captain's uglier, occasionally desperate and less effective hacking.

That is no real criticism of Cook – he can play properly in a 50-over game, and rise above hit and giggle. But Bell's performance was timely, before Tuesday's announcement of the squad for the one-off T20 international against Sri Lanka at The Oval seven days later.

In the unlikely event that the decision-makers of any Indian Premier League franchises had tuned in to the live coverage from Aberdeen, they might have wondered whether Bell would have been worth a punt when he put himself up for auction, but received no bids, in February. He could hardly have done any worse than Kevin Pietersen so far for the Delhi Daredevils. But obviously, that's dangerous talk.

Cook eventually fell to a spectacular catch at long-off by Calum MacLeod, the young Glaswegian whose performances in Scotland's successful World Cup qualifying campaign impressed their then coach Paul Collingwood so much that he recommended him to Durham. Eoin Morgan and Joe Root each played a classy cameo, Chris Jordan hit his only ball for six, and Jimmy Anderson took a wicket in each of his first two overs to undermine Scotland's reply – and should have had a third in three if Jos Buttler, his new Lancashire team-mate whose recent keeping has not been great, had not dropped Coetzer.

Michael Leask, a tall 23-year-old who only recently gave up his job in the Clydesdale Bank's Aberdeen branches to take up a contract with Cricket Scotland, gave the locals some deserved entertainment with 42 from 16 balls including five sixes, three of them off James Tredwell who went for 35 in his first 17 balls. But Tredwell had Leask caught at the second attempt by Anderson on the mid-wicket boundary and ended with more respectable figures of four for 40, as England completed an efficient win. In contrast to their last outing against the Netherlands, there were no banana skins here.