Oh, England

England will likely have to live with some what-ifs. Against Sri Lanka and against Australia some great individual performances were wasted. I actually got to see them bat against Australia yesterday. I braved the second-hand smoke of an English pub with a Sky box. Kevin Pietersen was amazing, hitting his first one-day century with rather limited support from partners. Ian Bell deserves credit for an excellent, if somewhat slow 77 in his new role as opener. And Bopara batted well in the tail. You'd think a 50+ from an opener, a century from your middle-order star and a fighting 21 from a tailender would be enough to win, but this is England vs. Australia, and other than those 3, plus some of Andrew Flintoff's usual quality bowling, England was pretty bereft.

England has a hole in the batting lineup. A big hole which was not filled at all by Vaughan and Strauss, who made similar mistakes. Flintoff's dismissal was perhaps the worst, though. Bradd Hogg simply out-thought Flintoff, and it seems like maybe that's not such a big accomplishment these days. On one ball Hogg nearly pulled Flintoff into a stumping, and the next ball landed just a bit further out and did pull him out of his ground for the stumping.

On the bowling side, Flintoff has been excellent, and the others have been inconsistent at best. Mahmoud had a fine match against Sri Lanka. If he'd had a fine match against Austrlia England would have won, but he didn't. He didn't get much support from the pitch or the other bowlers, though (Flintoff aside).

Now England will have to fight for what's left of their hopes in this tournament against a Bangladesh team celebrating its shocking demolition of the world's top-ranked one-day side.