World Cup: Mastering the middle overs requires clear thinking and adaptability

Nasser Hussain looks at the key ingredients for middle-order batsmen and how England compare to their World Cup rivals in that area...

Batting in the top three in ODI cricket is definitely the place – the only place – to be.

You have pace on the ball and only two people, usually a third man and fine leg, outside the inner circle so if you get it through the field the ball races for four, especially with two new white balls.

Add in the fact pitches are usually flat and that you have the chance to dictate the pace of the innings, then it’s the perfect spot.

The harder position is in the middle when the balls get soft; the run rate is going up to seven, eight, nine an over; and you are batting with tail-enders who come out swinging.

That is the high-pressure time where games are won and lost and some people excel in those circumstances - in my era Michael Bevan was outstanding at finishing a game and knowing how to bat with the lower order.

Good middle-order players must have a calm head and understand conditions – sometimes you need to get ahead of the rate, particularly if the pitch is slow, low and offering turn and reverse swing and the likes of Mitchell Starc and Mitchell Johnson or Lasith Malinga are still to come.

On other occasions, though, you need to make sure you don’t panic and instead, without plodding along, build partnerships, safe in the knowledge that if there is pace on the ball at the death you can go at 10 an over then.

Ensuring there are very few dot balls is always key, too, as they can come back to hurt you, so it’s about using soft hands to find gaps and keep things ticking over but mainly about being streetwise and having a clear thought process.

You won’t get over 300 or chase it down without those skills.

Pace

England’s middle order, which looks likely to be James Taylor, Joe Root, Eoin Morgan, Ravi Bopara and Jos Buttler, is not only the way I would have gone but it's also the best they could have picked.

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People will talk about Ben Stokes but he himself has stated that it was no one else’s fault but his own that he didn’t make the World Cup squad after he struggled to make an impact against Sri Lanka before Christmas.

I hope Bopara, who, like Eoin Morgan, is short of runs at the moment, keeps his place, not just because of what he can offer with the bat but also because he gives you an extra bowling option and some variation

Four big lads bowling is fine if the pitch has pace and movement, as we saw in the warm-up against West Indies in Sydney, but not all pitches will be like that, particularly the drop-in track at Melbourne, so Ravi could have a key role to play there.

Jos Buttler is a fantastic cricketer, too, with a 360 arc but if you are comparing England’s middle order to Australia’s or South Africa’s when pace comes off the ball and the pitch is turgid, I don’t think they are quite as good.

Looking further afield, I know the obvious middle-order star is South Africa’s AB de Villiers but I also expect Australia’s Steven Smith and New Zealand’s Kane Williamson to perform really well at the World Cup.

Smith is a wonderful player at the top of his game, with such good hands and the right sort of strut and a swagger about him, while he almost has a point to prove having not always been a regular in Australia’s one-day side.

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Williamson, meanwhile, is part of a well dovetailed New Zealand batting line-up – him, Martin Guptill and Ross Taylor are the steady eddies to complement the big hitters like Brendon McCullum, Luke Ronchi and Corey Anderson.

Williamson is the glue that holds everything together, much like Jonathan Trott was when England were thriving in one-day cricket, in that he bats through, gets hundreds and allows others to go ballistic.

With him in the mix, New Zealand are certainly one of the standout sides.

Watch each and every game of the ICC Cricket World Cup on our dedicated channel, Sky Sports World Cup, starting with New Zealand against Sri Lanka from 10pm on Friday 13 February.

Before then don’t miss our World Cup Preview Show, with Nasser Hussain and Michael Vaughan, from 8pm on Friday on the same channel.