ENGLAND THRASHED BY INDIA : TIME FOR CHANGE ?

With England licking their wounds after a humiliating innings defeat at the hands of India's rampant Test team, the commentators and pundits are turning their attention to the future of captain Alastair Cook. England got everything wrong in Mumbai - initially team selection but then their batting bowling and fielding was simply nowhere near good enough.

Cook has been captain for some time and questions are now being raised about his desire to continue in the role. Of course, he is a fine batsman and it would be hoped that he would continue to open the batting for a while yet, but the truth is that he never has been much of a captain. Cook shows little energy on the field of play, rather wondering about often with a puzzled look on his face. He has rarely, if ever, appeared to either have the ability or desire to make any effort to galvanise his players and has, instead, been happy to be led by them. Thinking back to the days of Mike Brearley, probably the best England captain of the last 50 years, Cook is, in comparison, immobile, dour and wholly lacking in charisma.

The problem is that there are no obvious successors to Brearley waiting in the wings. When Cook steps down, there's little chance of him being sacked, his replacement will almost certainly be Joe Root. He is, of course, a fine batsman but, at just 26, does he yet have the maturity needed to lead the England team ? Might giving him the added burden of captaincy blunt his worth as a batsman ? In his favour is the fact that he does seem slightly more animated than Cook and, until he's had a go, we won't know the answers. What we can't afford is another case of handing the captaincy to whoever is seen as the best batsman, simply for that reason. Far too often in the past this has been the approach, and it's rarely produced results.

We must also not forget that England's poor performances in India are not simply down to mistakes in selection or any shortcomings in the side's captaincy. Our batsman have failed to cope with India's bowlers and our bowlers have failed to contain India's batsmen. These failings indicate that there are serious issues to be addressed when it comes to developing our young players, though no one shows any signs of understanding what the problems are.

In short, our domestic games are played on flat, unresponsive pitches. Batsmen are rarely tested by the bowlers as wickets are consistent, with regular bounce and little turn; bowlers have little opportunity to exploit these wickets, so restrict themselves to a largely defensive mode of operation. Our counties have few spinners of real quality, but are replete with mediocre seamers. On wickets in countries such as India, we simply aren't equipped to cope.

What we need is a return to uncovered wickets and 3 day county games, meaningful penalties for failing to bowl overs at an acceptable rate and less, rather than more, limited overs matches. Our players need to be able to develop their skills in more challenging environments than is currently allowed by the structure of our domestic cricket.

Sadly, the chance of any of this happening is remote, if not non-existent. We will carry on as we are, and still get thrashed in the sub-Continent.

ENGLAND CRASH TO WEST INDIES.

Yet another hopeless performance by an England team.

Alastair Cook, fine batsman though he has been, has proved to be no good as a captain. Jonathan Trott, a man with a history of breaking under pressure, has been brought back as an opening batsman, probably the most pressured position in the order, and has failed. Moeen Ali, an excellent middle order batsman, has been expected to also be the team's principal spin bowler, which he is not up to. Jos Buttler, an exciting one day batsman, is simply not good enough as a Test Match wicket-keeper. All-in-all, this England team has too many players who shouldn't be there.

That said, English cricket as a whole is in a mess. Infighting at the top and regular changes in the domestic calendar don't help. Concentrating on one-day games and 20-20 knock-abouts to the detriment of the longer format of the County Championship has ensured that we produce few players competent to play Test Match cricket. Indeed, most of our Test Match players rarely, if ever, appear in the County Championship and a handful of appearances in shorter games is the most that the supporters of County sides can hope for.

Of course, the shorter format competitions bring in much needed money but they have also destroyed our traditional county cricket, which was the breeding ground for the Test Match team. Now, we have hordes of players who may be brilliant at 20-20 but are temperamentally unsuited to 5-day cricket; we also select captains on the basis of their performance as batsmen, something that is fine in schoolboy cricket but a recipe for disaster once the schoolboys have grown up.

Until someone gets a grip on all of this, England will continue to struggle in the international sphere of Test Match cricket. So-called 'experts' and 'pundits' will voice their opinions, always fro the viewpoint of insiders; the likes of Ian Botham, Mike Atherton, David Gower and co., are all part of the cricketing establishment and far too close to the people involved to do more than keep repeating the same tired clichés.

This is not something that is specific to cricket. England's football, tennis, golf, athletics and much more all suffer from the same disease. Until we change our whole sporting culture, we will continue to fail at these, and many other, sports.

INDIAN CRICKET NADIR AS ENGLAND ENJOY BRIEF SUMMER.

What a pathetic collapse by the Indian cricket team.

After good performances in the first 2 tests, including a win in the second, they've fallen apart thereafter. England, if you believe the pundits, have been transformed from a team of no-hopers to a team of world beaters - if only it were true.

The players are the same, the only difference has been attitude and determination. Frankly, the Indians have shown little determination and their attitude has been pathetic; England, on the other hand, have been buoyed by some fine bowling by Anderson and Broad and some large slices of luck for their captain. Alastair  Cook has made a couple of good scores but has also been dropped numerous times along the way, not quite what would have happened against Ricky Ponting's Australians.

Earlier in the year, Cook's position both as captain and batsman, was under attack. Now, after a couple of decent scores, courtesy of one or three dropped catches, and some easy victories, he appears utterly secure. What has changed ? He's still a fine batsman having a poor spell, but a weak and uninspiring captain; in one position he should be a 'shoe-in', from the other he should still be on his bike. 

The latest crushing of the Indians in less than three days is an utter humiliation for the tourists and will be greeted as a terrific performance by England. In truth, the Indians capitulated as they did in the previous 2 matches, completely unable to deal with English conditions. Unlike the great Indian batsmen of the past, the modern crop don't understand what to do when the ball swings or seams and don't have the patience and/or ability to work out an approach. All of this has been with the one glorious exception of captain M S Dhoni who has shown his 'batsmen' how to do it from his position as captain, wicketkeeper and number 7.

Jimmy Anderson is, undoubtedly, one of the best bowlers in world cricket; Stuart Broad is a pretty good support for him. The rest, Jordan, Woakes, and so on, are nowhere near world class. If Anderson and Broad don't do it early on, the team will have problems; while the batsmen may pile up the runs, the bowlers will struggle.

England don't play another Test Match until they visit the West Indies for a 3 match series next April, which seems a very long time away. By then, Anderson and Broad will be a year nearer retirement and we still won't have a decent third seamer, let alone a spinner of any class. The batting looks good for years to come, the bowling appears horribly fragile; the captaincy is in the hands of one of the poorest to inhabit the role. Our chances don't look good.

ENGLAND CRASH AGAIN; COOK HAS TO GO.

Following yet another crushing defeat for the England cricket team in Australia, the future of Alastair Cook is suddenly the topic of debate.

 

Cook was groomed for the captaincy for some time before he was eventually given it, after Andrew Strauss retired, despite him having no real experience at the job. In days gone by, an England captain was almost always either an amateur gentleman, trained in the public school system, or an existing County captain with several years of experience; no longer. In fact, a good few of the recent England captains have had little or no captaincy experience prior to being given the England job and their success has been varied. Sadly, the almost total separation that now exists between County and International cricket means that players are prevented from honing their skills with a county and are whisked off to be ensconced in the England camp, being moulded into whatever the current style of play is while also being protected from failure and disappointment. Many of them hardly ever seem to play and have little chance of ever getting into a real run of form; batsmen play a couple of innings a month and bowlers send down 300 or 400 overs in a year, nowhere near enough to find their true rhythm.   

 

Cook has been a fine batsman though his form has suffered greatly of late, presumably due to the added burden of captaining a dysfunctional team. That he has been unable to encourage his side to improve and that he appears to do little more than stand around with his head in his hands, or stroking his chin, is a sure sign that he is a man out of his depth. Cook has none of the dynamism of some of his more successful predecessors and his team is the poorer for it.

 

When I was a lad, the captain of our junior school team was chosen because he was the best player; while this system may be good enough for school teams, it is hardly the way to pick the best man to lead a national side and so it has proved. Cook is no more a captain than were Kevin Pietersen and Ian Botham; all were appointed because they were good players, with little real thought as to their captaincy abilities. The trouble now is, should Cook be deprived of the job, who would replace him ?

 

First in line would normally be the vice-captain, Matt Prior, but he too has suffered a collapse in form and has even lost his place in the team. Additionally, his captaincy experience is even less than Cook's. Stuart Broad has captained the '20-20' side but it is rare for a bowler to be given the main job; the last pure bowler to be handed the poisoned chalice was Bob Willis , and that was more than 30 years ago. A few all-rounders have had a go but none has been particularly successful since Ray Illingworth, in the early 1970s. Of the others in the current side, Pietersen's already had a go and failed, and his overall attitude is far from what is needed in a captain; Ian Bell has never appeared to be in the running for the job while Carberry, Root, Stokes and Bairstow are newcomers, young and inexperienced. Graeme Swann has gone and Tim Bresnan is on the fringes of the team as is Monty Panesar. Jimmy Anderson is, perhaps, the only one who could, possibly, take the job, but he's another bowler; would he even want it ?

 

For me, Cook is simply not up to it. The only immediate replacement would be Jimmy Anderson, who has matured into a fine bowler, an excellent fielder and, while having no pretensions as a batsman, can often keep one end up for protracted periods of time. Beyond Anderson, the selectors would have to look outside of the current squad, but there are few candidates even there. Several county captains are overseas players while several others are on the wrong side of 30 and with no international experience.

 

Effectively, the system is to blame for the current mess in which the England team finds itself, though others may blame the coach, Andy Flower. In truth, the blame lies with those who designed the system and appointed Flower but there is little chance that they will see it this way. Instead, they'll sack Flower and Cook and appoint another inappropriate captain. "Plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose".