M Parkinson on England: Lacklustre arrival of the county show (30 Mar 1998)

30 March 1998

Lacklustre openers stump arrival of the county show

By Michael Parkinson

TWO weeks to the start of a new cricket season. Oxford University v Sussex, Cambridge University v Northamptonshire. Can't you feel the pulse quicken? Do the short hairs stiffen? Doesn't the mouth water at the prospect? Or couldn't you care less? I'm not bothered one way or the other and I love the game so Lord knows what a predominantly indifferent populace makes of it.

Normally speaking cricket fills that three-month gap between the end of the Premier League and the first match of a new season. This year the break is bridged by the World Cup so the general perception is that cricket doesn't exist.

Given the presence of summer football you might have imagined cricket mounting a serious challenge to the take over. But no. The new season starts as it has always done with the most meaningless fixtures. Which other sport announces its arrival on the sporting calendar with second-rate practice matches, which is what the University fixtures are. If they have a justifying presence it is to provide a fitting overture for the mediocrity to follow.

There is much for Lord MacLaurin and the England Cricket Board to ponder in the coming months. For instance if Chris Smith takes the advice of his advisory committee and allows cricket the possibility of making more money from television deals, what will be done with the money? How will it be spent to improve the game? Rather, how can it be spent to improve matters?

It cannot modernise the game because the counties have voted against change. Without change we will never produce the players to transform an indifferent England team into a successful one, and without achieving success how will the game attract sponsors, spectators and players in sufficient numbers to prevent cricket dying on its backside, which is what is happening now?

The key to the game's survival is an England team capable of the kind of success achieved in recent years by the Australians. In the time it has taken Mark Taylor to set new standards of positive, attacking and attractive cricket, Mike Atherton and England have lunged from crisis to crisis like a drunken man in a minefield.

The latest defeat against the West Indies served only to demonstrate the difference between having a team capable of winning a game against any opposition and one which based its strategy on the forlorn hope the opposition's fast bowlers might be over the top.

The longer the tour progressed the more it became clear that for all the brave and optimistic talk of England having turned the corner the old problems remain. Ambrose and Walsh demonstrated there is no substitute for class.

Atherton's departure was the ritual sacrifice to the gods but will change very little. It might give the player the peace of mind to rediscover his talent as an opening bat, which would be a bonus. Also it creates an opportunity to introduce a fresh mind to the problem of captaining a team gorged on failure. There is a virus of defeat in English cricket and it needs an antidote. I was intrigued by Mark Nicholas's suggestion that Matthew Maynard might be the man for the job. Apart from his obvious quality as a player he would bring a fresh approach and inject new vigour and optimism into what must be a dejected team.

Whoever takes over inherits an insurmountable problem of winning Test matches with inadequate resources. The larger and more worrying problem is nothing being done to change a system producing second-rate goods. Two weeks to go before it all begins again. The start of the county championship. Derbyshire v Nottinghamshire, Gloucestershire against Glamorgan. Bet you can't wait. Sussex v Lancashire, Warwickshire v Durham. Isn't that an exciting prospect? Hello . . . hello . . . can you hear me? . . hello . . . anyone out there listening? . . . hello . . .

Source :: Electronic Telegraph (https://www.telegraph.co.uk)