All-round obsession

From Stephen Vagg, Australia
The Single Biggest Problem with English Cricket - the 'Allrounder Obssession' The recent selection of England's cricket team has drawn attention once again to the blight that has damaged English cricket for the past twenty years - the obssession with finding an allrounder.

Ever since the glory days of Ian Botham the English selectors have persisted with all rounders, in the foolish belief this somehow gives the team an extra player - ignoring the fact that this usually means you have one (sometimes two) less. Cricket is all about the basics, and the basics of team selection is that you pick batsmen who can bat, bowlers who can bowl, and keepers who can keep. You should only pick an allrounder if (a) they are good enough at one of those jobs to justify their place in the team (eg Kapil Dev, Imran, Gilchrist) or (b) back them up with another all rounder.

During the last Ashes, England's obssession with having an all rounder saw them pick a not very good keeper (Jones) over a world class one (Read) for his batting, an average spin bowler (Giles) over a world class one (Panesar) for the same reason, and played an out of form batsman (Flintoff) at six instead of a proper batsman - to enable them to play a fifth bowler. It came a cropper and it should have.

Now they are picking Flintoff, a not-very-good-test-batsman (at the moment) to play at six, Broad, a not-very-good test bowler, at eight because of his batting. Some people will go "what about the 2005 Ashes then?" and that's fair enough - but the team structure worked then because Flintoff, Jones and Giles kept up their ends with the bat. The moment they lost batting form (any one of them), it didn't work - and that's where you get into difficulty, because a fast bowler, keeper and spinner should be in the team on their basis to bowl fast, keep and spin the ball, not score runs.

The number of dud all rounders England have tried since Botham is staggering: Derek Pringle, Chris Lewis, De Freitas, Dominic Cork, David Capel, Craig White, Ronnie Irani, Alex Tudor, and Ben and Adam Hollioake are just some. These players all had their moments but their presence in the team almost always threw out the balance. They got some runs but no wickets or wickets but no runs; they boosted the bowling a little or weakened the batting a bit, or weakened the batting but boosted the bowling. They made the selectors see-saw between Jack Russell and Alec Stewart, just as they now chop and change with Read, Jones, Prior and Nixon. But such is the lure and glamour of the all rounder that no one seems to care.

I like Freddie Flintoff - who could not like Freddie Flintoff? He's a good enough player to be picked in the team, but as a bowler - he's not good enough to bat at six. Stuart Broad should not be in the test team as a bowler mainly because he's a "not-bad" number eight batsman. That's madness. England had the balance right in the third test - play six batters, and Flintoff at seven. Yes, they lost that test. But remember that England were put in a winning position in that test because of the efforts of a number six batsman (Collingwood). Does anyone think that would have happened if Flintoff had played at six? They just needed to keep their nerve.

But England's selectors snapped under pressure - and now it looks like they're going to win the 4th test, they'll keep making this mistake, and they'll keep losing and wonder why. The great thing about test cricket is that it finds you out in the end. England are trying to take short cuts, and they will come undone. Until they learn that lesson they will always remain a second-rate side.