Can pretty boys be ugly?

I’ve often pondered as to why English domestic cricket produces so many skilled, pretty boy types who seem to thrive in local competitions but just seem to lack that indefinable ‘X Factor’ when it comes to playing gritty, ugly, effective innings that get you home in tight situations.

Watching every ball of the current ODI series in England has made me dwell even longer on this question. It’s not a question of talent, skill or dedication – Ravi Bopara for example looks classy and is probably more naturally gifted than say Cameron White or Callum Ferguson (on the surface anyway). Yet, when they come up against hard competitors who scrap like junkyard dogs, they forever seem to fall short.

The current Australian team is but a shadow of the vintage of the past two decades but they are the quintessential scavengers, hunting as a pack and feeding on loose scraps. Admittedly, England, sans Pietersen and Flintoff are not without their own personnel issues, but you sense that players like Bopara, Owais Shah and Ian Bell would be in the frame anyway. To watch any of these three players bat is to see fluidity, grace and a touch of class. They look the part. No doubt in County cricket and against some international teams, they act the part too. Their talent is evident for the world to see and yet …

Every time they come out to bat in tough situations that call for attritional rather than attractive cricket, I get that sense of foreboding that precedes an imminent soft dismissal. And so it proves to be, all too often. They don’t seem to get out to particularly good deliveries or struggle for timing but it seems like only a matter of time before they spoon one lazily to cover or get too cute with a lap-sweep or find some soft way to fulfil the prophecy (eg: hit wicket or run-out). The sad thing is I probably enjoy watching them bat more than the effective but less aesthetically pleasing batsmen like Collingwood, Strauss, White, Ferguson etc., but you just know that if your life depended on it, you’d be dashing off to check that the life insurance policy was paid up.

England seem to throw up these sorts of players more regularly than most other countries I can think of. I’m sure all domestic structures have these characters who dominate the local scene but rarely sustain it on the international stage but for some reason, in England, these players seem to enjoy relatively long international careers, recalled time and again for another predictably disappointing reincarnation.

David Gower was an obvious exception – his timeless elegance belied impressive numbers against most opposition but there have been so many others who never inspired genuine confidence, despite always looking a million dollars. On the other hand, you have guys like Collingwood, Thorpe and even Hussain who may not have necessarily been so pleasing on the eye but nonetheless played some memorable knocks when it mattered. When was the last time Bell, Bopara, Shah or even Luke Wright (not quite in the ‘pretty boy club’) scored an ugly 70 that won a tight match against feisty opposition on a difficult pitch?

It’s probably too simplistic to blame the County cricket system for producing these domestic run machines who just can’t seem to produce the goods consistently on the international stage when it really counts. Those issues have been debated for years now and I’m sure the brains inside English cricket have addressed these perceived problems. It’s certainly not a question of talent so much as temperament.

Cameron White is a prime example – in terms of sheer raw talent, Bopara, Bell and Shah probably have more going for them and probably score more heavily in domestic cricket. In fact, their Test and ODI averages are probably higher too. But numbers alone don’t tell the full story. Last night’s game at the Rose Bowl was a classic case in point. It was a slow pitch and a tight game with two relatively mediocre teams (therefore evenly matched) scrapping hard for supremacy but one always got the sense that Beauty would come second to the Beast in that contest. Even Michael Clarke’s tortured innings was eventually a matchwinning contribution. I cannot imagine Bell allowing himself to bat that poorly and yet keep going without throwing it away in frustration.

Perhaps it’s not quite the best time of the season to expect attractive strokeplayers like Bopara and Shah to make runs in September. I enjoy watching them bat, albeit only too briefly, so I’m hoping that the Champions Trophy on South African pitches will see a flood of runs. But I keep coming back to the point that it’s not just the volume of runs that matter – it’s the context in which they are scored. In England it seems, the pretty boys shine on parade days but go missing in the trenches when it all gets a bit down n’ dirty. I wait in hope…