CMJ: Early success puts Giles in line for `home` debut (31 May 1997)

Saturday 31 May 1997

Early success puts Giles in line for `home` debut

By Christopher Martin Jenkins

EIGHT of the players who won the Wellington and Christchurch Tests in quick succession three months ago will rapidly be agreed by England`s selectors when they meet tonight in the ancient cathedral city of Peterborough to discuss the team for the first Test, which starts at Edgbaston next Thursday. On their debate about the other three places much will depend.

According to one of Ian Botham`s more famous throwaway remarks, an old soke might at one time have seemed a suitable place for a selection meeting. Tonight`s business, however, will be conducted soberly enough, you may be sure, by David Graveney, Graham Gooch and Mike Gatting, following thorough initial discussions with captain Mike Atherton and coach David Lloyd.

Four specialist batsmen - Atherton, Nasser Hussain, Graham Thorpe and John Crawley - plus the wicket-keeping allrounder, Alec Stewart, and three bowlers - Darren Gough, Robert Croft and Andrew Caddick - are certain of their places. Of the other three, Dominic Cork is injured, which unbalances the side; Nick Knight has not scored sufficient runs since recovering from a broken finger and looks technically vulnerable against topclass opening bowling; and Phil Tufnell has had little chance this season to suggest that he can improve on a poor record against Australia.

The spinning conundrum will be solved first, I suspect. Tufnell would be very unlucky to lose his place after playing a full part in the success in New Zealand but the feeling is that the Australians - in particular, perhaps, Mark Waugh - have established a superiority over him. In a way that is unfair on Tufnell, who was too often obliged on the last tour to perform a stock bowling role because of the failure of the fast bowlers. Nonetheless, he has managed only 24 wickets at 46 against Australia and his only five-wicket haul came at Sydney in his second Test.

Tufnell works well in tandem with Croft and he flights the ball more subtly than his latest rival, Ashley Giles. But the signs are that the improving Giles will be preferred on his home ground at Edgbaston and the very pitch on which he took five first-innings wickets against Worcestershire when it was last used in 1995.

Whether England will play two spinners depends on how much grass is eventually left on the third different Test pitch used at Edgbaston in three years. If they do, it becomes imperative that whoever replaces Cork is a genuine wicket-taking seam or swing bowler and not a `fourth` seamer like Adam Hollioake.

So impressed were Atherton and Lloyd by the performances of both the Hollioakes in the one-day internationals that they would happily find a place for both as soon as possible.

Realistically, however, only Adam has a chance of being chosen tonight. If Ben were to be made England`s youngest player since Brian Close it would be in the hope that his bowling might be as inspired as his batting at Lord`s last Sunday. That would be a pure gamble and the solid qualities of Mark Ealham appeal more in the role of a reliable third seamer who swings the ball and a solid batsman whose only obvious weakness when he played his first Test last year was against wrist spin. I think he would handle Shane Warne better than he did Mushtaq Ahmed.

A fourth fast bowler will be required for inclusion instead of the second spinner if conditions so justify. It would have been Dean Headley, if fit, but whenever he seems to be on the verge of his first cap he gets injured. The selectors will not be inclined to take a chance on a bowler who has had to miss Kent`s latest match with a strained ligament in the back. Therefore the choice will be between a man about whom there is little new to say, the estimable but flawed Devon Malcolm, and one of the left-arm bowlers.

Mike Smith being, perhaps, a little too slow to take the new ball in a Test, it will boil down, I suspect, to Malcolm or Alan Mullally. The latter took his chance against Atherton on Thursday, where, after some typical looseness with the new ball, he bowled with the accuracy and hostility which had first gained him his extended run in the side. But nine games in a row was a fair trial and he did not emerge as a likely winner of Tests.

Malcolm has, of course, effectively won some Tests, not least at Edgbaston against New Zealand in 1990 (eight in the match) but his 34 wickets in 11 Tests against Australia have cost 44 runs each and he has never taken five in an innings. Quite a contrast to his 34 at 19, with three lots of five, in county cricket this season.

I have seen Malcolm bowl with fire, accuracy and suc- cess against both Kent and Middlesex this year but one bad spell at Canterbury, when his weight fell away on delivery, re- vived memories of the kind of expensive spells which have blighted his career. If the series were not against Australia, Martin McCague might be the better choice but Malcolm would be mine now if England leave out the second spinner.

The hardest decision of all is Atherton`s opening part- ner. Knight`s catching brilliance might be worth 50 runs a match, but England cannot afford to lose a quick wicket in the first Test. If selection policy is to be consistent, Mark Butcher, who catches safely at slip and made 153 not out at Edgbaston in the first big match of the season, will replace him. You do not have to be Welsh, however, to wonder why Hugh Morris, tough, sound, dependable, personable Hugh, has played only three Tests; or why Steve James, who scored six championship hundreds last year, has not yet had even an A tour. Both are in cracking form and if the selectors are not yet convinced by Butcher, they should choose Morris.

The other possibility is that poor Stewart will be asked to open once more, to enable Adam Hollioake to take the place at six which he deserves, but for which he may yet have to wait.

PROBABLE ENGLAND 13: Atherton, Butcher, Stewart, Thorpe, Hussain, Crawley, A Hollioake, Ealham, Croft, Giles, Gough, Caddick, Malcolm.

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