CMJ: England must play to their strengths in selection (8 September 1997)

Monday 8 September 1997

Comment: England must play to their strengths in selection

By Christopher Martin-Jenkins

TWO of the 17 championship matches still have to be played and it is four months before the first match of England`s 1998 tour of the Caribbean, but the selectors meet today, perhaps with unnecessary haste, to pick their touring teams for the winter.

By tonight all will be decided and tomorrow morning at 10.30 three teams are to be announced from Lord`s: the 16 (or, posssibly, 17) who will travel to Antigua after Christ- mas to prepare for a series of five Tests and five one-day internationals in the West Indies in the first threeand-a-half months of the new year; the England one-day specialists who will take on the West Indies, India and Pakistan in a quadrangular one-day tournament in Sharjah in mid-December; and the A team who will visit Kenya and (mainly) Sri Lanka from January until the middle of March.

The plan for the team to the West Indies is to start with 16 men from whom the Test side will be chosen, with rein- forcements for the one-day internationals with which the tour concludes in late March and early April. Steve James of Glamorgam, prolific for two seasons and therefore very deserving, but, despite 1,701 more runs this season at 81, not obviously a batsman of true Test class, is, with Ashley Cowan of Essex, the only uncapped player likely to make the initial 16.

Of the batsmen Atherton, the captain, Stewart, Hussain and Thorpe are certainties and so, probably, is Adam Hollioake, as much because he has to be seen as a possible captain in Australia the following winter as because he has earned a place as a batting all-rounder on merit. Assuming the strategy will be to play six specialist batsmen in the modern idiom, two batting reserves is a reasonable contingency, even on a tour with very few first-class games once the Tests begin. Therefore there will be three other batting places to be contested by James, Mark Butcher, Nick Knight, John Crawley and Mark Ramprakash.

Graeme Hick and Robin Smith will be mentioned this evening, no doubt, but, realistically, it will boil down to the quartet above. I would put Crawley`s name down first, because I believe him to be a class batsman utterly dedicated to his career. The quality and commitment of Ramprakash are no less obvious and he did sufficiently well at the Oval to justify another tour of the West Indies even if that leads to a tricky last batting choice between James, Knight and Butcher. There have been worse starts to Test careers against Australia than Butcher`s 254 runs at 25 and he did not look out of his depth. The obvious course is to pick James and Knight for the A tour, in reserve lest anyone should break a finger in the Caribbean: someone invariably does.

Jack Russell has had too good a season not to remain the first choice as wicketkeeper/ batsman. The debate about whether he or Stewart fills an all-rounder`s role can be left for the tour itself. Who should be the official all-rounder, howev- er, remains almost the hardest decision. Dominic Cork has not performed sufficiently incisively as a bowler since his hernia operation and rather than take his return to 1995 form on trust, it makes sense for him to have some solid cricket with the A team in Sri Lanka. If he performs with distinction there, the option to add him to a party of 16 for the West Indies could be exercised because, at his best, he gets into England`s most convincing looking Test team.

This leaves Cork, Mark Ealham or Ben Hollioake. The latter is not yet a serious proposition as a third Test seamer and he would learn much by touring Sri Lanka before, no doubt, going to the West Indies for the one-day internationals. There will be those who say that Ealham is not quick enough to be anything other than money for old rope in the Caribbean but the need there, in the absence of extreme pace or spin, is pri- marily for accuracy. Ealham is constantly underestimated: on this season`s evidence he should be preferred to an erratic Cork.

England have to play to such strengths as they have, which means taking both their spinners, Phil Tufnell and Robert Croft, and setting out with the intention of playing them in at least some of the Tests. English bowlers generally have had a very unrewarding time in the West Indies on recent tours, only Angus Fraser, twice, and Richard Ellison, once, managing a five-wicket analysis in the last four series there.

Fraser must be seriously considered again now in sup- port of the obvious selections, Gough, Caddick and Headley, but Peter Martin`s equally solid virtues and relative youth should probably take precedence. Alternatively the selectors will be tempted to take one rising talent with less experience, as they did when choosing Chris Silverwood last winter.

Alas, he is not obviously any better a bowler now than he was 12 months ago. The three candidates this time are Alex Tudor, the quickest but this season the most disappointing; Paul Hutchison, suddenly and excitingly in front of the longest queue of useful left-arm bowlers in the world; and Cowan, the tall and willing young Essex outswing bowler, who has kept going well all season and will surely have Graham Gooch`s support.

The best policy, as with Steve James, might be to take all three on the A tour and see which one responds best to the challenge, though conditions in the West Indies and Sri Lanka are dissimilar, for all the relative slowness of most Caribbean pitches.

My 16 would be unadventurous, but the Australians showed in the West Indies when they finally triumphed there that it is only by solid, simple, determined cricket that any team can possibly prevail - hence, the following: Atherton, captain, Stewart, Butcher, Thorpe, Hussain, Crawley, Ramprakash, A J Hollioake, Ealham, Russell, Croft, Tufnell, Gough, Caddick, Headley and Martin. My guess would be that Fraser and Cowan will be preferred to Martin and Ealham and that Knight or James will actually be chosen ahead of Butcher.

Perhaps the best way of demonstrating how difficult it is to choose between promising cricketers between 18 and 25 from whom the A team should be drawn (yet bearing in mind also the desirability of keeping potential reserves for the West Indies in match practice) is to list the fast or fast-medium bowlers who might be considered: Cowan, Hutchison, Tudor, Silverwood, Cork, Dougie Brown, Melvyn Betts, James Hewitt, Jimmy Ormond, Ben Phillips, Darren Thomas and James Kirtley. Five of them would be plenty and mine would be Cork, Cowan, Hutchi- son, Brown and Hewitt.

Mark Alleyne must have a chance of the captaincy, but in the interests of forward planning my choice would be Knight. The remainder of the team might be: James (vice-capt), Dowman, Adams, Shah, Flintoff, Hemp, Nixon, Rob Turner, Giles, Cosker and Salisbury. (Young off-spinners are in short supply.)

Space allows no detailed discussion of the team of oneday specialists who will be sent to Sharjah to try to beat three strong opponents, but also to prepare for the 1999 World. Given that we know all about Hick and Chris Lewis, I would suggest the following 14: A J Hollioake (capt), Stewart, Knight, A D Brown, G Lloyd, Adams, Penney, Ealham, B C Hollioake, Croft, D R Brown, Gough, Headley and Welch.

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