CMJ: Hollioakes could provide the lift England need (30 July 1997)

Wednesday 30 July 1997

Hollioakes could provide the lift England need

writes Christopher Martin-Jenkins.

THE England selectors have three more days of cricket - the championship round starting tomorrow - before they meet on Saturday night to pick a team for the fifth Test at Trent Bridge next week. Australia are one up with two to play so England must win or abandon hope of regaining the Ashes.

Rightly, Mike Atherton remains captain and unless the last two Tests finish disastrously for England, or he fails to find the answer to his problem against Glenn McGrath, the chances are that Atherton, not any of the alternatives - Adam Hollioake, Nasser Hussain and Mark Ramprakash -will take England to the West Indies after Christmas. It is equally likely that Hollioake will lead the one-day team in Sharjah in December.

For the moment, however, planning is almost irrelevant. The frenzied call is for boldness and experiment, but sweeping changes will not work now, any more than they did in 1989 when England fielded 29 different cricketers in six Tests and lost 4-0. Even the introduction of Mike Smith in the Leeds match, which seemed the right choice to me, proved to be a mistake, as much because it weakened the batting fractionally and subtly damaged team cohesion as because of his inability to take wickets. The only hope is for a reasoned analysis of what has gone wrong since the win at Birmingham and appropriate remedial action.

The most obvious weakness has been in the close catching and first innings` batting. Catches are invariably dropped by losing sides, brilliant ones taken by winning ones. Graham Thorpe`s dropping of Matthew Elliott has been much debated, but Thorpe himself was dropped by Michael Bevan early in his century at Edgbaston and had Mark Butcher not been missed at Lord`s by Mark Taylor, England might not have drawn the second Test. These moments are often a symptom of a team`s morale rather than the result of any lack of professionalism.

English morale was very high indeed, of course, after the oneday internationals and the Edgbaston Test. There was something about the build-up to the second match at Lord`s, however, which suggested that the feeling had already been lost before that match even began. If England had won the toss and fielded first on the damp pitch perhaps the catches would have stuck as they did not after the deflating experience of being bowled out by Glenn McGrath.

The best slip catcher in England is Nick Knight, who is out of the running. Graham Thorpe has taken 33 catches in 41 Tests for England and is just as likely as the only feasible batting alternatives - Ramprakash, Chris Adams and Adam Hollioake - to hold catches at first slip. Far from dropping Thorpe, I would restore him to his best position, four, with Nasser Hussain (the best fielder in the side) at five, and John Craw- ley and Alec Stewart changing places at three and six.

There is obviously a case for dropping Stewart on both his batting and wicketkeeping form and restoring the estimable Jack Russell. But against top-class fast bowling Stewart is far the more likely of the two to make runs. The last thing England can afford is to weaken the batting, which is why, if Darren Gough, Dean Headley and Andrew Caddick are to remain the three main fast bowlers, there is a case for Ashley Giles, rather than Phil Tufnell, temporarily to replace the shell-shocked Robert Croft, and for Adam Hollioake to take over from Mark Ealham.

That would, however, be hard on Croft, the best spinner in the country (with Peter Such not far behind) and on Ealham, whose average in the series is 35 with the bat and 23 with the ball. Dougie Brown, of Warwickshire, and Somerset`s Graham Rose, 33 now but having a very effective season, will no doubt be considered, as will the mercurial Chris Lewis, but such is Ben Hollioake`s flair for the big occasion that it would be tempting for so crucial a game to ignore his modest first-class form with bat and ball for Surrey and put him in alongside his dauntless brother.

I would assemble the following at Trent Bridge before assessing the pitch, with the first 11 as the most likely side, in batting order:

M A Atherton, M A Butcher, J P Crawley, G P Thorpe, N Hussain, A J Stewart, A J Hollioake, B C Hollioake, R D B Croft, D W Headley, D Gough, A R Caddick, M A Ealham, A F Giles.

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