CMJ: Lord`s Test: England keep faith with winning side (16 June 1997)

Monday 16 June 1997

Lord`s Test: England keep faith with winning side

Christopher Martin-Jenkins.

THE England selectors did more than decide on an unchanged party of 13 for the Lord`s Test when they discussed the matter for the final time during a five-minute telephone link-up on Saturday night,

The chairman, David Graveney, also made it plain that unless the look of the pitch is radically different from what they expect when the team gather for net practice tomorrow, the XI will be the one which won the first Test by nine wickets.

If so, this would be the first time England have fielded an unchanged team for a home Test for 34 matches, stretching back to 1991, when a Graham Gooch-inspired victory at Headingley was followed by the relative triumph, given England`s ap- palling record at Lord`s, of a draw against the West Indies. On that occasion the failure to field a single specialist spin bowler arguably cost them the chance to go two up. Graeme Hick bowled 18 overs in the West Indies first innings and took two for 77.

It is a measure of England`s recent progress that Hick will not have been mentioned over the phone despite a belated first championship hundred of the season against Gloucester- shire. One of the favourite rainy day debates last winter was whether Hick would play for England again this summer, or indeed ever again. He had looked a jaded cricketer last season and a winter`s rest, it was hoped, would recharge the batteries. After all, he had made 98 not out in the last Test he played against Australia.

But the boat has moved out of port and only if the en- gine breaks down will there be a chance to catch it. There were only two changes the selectors can even have contemplated after Edgbaston, assuming Darren Gough`s full recovery from the sore shins which resulted from his efforts there, though that is a problem liable to recur, unfortunately, during a long series.

The first might have been to ditch Mark Butcher - as a previous committee did his father - after only one game, a no- tion which would quickly have been dismissed despite two brief innings and a feeling that he is not playing at his best. Having once preferred him to Nick Knight and Hugh Morris among others, he had to be given a proper chance.

There will have been more discussion about Devon Malcolm and it would be he who would make way for Phil Tufnell, presumably, if the relaid pitch, being used for a Test for the first time, looks drier than expected. Graveney said yesterday, however, that he felt that Malcolm`s fast and immensely hardworking spell on the Sunday afternoon at Edgbaston both fired up the crowd and prepared a path for the incisive spell by Gough which followed. In other words, modest figures of nought for 52 were deceptive.

Ashley Cowan, Essex`s 22-year-old fast bowler, a bois- terous young puppy rapidly turning himself into a seriously menacing guard-dog, will join the nets tomorrow and as Essex have no game until they play Oxford on Friday, he will stay on as part of the team when two players - probably Adam Hollioake and Tufnell - rejoin their counties to play championship matches on Wednesday.

Mike Smith of Gloucestershire remains under close consideration, but as his wife gave birth to a daughter on Saturday night, his chance to join an England net practice and show how he reacts to a sudden glare of publicity has been postponed.

England`s 13

* M A Atherton (Lancashire) age 29, caps 68;

M A Butcher (Surrey) 24, 1;

A R Caddick (Somerset) 28, 12;

J P Crawley (Lancashire) 25, 18;

R D B Croft (Glamorgan) 27, 6;

M A Ealham (Kent) 27, 3;

D Gough (Yorkshire) 26, 18;

A J Hollioake (Surrey) 26, 0;

N Hussain (Essex) 29, 18;

D E Malcolm (Derbyshire) 34, 37;

- A J Stewart (Surrey) 34, 64;

G P Thorpe (Surrey) 27, 38;

P C R Tufnell (Middlesex) 31, 27.

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