England back on the right track (6 December 1998)

6 December 1998

England back on the right track

By Scyld Berry

WHEN English explorers searched the interior of Australia for some respite to the never-ending bush and ruthless desert, especially for a great inland lake or sea, they searched in vain. Names on the map like Lake Disappointment and Mount Hopeless attest forever to their lack of success.

This England cricket team, however, should not be condemned for their lack of success in Australia: not yet, at any rate. For the culture of the England team is now healthier than at any time since Mike Brearley was captain.

The pain of Perth was part of the birth-pangs of a decent side being born. It can never be a table-topping one until England have a match-winning spinner, and the selectors have made sure there is not one here by packing the party with off-breakers. Otherwise they are on the right track, so long as they believe it to be so, and further down it than many people, judging by the scores of this series and almost two decades of under-performance, may think.

At Brisbane and Perth this England team have played well for whole sessions, copping cuts and bruises and earfuls of abuse, answering the Australians back and trading punch for punch until the world champions have come up with the killer one from Glenn McGrath or Jason Gillespie. Mark Ramprakash must have received more abuse in his second innings in Perth than Patsy Hendren, Denis Compton and Mike Gatting in their combined careers, which was a measure of how much the Australians wanted to break him, but it was symptomatic of this England team's spirit that they did not.

Of course England need a real strike-bowler, and attacking spinner, of their own before they can string those sessions into one long victorious necklace. For the moment though let us appreciate how far they have come since two years ago in Zimbabwe, or even last summer in the Lord's and Old Trafford Tests against South Africa, when they were incapable of playing well for one session.

No scores or statistics can prove this improvement - indeed they may suggest the opposite - but it is nonetheless evident as they prepare for the Adelaide Test, where they cannot afford to be defeated if the Ashes are to be regained. There is a genuine zeal as Darren Gough strives to be the answer to McGrath; when England are throwing themselves around in the field - and stopping the ball - as never before; or when their fielders mix it with Steve Waugh while Alex Tudor makes him do a fine imitation of a kangaroo on a pogo-stick.

The Australians as a whole did not like it one bit when England's fast bowlers attacked them in Perth, or when England's batsmen asserted themselves in Brisbane: twice in one over there Australian fielders fumbled and conceded an extra run. At Adelaide England must aim to be consistently positive, running every quick single, putting away every half-volley, getting that short-leg in for new batsmen. Bullies are the last people who can cope with being bullied.

England are at last trying to make victory happen instead of waiting for it: such a philosophy of patience has never won hearts or modern Test series and soon becomes indistinguishable from resignation. Graham Gooch succeeded in dispelling it in his early period of captaincy, and raised England's level of intensity, until he tired of the struggle and went back to batting.

"Show some passion, Mullally!" shouted one spectator in Perth as the bowler ambled back to long-leg after dropping Michael Slater. This critic did not know his man: Mullally does care, when he is bowling and giving it back to Steve Waugh in equal measure. What he (and every other England player) has to do is channel the same passion into every facet of the game, not clowning around with the bat and being the worst of England's culprits with three dropped chances out of three.

Given ECB contracts, England's bowlers could work on their fielding and batting between Tests instead of doing donkey-work in county cricket; and Ramprakash and Graeme Hick could work on their bowling so that England could make do with seven batsmen and four seamers in most circumstances, excluding Sydney, until the selectors give Ashley Giles a go. Above all, ECB contracts would stop Tudor being bowled into the ground in pursuit of promotion or to avoid relegation for Surrey in the brave new world of a two-division championship, and cutting down his pace in order to survive.

One way to supply more punch in Adelaide would be to open with Alec Stewart: the Australians do not make Slater bat at number four and keep wicket. But as England have no reserve keeper who can bat, Stewart will continue in his three jobs and down the order, to be pitted against spin as soon as he comes in, while Mike Atherton, England's best and most soft-handed player of spin, seldom faces any because he is snuffed out by the quicks.

Given these selector-imposed limitations, the best available option would be to elevate Hick to number three, tell him that he is there for the series, and hope he can carry on from where he left off in Perth. He did not chew his nails to the quick at second slip as he used to do. After 50 Tests he looks more secure than ever.

Top batsmen are motivated in different ways. Stewart loves to strut his stuff; Atherton loves to deny opponents his wicket and victory. In both cases confrontation sparks them. Hick loves batting and has done ever since he was bowled to by African boys in his garden on the Trelawney estate outside Harare; and county cricket was much the same. In Test cricket bowlers have bowled not to but at him, denying him his first-choice preference of front-foot drives, while everyone has watched and carped.

He was beginning to flow in 1993 until Merv Hughes confronted him verbally and he was dropped. Back he came, more hardened, and the career graph was rising steadily until 1996, when he began badly against India and froze against the abrasive Pakistanis and Waqar's yorkers, to be dropped until last summer.

All the time his old Worcester coach Basil d'Oliveira has told him to go for his shots - he is too big a man to push and fend at all the short stuff - and at Perth he did so. Ideally, he needs reassurance, a quiet crowd, a platform for him to bat on and a solid defensive partner like Ramprakash at the other end, but he may be ready at last to deal with practical conditions.

If Hick can fulfil himself, and Graham Thorpe strengthens his lower back, England have a solid enough core of batsmen and pace bowlers, and the right attitude, to make them a worthy mid-table team with a chance of beating the big four Test sides. Gooch as a hands-on manager has not lapsed into the mistake he made as captain of being too zealous for the hair shirt: it was sensible to give the Test players two days off after the seven-wicket defeat in Perth.

England's development though has also to be seen in the context of other Test nations who are improving simultaneously, like Sri Lanka, New Zealand and Zimbabwe; and another beating in three days would inevitably stir self-doubt in a team still exploring its capabilities. But at least if England do fail against the world Test champions, it will be merely because they are not good enough - disappointing, not hopeless.

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