England start from scratch (24 August 1999)

24 August 1999

England start from scratch

Michael Henderson

England's cricketers woke up yesterday morning to find themselves arraigned before the court of public opinion, charged with professional neglect. Unofficially they are now deemed the worst team in the world, a phrase that has a forbidding ring to it.

The only things that members of the cricketing public wanted to wring were the necks of the men who lost so miserably to New Zealand on Black Sunday.

It was not hard to feel sympathy for Nasser Hussain, who was jeered by spectators after the match and who has been widely criticised for defending the integrity of his players. In fairness, he could say little else. He knew more than anybody how England had been outplayed by an underrated team and he paid tribute in full to their conquerors. There is a private time and place for a captain to say what needs to be said and one trusts that he said it.

All that happened was that England lost a Test match and, with it, a series. Worse things occur every day but, from the perspective of the cloistered, slightly unreal world of games and games players, it was a major story.

Last night, when Hussain sat down with Duncan Fletcher, the coach with whom he must now work, to select the touring party for South Africa, he will have been left in no doubt about the public perception of the team he took over earlier this summer. One hopes that the two men bore that in mind when they drew up a list of 17 names, with David Graveney's help, which was due to be announced tomorrow, but will now not be until next Tuesday.

It is not an easy task, for one very simple reason: there is not an abundance of high talent. When Hussain looks at the wonderful players available to other international sides he may feel, as Elgar did, on studying the symphonies of Beethoven, "like a tinker looking at the Forth Bridge".

Even before Graham Thorpe withdrew from the tour, to restore some "balance" to his life, England did not have batsmen of the quality of Sachin Tendulkar, Mark Waugh and Brian Lara. Neither can they call on bowlers like Wasim Akram, Glenn McGrath and the two men they will face this winter, Allan Donald and Shaun Pollock. The cupboard is not bare but neither is it well stocked; otherwise they would have beaten New Zealand.

How long ago it seems that Alex Tudor was belting the bowlers all round Edgbaston to give England victory in the first Test. Tudor has not hit a shot or bowled a ball in anger since that peculiar Saturday. Darren Gough, whose bounce is so important to this uncertain group of players, has missed the entire series and is by no means fit to tour.

The loss of that pair would be cruel. Gough is the team's standard-bearer and Tudor, though green at 21, can really bowl and really bat. For one so young he is worryingly injury-prone. Unless he takes himself in hand he is going to go the way of so many other promising English bowlers down the years.

By and large, the quicker bowlers who represented England this summer performed well. Andrew Caddick performed with distinction. It was the batting that let the team down time and again, and until they begin to put decent totals on the board in the first innings, England will continue to lose. To concede the lead in 14 consecutive matches, 10 times by more than 100 runs, is the most damning fact of a pretty damning year.

The other damning aspect of this team's performance, which David Lloyd alluded to in his recent, much-quoted column in this newspaper, concerns the team spirit, or lack of it. Players new to the side do not feel comfortable in a dressing-room that has grown sour and it is that problem Hussain and his co-selectors must resolve before they can expect the team to make real progress.

All this is in marked contrast to the impression that Stephen Fleming and his happy players have made. The Kiwis have had a good summer, reaching the semi-final of the World Cup and coming from behind to beat England without two of their main bowlers. Fleming, thoughtful, deliberate and fair-minded, a true leader in word and deed, has revealed himself to be a class act.

After the match on Sunday, he paid England the compliment of saying that New Zealand judged their development by how well they performed here and in Australia. So far as he is concerned this country remains the home of cricket and, in an emotional sense, it is. However, the heart of the modern game beats most strongly elsewhere.

This is not the time to berate Tim Lamb, Lord MacLaurin and the rest of the folk at the England and Wales Cricket Board. Of course they have made mistakes. They have made howlers, but they know how far the game has sunk and they feel it like the rest of us. (Holding the purse strings they probably feel it even more.) They are also determined to reshape the domestic game so that it begins to produce the players that have distinguished England teams of the past.

There are, believe it or not, people of goodwill out there. There are players of talent, even within the England team. What there is not is unity, or any clearly defined strategy.

Yes, these buzz-words appear far too often, and are used imprecisely, but no group of people are ever going to advance without first deciding what they want, and how they are going to get it. In their own way, New Zealand have just made that point.

When Hussain takes himself off for a break next month, to blow some cobwebs out of his hair, he will leave for South Africa in a better frame of mind. He will have to. The tour represents a fresh start, with a new captain and a new coach engaged on a mission the scope of which is disturbingly clear: to improve, one step at a time, however painstaking it might be.

We shall know soon enough what moves those men. As they go away to talk, and to find consolation in matters of mutual concern, we can send some small gesture of acknowledgement across the divide that separates performer from observer. In the current reduced state of English cricket the least we can do is wave at each other.

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