England suffering domestic strife (12 April 1998)

12 April 1998

England suffering domestic strife

By Scyld Berry

AFTER touring the West Indies last winter, India's captain (as he then was) Sachin Tendulkar was asked what he thought was the proper rest period after such a tour: "Twenty-one days," he replied. On Friday the county championship begins, one week after the England one-day players return from Trinidad.

Something will have to give, therefore, and for once it might not be the players' hamstrings. "I have sounded out the counties," said David Graveney, England's chairman of selectors, who will meet Graham Gooch and Mike Gatting in midweek to decide England's next captain (Alec Stewart is still frontrunner, if partly as a compromise candidate). "It is more than likely the gentlemen's agreement will be tested out. It is impossible for the players to fulfil everything."

Until now 'the gentlemen's agreement' has been one of those compromises which can give a country a bad name for being so ineffectual. One of the handful of occasions it has ever been used was in 1996 when England's coach David Lloyd asked Worcestershire to rest Graeme Hick for one championship match. It was done amid cries of ridicule on the lines of: "In my day players never needed a rest."

This comparison has to be considered, between English cricketers today and those of yesteryear. The latter were no doubt stronger for having walked to school and known manual labour: but they had enforced rests in the age of ship travel; never faced a domestic season which started in earnest as early as April 17; never played Tests without a rest day, or back-to-back Tests let alone one-day cricket.

"I'm waiting to hear from Bumble (David Lloyd) to clarify who needs a rest," said Graveney. "Each case is different. We have to discuss not only a player's work-load but also factors outside the game, perhaps domestic ones."

Mike Atherton, after enforced idleness for the last fortnight, is ready to go straight back to Lancashire and make the runs absent in the West Indies. His England opening partner Alec Stewart is out on his feet after his three-month tour culminated in back-to-back Tests and five internationals, plus a sixth one-dayer in which he made a hundred, and would be useless by the summer series against South Africa if Surrey made him play until then. And this is a fitness fanatic.

Fortunately Stewart is an extreme case - or rather by design, not fortune at all. The one-day squad did not achieve their primary purpose of winning in the West Indies, but they have given half of the Test players a necessary break, to summon up new energy for the next endeavour and to rest those strains which over-load turns into injuries.

The last time England returned from the West Indies, one player was stupefied to get home on a Friday and hear that he had a Benson and Hedges qualifier on the Monday. "You have to try for your county," he said. "You have too much pride not to." But if the objective is the best possible England team, such players cannot be asked to serve two masters virtually all year round.

The comparison which has to be made is with the Test players of other countries today. Then the scale of a uniquely English problem is apparent. England's Test players not only have to play as much international cricket as their counterparts: they have to play vastly more domestic cricket as well.

If we take the senior players of certain countries, we find that Atherton has played 146 first-class matches and 158 one-day matches in his 11 years for Lancashire and Cambridge University; while Darren Gough has played 102 first-class and 133 one-day games in his nine years for Yorkshire.

By stark contrast, Curtly Ambrose has played 30 first-class and 35 one-day domestic matches in 13 years, Brian Lara 36 and 32 in 11. For Free State Allan Donald has played 16 first-class games, and Hansie Cronje 19 since South Africa's readmission in 1991/2. Shane Warne has played 25 first-class and 11 one-day, games in his eight seasons for Victoria. New Zealand's captain Stephen Fleming has played five - just five - first-class matches in his seven seasons for Canterbury.

Similar research two years ago, which showed that England's players are actively engaged in cricket for approximately 100 more days each year than their counterparts, prompted no action, but the consequences of this enormous disparity are still profound. Whereas the players of other countries can peak for a Test match, England's often turn up after five days of county cricket.

After the 1995 Lord's Test Angus Fraser had to travel to Cornwall to play the next day. After the Headingley Test last summer Gough had to drive to Cardiff to bowl 12 high-pressure overs in a NatWest Trophy quarter-final. He has not taken a wicket for England since - or for Yorkshire until their pre-season tour of South Africa - and a fit Gough might well have won the first of the Trinidad Tests.

Steve Waugh highlighted some psychological repercussions, too, in his book, Ashes Summer (co-authored with Nasser Hussain). After England had won the one-day series 3-0, the Aussies went for a beer in the Poms' dressing-room, only to find they had already gone off to their B and H ties on the morrow. "It's imperative that you enjoy your success and let some steam off," Waugh reflected. "The successes are the times that provide lifelong memories. It's what makes playing so enjoyable." Maybe England win so seldom because it is not the pleasure it should be; and lose so often because their players can find instant compensation in county success.

It can be argued, of course, that 18 overseas players are engaged in county cricket every year. But only half are Test regulars, and they choose to play at the height of their game, and are good enough to pace themselves and get by. Even Mick Kasprowicz, as tough an Aussie as they come, has decided a second county season would be too much.

Last autumn the counties were asked to agree to an England and Wales Cricket Board proposal that the chairman of selectors should have the right to withdraw England players from domestic cricket whenever he saw fit, with the counties receiving financial compensation. The counties rejected the proposal 10-8, arguing that the gentlemen's agreement could still work. For England's sake, it better had.

If it does not, the ECB are setting up a working party to examine the possibility of taking the leading players away from their counties and contracting them to the Board, as other countries do. But again there is a peculiarly English problem, that of the benefit system: it would take a lot of money to offset the £300,000 that most players can now expect from their counties, tax-free.

Ultimately, it may be the England players who 'give' after all, while everyone else keeps on wondering why they never win major Test series.

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