Number is up for England's board of plenty (7 June 1999)

7 June 1999

Number is up for England's board of plenty

Michael Henderson

The round dance resumes this morning. England are searching for a new coach, wondering whether to appoint a new captain and pondering sufficient opinions on the game's failings to fill a book of Proustian proportions. "England" in this case means the England Management Advisory Committee, who meet at Lord's.

Pray, by all means, for wise counsel to prevail. Do not be surprised if our old friends, Master Fudge and Master Botch, make an appearance before the dancing is done.

There are eight members of the committee. That's three too many for a start. What's David Acfield doing on it? For that matter, what's David Graveney doing? Hasn't he got enough hats in his wardrobe? If they want his opinion, they can seek it privately. And, for goodness sake, why is Doug Insole still hanging around? He's spent more years in the inner sanctum at Lord's than Metternich did in all his years in Imperial Vienna!

The best service the committee could render is to disband. There are too many people clogging the game's arteries. The ECB have a chairman, a chief executive, sundry officers (not all of them necessary) and a vast secretariat. The England team will have, shortly, a manager and a coach. How many more people does it take to run the game?

Make no mistake, the mood abroad is ugly, and growing uglier by the minute. The ECB should not imagine that their headquarters at the Nursery End represents a mighty citadel. Cliff Barker, the deputy chief executive, stood down last month, to go into teaching. Simon Pack, the international teams director recruited by Lord MacLaurin, will do well to survive the year. If he goes, he may not go alone.

Everywhere they look, board members see malcontents. The Test match grounds are still not convinced that they will get a fair share of the revenue from international matches. The smaller counties feel their voice counts for little. The players want more money. And all the time, television waits and watches, knowing that opportunity will knock. Cricket's ship was raided 22 years ago by an Australian with a cutlass and eyepatch. It was no more vulnerable then.

The business at hand this morning is to assess the five candidates for the job of England coach: Jack Birkenshaw, Duncan Fletcher, Dav Whatmore, Bob Woolmer and John Wright. Woolmer, originally the preferred choice, is the most successful, but he wants a few months away from cricket. The mantle of favourite has accordingly passed to Fletcher, the Zimbabwean who coaches Glamorgan. Whoever wins will be given a wand and told to wave it.

But this is not the real business. The game is made by players, and the underlying problem with English cricket is that the players are neither good nor durable enough. You can appoint any captain you like, bolster his position with the most sympathetic coach, and support them with an army of psychologists, dieticians and such like. But the drive only ever comes from within.

The most disheartening story to emerge from English cricket in the past year came not in defeat, but in victory. Last August, when England were battling with South Africa in the final Test at Headingley, knowing that victory would give either side the series, a voice piped up on the fourth afternoon: "Come on, boys, win it for the money."

There, in a sentence of chilling brutality, is the authentic voice of English cricket, caught off-guard. Not win it for the team. Not win it for the pleasure of victory against doughty opponents. Not win it for the immense satisfaction of completing a job that had begun two months before. Certainly not win it in the name of England, either to uphold the honour of all those players who have come before, or to reward the many thousands of people in this land who still think well of the game. Instead, win it for the brass. Then we can ring our agents, and bump up our fees.

That is the problem with the current Test side and, until it is rectified, EMAC can meet as often as they like. As Simon Hughes pointed out last week, few of the current players enjoy the game. To them it is a chore, if not a downright bore. They laugh at such quaint, old-fashioned notions as enjoyment. That's what amateurs play for, isn't it? Well, mock on, you all-knowing, dollar-drawing, hard-bitten pros. Just don't be surprised if others laugh.

When Mark Taylor announced his retirement earlier this year at a press conference in Sydney, he spoke simply of his love for the game. Coming from the captain of an Australian side who conquered the cricketing world under his command, it was worth hearing. Nobody ever called him a softie, or a soppy romantic. He belonged to the Australian tradition of playing the game hard, but it was the enjoyment, in thin times no less than thick, from which he drew comfort. It was one of the reasons he was a great cricketer.

Somehow we have to change attitudes in our own parish. When you watch an England team, they give off little sense of enjoyment, by which I do not mean players wandering round with coathanger smiles, but having a sense that cricket is a game worth celebrating, the way that Botham and Gower celebrated it in their play and their laughter. The modern English game is an arid little bush, where few flowers bloom. We need some Capability Brown to create gardens of delight.

Darren Gough can be excused from this general criticism, and so can Angus Fraser, who may look miserable but who brings genuine conviction to his cricket. Adam Hollioake enjoys what he does, too, which makes it a pity that he is unlikely to reach proper Test class. Too many others give the impression they would rather walk round the boundary with nails in their boots. When they should be looking outward, to the wider world, they look inward.

Press on in your deliberations, members of EMAC. But when the music begins this morning, and you take your partners, don't forget that you are dancing on the edge of a volcano.

Source :: The Electronic Telegraph