Third Cornhill Test: England's veterans on parade (1 August 1999)

1 August 1999

Third Cornhill Test: England's veterans on parade

The Electronic Telegraph

Scyld Berry on the measures required to set Hussain's men on a winning path before their next tour to South Africa

Another new captain, as Nasser Hussain will not play at Old Trafford, but several old faces will be unveiled this morning in response to England's worst Test defeat since 1986, when they lost home series to both India and, for the only previous time, New Zealand.

It is not quite official policy to announce that England's youth is useless - David Graveney, as chairman of selectors, will only go so far as to say that bringing in a youngster for Old Trafford might be "a lamb to the slaughter". But that is the gist as England find themselves at one-all in a series which they must win if they are to go to South Africa this winter with any credibility.

Mike Atherton will be one of the veterans called up to do what only Hussain of England's specialist batsmen has been able to do in this Test series: stay at the wicket and not give it away. Now that his back trouble has finally been diagnosed - and treated - as a damaged disc between the fourth and fifth vertebrae on his right-hand side, he has to be worth a recall to set a serious Test, not one-day, tone to England's innings.

Most people will regret that Atherton has chosen to stick to the resolution of never leading England again which he made upon his resignation last April. Whoever the Surrey stand-in, Graham Thorpe or Mark Butcher, he will have too little experience for a watershed and possibly ill-tempered Test against combative opponents. But Atherton's refusal at least proves he has not mellowed to such an extent in the last year that he has lost his essential stubbornness.

For Graeme Hick, the return to the fold, at the expense of Aftab Habib, will be his eighth. His last recall was to Australia during the winter when he played two valuable innings down the order, including an innings top-score of 60 which turned out to be half a match-winner in Melbourne. He also has legendary status in New Zealand, where he flogged 10 of his first-class hundreds in a couple of brief domestic seasons, which might serve to steel him as nothing else has yet done.

Peter Such, at 35, is another old warrior who can be trusted to bring some reliable craftsmanship back to England's table. The Old Trafford pitch, already used this season (if not so much as the rest of the well-worn square), is expected to deteriorate sooner or later and develop cracks. A second spinner is therefore necessary to partner Phil Tufnell, as Such did in 1993 when he made his Test debut on the same ground and took what are still his best Test figures of six for 67 against Australia.

If conventional swing seldom features at Old Trafford, reverse swing does by some law as yet undefined by science. The August-dry, closely-shaved surface should be abrasive enough to rough up one side of the ball, and a few lbw decisions will reward the skilled practitioner who can reverse-swing it in late and hit one of the cracks.

Darren Gough was the first England bowler to master reverse swing, and now Dean Headley is not far behind, which guarantees his place. Andy Caddick is not a reverse swinger, but his batting as well as his conventional seam bowling have earned his retention.

England's third seamer should be another reverser, who can also bat better than Alan Mullally (a tail of Mullally, Such and Tufnell would be even weaker than England's middle order in the first two Tests). The selectors checked on the fitness of Gavin Hamilton yesterday when he was in the nets at Lord's before the 'Super Cup final' (or the third-round tie, if you prefer), and his cricket has an appealing vim about it, while his batting stood up to the big occasion in Scotland's World Cup games. But he has to do more with the ball than shape the new one away, and a niggle did not let him bowl at all in Yorkshire's last National League match.

In Wednesday's NatWest quarter-final at Old Trafford, Craig White, as usual, reversed the ball at the same dangerous pace as Gough, and he made a Test fifty against New Zealand in 1994. But the place of reverse-swinging allrounder is more likely to go to another old hand, Mark Ealham, a steady Eddie who won't hit headlines or let you down, as a more dependable option than Dominic Cork.

Whoever England's final XI are, however, they have to put together a proper first-innings total to arrest the team's slide from mid-table to bottom. It will be a crucial toss - winning it will be more important than the man who does it - after which England cannot afford to be dismissed for less than 200, as they have been in the first innings of 12 of their last 23 Tests.

The first affliction among England's specialist batsmen is technical. All too often when they play forward, they point their front foot towards cover (rather than in the direction they wish to hit the ball), and as their head naturally follows, they fall across the crease, which stops their bat coming down straight. "It's a basic, schoolboy mistake," observed Graeme Fowler, the former England batsman and TMS commentator who has made Durham University into one of England's few centres of technical excellence.

The second affliction is mental, and partly the result of playing on poor 'result' pitches which encourage county batsmen to hack away before the unplayable ball comes along; and partly the result of too much one-day cricket. "England's batsmen are not playing the ball on its merits, they are playing by the scoreboard, which is what you do in one-day cricket," said Fowler. "They have forgotten how to recognise a good ball when it seams, swings or spins and how to leave it."

This one-day effect is not limited to England's World Cup batsmen who were in one-day mode for the first half of this year. Mark Butcher has played 15 championship innings for Surrey this season and 14 one-day innings. While the players of other Test countries play just as many one-day internationals as England's, and more, they don't grow up playing it twice a week in domestic cricket. Excellence exists in English batting, but it is to be found in power-play: of the 25 teams in the world who are best at scoring 170 from the last 20 overs, 18 are to be found in this country.

In addition to these negative factors is the pressure felt by new England batsmen, which means they need a longer run in the side than the young batsmen of other countries before they can pull their weight. The weight of knowing that the largest and most critical media in cricket are ready to seize on his first mistake is still too much for Mark Ramprakash, who, after 36 Tests in all, has a highest Test score at home of 67 not out; and it was clearly too much for Habib, who never looked sufficiently at home to give his best. Habib, indeed, was probably not made to feel at home (the fact that he has a Kiwi girlfriend could have been used as the cue for friendly joshing) as professional rivalry and poor man-management seem to be more prevalent than patriotism in the England dressing-room. One more huge problem for Duncan Fletcher to sort out.

On Friday, Graveney went to Cardiff to see Fletcher, who was right not to be at Lord's and confuse the picture further. The new coach will meet the England players as and when they play for their counties against Glamorgan in the rest of this season. But to sort out England's specialist batting - the other parts of their game are not too far from mid-table - Fletcher has to be given the right structure in support, not the elephantine one which demands more and more people to make the unwieldy wheels go round.

New Zealand's cricket is the opposite of England's in being so small that it can easily be coherent enough to make the most of the little it has. Zimbabwe's cricket is a smaller unit still, but even they have not been defeated so ignominiously at home as England were at Lord's.

Who was ultimately responsible for the defeat there and for rectifying the batting of England's old faces and new: the captain or his replacement? The team manager or chairman of selectors (Graveney in both cases)? The International Teams Director Simon Pack or the England Management Advisory Committee under their chairman Brian Bolus? The board's chairman Lord MacLaurin or chief executive Tim Lamb? Nobody knows who is accountable, and nobody can know until the mess off the field is cleared up, too.

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