What should the ECB do next summer?

The ECB are getting themselves in a lather about Kent signing Stuart Clark to play county cricket before the Ashes, stopping only just short of seeking an indictment of the Kent Committee on charges of high treason. What nonsense, not to mention piffle, poppycock, balderdash and claptrap.

This is the same ECB which was very pleased when last year the New Zealanders allowed Jimmy Anderson to play some state cricket to help him recover from injury, following which he got picked for the Second Test and ripped through the New Zealand top order as England went on to win the match and then the series.

This is the same ECB which arranged an England Performance Squad tour of India to coincide with the senior team’s tour before Christmas, a transparent way of making sure they would have a pool of reserves fit and acclimatised if they suddenly needed someone to step in (otherwise what was Michael Vaughan doing in the party?). It could not have been organised without the good offices of the BCCI, who did not turn the idea down on the grounds that it might help the visitors win a match or two – not that it did, but that is hardly the BCCI’s fault.

The Australians are double-dyed villains who won’t let Poms play in their precious Shield competition so why should we be nice to them, goes the line from some people. But Shield cricket isn’t the only game in Australia: when Ray Illingworth failed to pick him for the 1994-95 Ashes tour, Gus Fraser arranged himself a gig to play grade cricket with Western Suburbs – and was in the England Test team for the Third Test.

Fraser himself is on a subsidiary indictment now because Middlesex, where he is the new director of cricket, have signed Phil Hughes for the early part of the season. But Hughes has been signed to fill in for Owais Shah, whom the ECB have seen fit to allow to swan off to India to play in the IPL, an offer which Hughes turned down. Perhaps the ECB should have put their foot down about IPL stints rather than whingeing when counties respond by signing the best replacements they can.

It says little for the ECB’s confidence in its team if how the opposition prepare is an issue even worth commenting on, let alone vituperating about. It may be understandable, given that the only team to lose the First Test of a series to England in the last four years was Bangladesh, but the obvious fact that the ECB are incapable of preparing a side which is ready when a series starts is a poor excuse for trying to sabotage opponents.

Sure, winning the Ashes is the best thing that can happen to an England team. No other cricket contest reaches into the collective national unconscious the same way or stirs as many young players to redouble their efforts to get good enough to win an Ashes series themselves. But sticking artificial obstacles in the Aussies’ path is a pathetic way to try and engineer it.

So I wholeheartedly agreed when Gus said to Cricinfo, "What should the ECB do next summer? Abolish all comforts for the Australians ahead of the Ashes? Put them in dirty hotels and make them travel on a rickety, old school bus with springs coming out of the seats? No, you want a situation like in 2005, where you had two teams at the top of their games battling each other, and hopefully England coming out on top."

You tell ‘em, Gus!