Why England fail to find vintage form (22 June 1999)

22 June 1999

Why England fail to find vintage form

Donald Trelford

We were at Chateau Figcac, just outside St Emilion, sipping the 1998 Premier Grand Cru Classic, when my fellow taster popped the question that has baffled public and media after the recent failures of our national cricket and football teams.

"Why is it," he asked, "that we don't seem able to create teams who can turn individual talent into victory when the chips are down? Is it the performers, the structure, the schools or something in our national character?"

The same debate was raging at Lord's on Sunday after Australia had snatched cricket's World Cup with a winning mixture of ability, luck and, above all, sheer willpower. The same hardness, focus and team spirit had been evident among the luckless South Africans, and to a lesser extent in Zimbabwe and New Zealand, who all finished ahead of the host country.

Does patriotism have a sharper edge in countries that are still relatively new to nationhood? Does it mean more to represent your country and carry more shame if you lose?

There are, of course, examples in other sports, such as motor racing, rowing and athletics, to show the opposite, where we have produced world-class performers who delivered the goods when it mattered. But they have mostly been individuals rather than teams.

In cricket and football, especially, our leading players have problems recreating their club form on an international stage. It is not just talent that seems to falter but motivation, too.

The problems in the two sports are very different. In football, money may be at the heart of it. Where even moderate club performers are rewarded with untold wealth, there is little incentive to reach any higher peaks in their sport.

Nat Lofthouse, the Alan Shearer of his day, used to recall the Bolton team bus collecting him from the factory gates on match days. He knew that success on the field meant never having to go through those gates again. That was quite an incentive.

The problem for some of our young players is not so much that they have never known riches before - though handling the temptations they bring have tripped some of them up - as never having known poverty like the Lofthouse generation. The money comes too easily, devoid of real meaning in their lives.

Mention of the Lofthouse generation brings to mind another factor that may be relevant: character. When talent and character are combined, as they were with the likes of Stanley Matthews, Tom Finney and Len Hutton - and, to be fair, still are today in men like Shearer, Darren Gough and the reformed Tony Adams - they lead more balanced lives and perform at a consistently higher level.

Those who appear to lack the character to match or cope with their talent - Paul Gascoigne, Stan Collymore, and Phil Tufnell are obvious examples - tend to squander their abilities.

No one watching Steve Waugh's Australia or Hansie Cronje's South Africa can doubt the role of character and leadership in achieving success. Likewise, a lack of character can be identified in England's all-too-frequent batting collapses.

At Lord's on Sunday, where they seemed destined by some higher power to win the trophy, Australia's ruthless efficiency reminded me of something Hutton wrote: "Losing is foreign to their nature. They may appreciate the birds and the flowers over here, but their real delight is beating England at Lord's.

"Australians have made me fight for every run I have ever made. It is a hard game against them. The grounds are hard, the ball is hard, the men are hard: you need to be harder than they are to beat them."

Hutton famously was, and did, on two occasions. He was helped, of course, by having some brilliant players in his side. Essentially, though, he beat them at their own game, by being harder and more systematic than they were.

Having taught the rest of the world to play cricket and football, perhaps it is time to take a few lessons from them. One of the first is to stop treating one-day cricket as an inferior game, but as a contest that brings out the highest skills in batsmen, bowlers and, especially, fielders.

Hutton once told me he would have enjoyed the challenge of the one-day game. I thought he was joking. Now I realise he meant it.

Source :: The Electronic Telegraph