Wooldridge I: England expects fight to the finish (08 Feb 95)

ENGLAND EXPECTS FIGHT TO THE FINISH - Ian Wooldridge

ONE OF the few privileges left to us in this increasingly dotty world is to kick in a television set in the privacy of one`s home. I have never come closer to such senseless destruction than early on Monday morning.

England had to bat out seven hours on a sound pitch to save the Perth Test. Runs were immaterial. Within 57 minutes they were 27 for five.

It was not merely inept. You don`t become an England cricketer in any era if you are inept. You don`t win a Test in Adelaide if you are inept. It was far worse than that. It was surrender, the abject denial of an inviolable tradition established on the morning of March 15, 1876. When you play Australia at cricket you fight till you drop.

You fight like Bailey and Watson did improbably to draw the Lord`s Test of 1953. You fight like Botham and Willis did, almost impossibly against bookmaker`s odds of 500-1, to win the Headingley Test of 1981. You fight because they have chosen you from a population of millions to play for England. You fight because Grace, Hobbs, Larwood, Hammond, Compton, Bedser, May, Cowdrey, Barrington, Boycott and others fought hand-to-hand over this same terrain, giving no quarter. Ever.

You fight and sometimes you fail and there`s no disgrace in that because that is the nature of sport and your opponents are fighting with similar resolution.

But frankly 27 for five on Monday morning didn`t strike me as constituting a fight. It struck me, with one exception, as the weary going-through-the-motions capitulation of a beleaguered platoon which simply couldn`t wait to be air-lifted home from a fractious, ill-planned, ill-managed and utterly disastrous tour, alleviated only by the Adelaide victory which, for a whole day, had our politicians leaping up and down like jackasses in the House. Politicians would be better employed looking after the Health Service. The exception to whom I refer is Michael Atherton, England`s captain. Opening, as usual, on Monday he survived the vespers holocaust only to be out without adding to his score yesterday. Returning to the pavilion, he flailed down a few plastic chairs with his bat.

Now this, unquestionably, was a stupid thing to do. There have been instances in the past when players have smashed dressing room windows and even put head-locks on colleagues in their frustration, but to swipe down a few chairs in public created just the kind of diversion that will deflect attention from the serious problems exposed by this tour.

If I, a non-combatant, was close to demolishing my own television set in sheer disgust, imagine how Atherton, who had batted hour after hour in the Test series with perspiration and guts, felt at being left yet again to face the carniverous media of two countries and explain how it had all gone wrong.

The man was at his wit`s ends, and little wonder. His action was rash, foolish and utterly human. The last collapse of the final Test was clouded by the sentiment surrounding the retirements of Graham Gooch and Mike Gatting, who scored 12 runs between them, and the new-found brilliance of Graham Thorpe and John Crawley, who contributed all of 0 and 0. These men are pretty well paid professionals. They were not in Australia on Sinatrian farewell tours, nor were they on work experience missions.

They were playing for England, the highest calling to which an English sportsman can aspire, and they let their captain down. Thankfully, an intelligent match referee determined no charges of bringing the game into disrepute - a portentous sporting euphemism which appears to cover anything from a dirty look to attempted manslaughter - should be brought against Atherton. If Lord`s is seeking a scapegoat, it should look elsewhere, not least down its own corridors of free-loaders.

Of course there will be a plethora of excuses, some of them justified. England were plagued by injury and illness and hit by a sequence of questionable umpiring decisions. That is known as the rub of the green. It does not account for shabby fielding and dropped catches or batting collapses on good wickets. Nor is it exonerated by the fact that Australia had a pretty good team. There have been two Australian teams since the war. It may be marginally due to the fact that every international team is now playing far too much cricket. England alone will have played 16 Test matches, plus a rash of one-day internationals, in just over 12 months by the end of the first week of January next year.

Familiarity diffuses the significance of these once-great occasions but greed decrees that the cricket -playing hierarchies want more and more of them. Australian cricket, having now taken its marketing, publishing and television rights into its own hands, will pick up close on L6 million profit from the series which ended yesterday, one-sided though it was.

Meanwhile, England is left to pick up the pieces after a catastrophic venture. Conducting inquests will be about as useful as subjecting post-mortems on sides of beef. England simply didn`t play well enough and there is little point in political platitudes about restoring cricket in schools or establishing Australian-style academies of excellence until our current professionals accept that playing for England is the highest calling. `Thank God,` murmured my wife as Devon Malcolm`s middle stump went cartwheeling into history early yesterday morning to put an end to it, `now maybe we can get some sleep.`

The fact that Malcolm was only fractionally closer to the trajectory of the ball than the square-leg umpire at the time had little to do with it. Since coming home from Australia, only monks and junior hospital doctors have spent more nocturnal hours worrying about how it would all end.

It wasn`t good - and don`t bank on the politicians to improve it. It is above all about the attitude you take into any arena when you are playing for England.

Thanks : Daily Mirror