Author: thelegglance

Still Standing on Those Shoulders, Still Giants

thelegglance4 Comments

It’s been a reflective time for me the last few months, and in a cricketing sense too. Watching England play has been a joyous experience, seeing them throw caution to the winds in an attempt to entertain has been both startling and impressive. I wasn’t bothered that they lost the 2nd Test to New Zealand, that they – as some insisted – threw away a series win simply didn’t matter to me as much as how they played. Perhaps it is a thing about getting older, to care less about the outcome on the field than the process that led to that point. Certainly English cricket and world cricket isn’t short of problems, many of their own creation, but if the England team are raging against the dying of the light of the game as we’ve known it, then I’m going to be right behind them and express both my wonder at how they’re doing it, and my complete forgiveness when it goes wrong.

Perspective and context. The essence of this blog has been to highlight so many of the hugely damaging initiatives the ECB have brought forth in the last decade, and they are still there, and those problems have far from disappeared. English cricket remains in trouble, and the objections remain the same. It doesn’t mean I can’t appreciate what is happening, nor is there a “but” when offering up that praise. Ben Stokes has proved to be a remarkable captain, Brendon McCullum a remarkable coach, and Rob Key an astute selector of people. Perhaps it could even be an indicator of where those in charge are looking to go, we will wait and see.

And yet that observation, of taking succour where it is offered, could be seen as simply taking the positives – a phrase that invokes a sense of doom whenever it is heard. Perhaps that is so, but for now, for me, it is enough. My father entered his final illness at the start of the year, a period of distress for all the family, leading to something of a sense of release when he passed away. His influence on me was far and wide, but in a cricketing sense he was the one who first put a bat in my hands, who bowled to me for hours in the back garden and insisted I keep the ball on the ground in order to avoid dumping the ball over the fence to the neighbours. It did have an influence on how I played for decades, rather more than I would have liked to admit. Certainly I was forever stronger in the arc of the offside than the onside, where a wall a few feet away from me meant as often as not pinging the ball through there meant it came back and smacked me in the legs. But he was proud that I became a much better player than him, and it’s unsurprising that given he was a bowler, I was a batsman. The wicketkeeping came much later, but certainly I cared little about bowling to Dad when I had the alternative of him bowling to me.

Several years ago I wrote this: https://beingoutsidecricket.com/2017/04/12/standing-on-the-shoulders-of-giants/, a tribute to those who formed us, who taught us the game and who we failed to appreciate at the time. In a cricketing sense, this is more true of my father than I ever realised, for his contribution above all else was to imbue in me a love of the game itself. He would tell me entirely fictional cricketing stories using players from his childhood or early adulthood, meaning that someone like Alf Valentine was a hero to me long before I knew a single thing about the real man and cricketer. All entirely down to long forgotten father’s tales made up on the spot. And perhaps that he was telling such stories about so many West Indian cricketers says a lot about those he considered his heroes too.

In his last years he suffered a traumatic brain injury, and became an echo of the man he had been. But he still enjoyed the simple pleasure of seeing cricket. When I went to visit him I would download (entirely illegally, and no I don’t give a shit given the context) recent cricket matches to watch with the highlights with him and talk through what had happened. His face would light up watching it all, that part of his mind still able to appreciate the simple joy of a game of bat and ball. And that is why England under the new bosses (not the same as the old bosses) will get so much affection from me whether they win or lose. Because ultimately, it doesn’t matter, the pleasure of the game is everything. That is not how I played, where winning absolutely mattered, otherwise why bother keeping score, but it is a perspective that perhaps comes with moving through life and seeing other things as more important.

Last week an iconic figure at my old club passed away. The pain of that was sharpened by losing my father not long before, that circle of life might be inevitable, but we all focus on our own lives and experiences. David Silverson was someone who played the game for over half a century, one of those for whom a couple of generations saw as an ever present backdrop to their own sporting lives. Since I had moved to the area as an adult, he wasn’t one of my cricketing heroes of my formative years, but he was for the generation behind me. And my own thoughts about my heroes led me to put together the club statistics, detailing every player who had been at the club. He was top of the list, with over 20,000 runs and 1,500 wickets, and when I first produced the spreadsheet I called around to his house to show him. His reaction was for his eyes to fill with tears, I think not because of caring at all that he was at the top, but because someone had taken the trouble to put it all together. And you know what? I’m damn proud of doing that, because the existence of those tables, and the awareness of the entire club membership about them made a material difference in how the kids saw him. No longer was he just the old man coming to watch and making appearances for the Sunday 2nd XI, he was an icon, someone who had been there and done it all. We persuaded (forced might be a better word) him to play the odd 1st XI friendly match to get him over that 20,000 run landmark, and the sheer pleasure of everyone of all ages when he did so is a treasured memory.

But he was anything but a relic. He came to watch with huge enthusiasm the women’s matches when they began, offering support without ever pushing his opinion. He cared for the game of cricket first and foremost, for the people who played it and the culture and lifestyle that it conveyed. It mattered to him because it is a part of life and community, something far more important than the result, whether in a Test arena or a Sunday friendly. To him, both were parts of a greater whole. He was a wise man.

Yet if a player wanted advice, he was there – and it wouldn’t be unusual to see a young player, male or female, in deep conversation with him about their game as he would talk it through with them in his gentle way. He was a modern mind, caring less for the detail of coaching and more for the mindset and how to make the most of what someone had. And for those who came to him, that support was firm and unending. One young player was languishing in the Sunday 2nd XI, just another player who would be an entirely social one and never make it as a key performer at the club. He disgreed. Oh how he disagreed. When all others had written this young man off, he was insistent he would be a 1st XI player. When asked why, given the modest returns on the field, he would answer “because he wants it”. And he was right too, that young man did go on to be a central player for the club.

And this is where it all comes around again. When I wrote that piece about our influences, that young man read it. He said it made him cry, because he did so thinking time and again about David, and how instrumental he had been to him and how much he valued it. “So tell him”, I said. “Go and see him, and tell him how much he has meant to you”. And he did. And I imagine that must have been deeply emotional for both of them. David’s passing is as desperately sad as it always is, as it has been for me with my father’s. But they remain enormously consequential to us all in our own lives and in how we live them.

I will miss them both, for different reasons and in different ways. But from them both will be the pleasure of watching an England team who play in a vibrant manner because of a love of a game I have at different times fallen out with, and that they never forgot. It has been an honour.

Advertisement

Let’s Hear it For the Boy

thelegglance15 Comments

There will be plenty said about this Test, the blow by blow accounts of what happened and why. It was genuinely remarkable, and the problem with the grade inflation of besteveritis is that all the superlatives have been used up on far lesser events and performances, leaving many to reach for the same words for something that did astonish.

Yet it should not be forgotten in the afterglow of praise for England’s approach of somehow extracting a win from a terrible pitch that plenty were queuing up to criticise as reckless both England’s approach to the second innings as they lost wickets, and also the declaration itself as far too generous.

Perhaps it is confusion, that Stokes and McCullum really mean it when they say they are prepared, as Warne would have put it, to lose to win, but there was a strong logic in what they decided that went far beyond simply dangling a carrot.

England could not have won the game had they batted on and only offered Pakistan a chance if they wanted to take wild risks. The final five wickets might have fallen in a heap, but the chiselling out of the top order batsmen required there to be the genuine prospect of a successful run chase. It wasn’t a matter of chucking everything on red and hoping for the best, it was a hard headed calculation as to the best prospect of winning. Had Pakistan chased it down, it still would have been a fine pursuit, but it wasn’t generous, it merely opened up a possibility sufficiently widely that there was little choice but for Pakistan to try to win given the time available, and that is what brought England in with a chance of bowling them out.

This isn’t always going to work, but it probably is England’s best chance of regular success. They aren’t an outstanding team by any means, and some of the stalwarts who have bought in to the new ethos are coming to the end. England will collapse in a horrible heap from time to time, but that was happening anyway, there was little to lose by trying this, and thus far it is working. That it won’t work every time is not the point – it can’t be argued that there will be criticism when it goes wrong given that there was plenty of criticism here even when it went right – in fact absolutely perfectly.

Outcome is everything. Its like the shot that just clears a fielder for six; there will be praise for it being a great shot, but if it falls two feet short and is caught, there will be cries that it was reckless. Same intent, slightly different outcome, but it is unhelpful to say the least to criticise the intention based on how well it turned out.

Yes, if they try this in the Ashes it might go wrong. Or it might go brilliantly. Either people buy in to what they’re attempting and accept it is a high risk but thoroughly calculating strategy, or call for them to do it completelt differently and traditionally overall. There’s not that much middle ground, and it’s certainly not reasonable to criticise the overarching strategy when it doesn’t work only to be adulatory when it does.

We know Test cricket is in trouble. This is a way of saving it for the future. Stokes has talked about his determination to do something to popularise the best format of cricket there is, and he deserves everyone’s support for that, because it’s really important, and a damn sight more so than a three match Test series.

You’re not going to find me having a go at them when this goes tits up and England get hammered, not even if it’s in the next Test. I love every element of what they are doing and I want more of it. And we are going to lose matches.

I made a flippant observation this morning that Ben Stokes would make an outstanding Sunday 2nd XI captain, but within that is a serious point – the creativity required for that thankless task is something he possesses in spades. It is genuinely a high compliment.

Strap yourselves in, we’re in for a hell of a ride.

All Hail the T20 World Cup

thelegglance6 Comments

At a time when saturation levels of T20 cricket have gone beyond even the wildest fantasies of the money men in every country bar England, where it isn’t deemed sufficiently radical, it might seem strange for one of us to write a paean of praise for a tournament of hit and giggle cricket, but I’m going to do it anyway, and not because England won it either.

That was a nice bonus, for sure, and the free to air coverage of the final again demonstrates that Sky Sports have a better grasp of the value of wide exposure of a particular sport than the ECB have done in recent years. It is of course entirely a matter of slightly enlightened self-interest, but that’s rather the point – the exposure argument has never been about doing so to be nice, but because it has value in and of itself down the line. At a purely anecdotal level, two friends who have little more than a vague passing interest in the sport and don’t have Sky watched the final and were caught up in it, sending me messages asking for an explanation as to what the Powerplay was and how the hell DLS worked. There are some questions too difficult to answer.

But it wasn’t the final or the result, or even the relatively wide audience watching that made me think about how good the T20 World Cup was, it was the whole tournament. The matches themselves were not overly reliant on the toss, unlike some previous instances (Hi UAE), and the format is one that provides a genuine sense of peril in each game. That’s partly because of the short nature of the format – the longer the version of cricket, the more the stronger side can be sure of winning. 20 overs – or indeed 10, or 100 balls – equalises the difference between the teams by raising the importance of a single exceptional performance to turn the game. The longer the game goes, the more sure the stronger team can be of winning, until you reach Test cricket where genuine upsets in a mismatch are relatively rare, whatever the other strengths of it. Ireland’s victory over England in the 50 over World Cup in 2011 was a very special day for the game, but shines bright as a rarity, and one that foreshadowed the arrival of Ireland as a genuine international side rather than a total minnow pulling off a shock.

But the Netherlands beating England in T20 World Cups in 2009, again in 2014, and South Africa this time around, that’s a bit different. It’s hard to see such results being so likely in 50 over cricket, and almost impossible to in Test cricket. It goes further too. The first round involving the qualifiers being part of the main competition – in effect if not in promotion – both eases everyone watching into the competition and also showcases the associate nations more obviously than is usually the case at ICC events. And here again, the opening match saw Namibia giving Sri Lanka something of a hiding, while the West Indies were heavily beaten by both Scotland and Ireland. The T20 World Cup is the FA Cup of international cricket, maybe even the FA Cup of international team sports.

That first round was as brief as it was brutal. Lose a game and you’re in trouble. Lose two and you’re done, and going home with your tail between your legs, just as it should be. The lament for West Indies cricket can be a genuine one without losing sight of the cruel beauty of a tournament that crushes hopes in the space of an hour or two.

Various 50 over World Cups have had a Super Eight or Super Twelve, or God help us all Super Fourteen stages, but the abiding principle of these always appears to be to maximise the number of games, extend the tournament long enough for civilisations to rise and fall, and above all else ensure that the “big” teams go through. It’s perhaps most of all because of the determination for so long to hold quarter finals meaning the odd embarrassing defeat can be overcome, a kind of repechage for the wealthy but inept to ensure they do at least reach the point where being put out of their misery is done by a genuinely good team rather than the flogging that’s deserved beforehand. Maybe the ICC have learned a little, as the 2019 50 over version (and the 2023 edition to come) was something of an exception to this, and better for it, whatever the legitimate criticisms of the round robin format that still allowed for recovery from a balls up. Whatever the flaws, and there were many, it did make it a dog fight to only have four going through rather than eight. Qualification for these events and the exclusion of the smaller teams, that’s a different matter, and one that is shameful.

The T20 World Cup as currently constituted does not have quarter finals, and doesn’t have a round robin either. And at no point can any team feel comfortable. England’s defeat on DLS to Ireland plunged a comfortable road map to the semi-finals into a frantic last chance saloon in every game they played afterwards, effectively turning the group stage into a knock out scenario half way through. And wasn’t it great? South Africa were cruising through to the semi-finals with only a match against a so called minnow to go, while Pakistan were to all intents and purposes on their way home – and then everything changed.

And then there’s the weather. The interminable whining about rain in 2019 came back to bite many an Australian journalist or Twitter user on the arse as the scheduling in the wettest part of the year in certain parts of Australia allowed the English to gleefully suggest that until they have covered stadia they shouldn’t be allowed another one, but it had a wider impact too, which was to make the games that did happen even more important. It’s entirely capricious, unfair and downright unreasonable, but however frustrating it might be for teams and supporters to watch the rain fall, it adds to the sense of a tournament where you have to win the games you do play because of the ones you don’t. Australia ultimately went out because they got whacked by New Zealand.

Of course, not holding the final Super Twelve games simultaneously was horrifically unfair to Australia, and it’s no defence of it to point out that it happening to Australia makes it acceptable. Although it is funny. But that sporting quibble aside, I am all in favour of the sheer viciousness of the capricious weather gods entirely wrecking carefully made plans. England’s tournament win in 2010 too was nearly derailed by bad weather in the group stage for that matter, and the raging fury at that which is impossible to overcome is too part of the tournament experience.

There’s far too much T20. There’s certainly far too much T20 involving teams no one cares about except the billionaires that own them. But national teams playing a short, sharp, savage tournament that kicks out the unworthy unceremoniously is one to be both enjoyed for the spectacle it is and most of all celebrated for being that rarity in international cricket – a total hoot.

Daydream Believer

thelegglance30 Comments

England’s first Test victory of this summer was rather routine. Not in terms of the run chase, because that was impressive. But it was also entirely orthodox, relying on a proven world class batsman – their only world class batsman – leading his team home with a superb innings. It didn’t tell us anything we didn’t know, namely that England were a brittle batting line up, but that if Joe Root got runs they might have a chance. At the time it seemed little more than that, no indication in particular of anything especially different, and apart from Root’s majestic knock, England probably had the worst of the game. So sure, a win, and a welcome one after the dreadful run of the last 18 months, but maybe not a whole lot more. It’s with hindsight it appears to have been greater than that, with it granting a degree of confidence and belief in the next step. Since then all hell has broken loose, the batting performances becoming ever more extraordinary and insane. After the conclusion of today’s Test Ben Stokes said a part of him had hoped India’s lead had reached 450 in order to see what England did about it. And you can feel this team is absolutely itching to have a go at a world record chase just to see if they can do it. It’s a world record for a reason, but after the absurdly easy and routine chasing down of 380 who is to say they couldn’t do it?

And in a tactical and strategic sense, this has an effect. Teams will be wary of setting England a total that up to now will have been considered a safe one, particularly with a time element. Leaving England 300 to get at 5 an over has been something that could be viewed as placing the pressure entirely on an England team that had little intent to go after it and a couple of sessions to survive. Not any more, opponents would be viewing it as a risk to do so. Even 400 plus will be treated as though it’s a feasible target. That isn’t to say for a second that the game has been entirely turned on its head – in such circumstances the bowling team should feel they were in a strong position and not all fifth day pitches will be remotely as accommodating as the ones this summer, but the mind is a funny thing, and the nagging thought that England won’t just go for it, but might well get it will be present in many an opposing dressing room from now on. A similar thing happened with the ODI team, where teams would often be so aware that they needed a big total against an England side that made it abundantly clear they thought they could chase anything that opponents overreached and fell in a heap. Test cricket isn’t white ball cricket, true, but the difference so far this summer has been narrower than ever seen before.

Likewise, the disquiet when building a lead will be entirely about the potential doubt of whether it’s enough. It shifts the pressure onto England’s opponents in a way that has never been tried before in the longest form of the game, or at least not to this extent. It’s why the whole Bazball approach is so extraordinarily fascinating to watch how it pans out over the longer term. England haven’t become radically better as a batting line up overnight, but it is the case that the quite incredible levels of belief flowing through them have raised their level to a degree that’s hard to credit.

There will certainly be bad days, when they fall in a heap and collapse. But they are trying this out from a position where it was hard to see how they could get any worse, with endless feeble subsidence of the batting order under the lightest of pressure. When you’re often 100 or fewer all out anyway, why the hell not? In that they are lucky – because it’s not just that this is thrilling to watch, it’s that they have licence to do it from a supporter base that wants to see something, anything, done to show some sign of life.

Stokes again probably went too far, his last couple of innings were less aggression and more rank slogging. But you can see why and how this happened – he is trying to set a particular tone to the rest of the team that he won’t take a backward step and he wants them to follow his example. That will doubtless be pulled back in to some extent in the months ahead because he’s got a decent cricket brain, and he’s got the buy in from everyone, on and off the pitch to a level he doesn’t need to demand they follow suit. An example of the level of commitment was surely to be found yesterday evening, when the nightwatchman padded up was Stuart Broad. Stuart Broad!

It’s really why this morning and yesterday were so impressive. Although England scored at a preposterous rate, they weren’t going all out for trying to hit every ball to the boundary, it was aggressive, but it was controlled. Jonny Bairstow’s twin hundreds were markedly slower than those against New Zealand, yet still rapid by any standards other than his own. Root’s tempo is little changed, but it suddenly looks like part of a bigger plan than just his own ability, oft mentioned, to score quickly without anyone noticing. The ramp shots though – that is someone not just in astonishing form, but someone who doesn’t fear a bollocking if it goes wrong.

And it will. If there’s a certainty, at some point it will. But there is a difference between it going wrong on occasion due to the high risk/reward equation or doing so on a consistent basis because it’s not sustainable in Test cricket, and it’s that we don’t yet know, and that that will be enthralling to witness. Whether they can play like this away from home, whether they can do it against the likes of Australia (if they’ve done it to India and New Zealand I simply see no reason why not) and so on. But at the moment they are pushing the envelope to see what they can get away with, and it feels dangerous and exciting – not necessarily something people would normally think about Test cricket.

And here’s the biggie: Test cricket has been in real and increasing trouble, as the white ball game dominates the cricketing calendar. If England are to try to play like this consistently, and even more so if other teams follow their lead, then the Test game becomes far more than the one that people have loved for decades, it becomes one to really pull in those younger adherents that everyone is trying to chase after. It becomes an attraction in itself to those who happily go to an ODI hoping to see fireworks. That might not be entirely traditional, in fact it’s rather the opposite. But we have been hoping for a way that Test cricket might not just survive, but even thrive, and who knows, maybe this could be it.

It’s anecdotal, sure, but I’ve had plenty of friends who scarcely pay attention normally talk glowingly about how England have been playing. It is the fours and sixes that do it, and however facile many might find that, it’s not a crime to be practical in the approach to the need for Test cricket to succeed.

It doesn’t mean the challenges have gone away, nor the mismanagement by the ECB. Indeed, it would be a truly delicious irony after the millions chucked at the Hundred if the way to entice people into cricket proved to be the Test team instead, especially as Test cricket is, and always has been, the ECB’s main source of income.

Yet we now have a six week gap to the South Africa Test series as the white ball internationals take over and domestically the Hundred rears it’s controversial head. It’s unfortunate, but we didn’t really expect England’s start to this summer anyway, just the opposite. But let’s put it this way, the England Test team are raising all sorts of questions at the moment. There might not be answers, but they’re really, really good questions. And it’s an absolute blast isn’t it?

I Saw Two Shooting Stars Last Night

thelegglance42 Comments

England have just bowled New Zealand out, and need 296 runs to win. Which makes this a good point to think about where England are generally, before what happens next in the final innings of this series.

Because 296 is a hell of a lot of runs on a wearing pitch, and New Zealand are surely not only favourites, but really strong favourites. And that’s the funny thing – this is a big ask for England, and supporters, commentators and journalists are so thoroughly caught up in the new England approach that they have started thinking this is extremely gettable. It probably isn’t, but it’s absolutely marvellous to see how the arrival of McCullum, and quite likely Rob Key who appointed him, has entirely changed the mindset of not just the England team, but everyone who follows the England team. Anything is possible. And we now really think anything is possible. It just might be too.

And that’s the reason for writing this up now, because England haven’t magically become a good side overnight – all the flaws in the batting line up are still there, the fragility of the techniques of the top order bar Root is little different to before. And if England fall in a heap and get hammered today and tomorrow, that really shouldn’t affect the perception of what is a fairly seismic shift in the way everyone is looking at the game.

With the same batting line up a year ago, the degree of optimism about England’s chances would have been subterranean, now viewers and spectators are eagerly awaiting England having a right good crack at it.

It’s extraordinary. Kumar Sangakkara said yesterday that he was jealous of the members of this England team, and would have loved to play in it. Fear of failure appears to have been thrown into the bin. They aren’t going to get it right all the time, and there are going to be some pretty horrendous collapses to come as a result, but there were horrendous collapses anyway, match in, match out, there’s little downside from where England have been loitering over the last couple of years. Equally, the reckless abandon needs tempering occasionally with a slightly more rational approach – Ben Stokes’ first innings was more than freewheeling it was reckless slogging and cost him his wicket. No matter, Stokes is more than bright enough to have realised that, and has shown before he’s more than capable of being downright defensive of circumstances permit. The difference is that England seem to just believe they can win from anywhere, and that entire attitude can take them a long way.

And goodness me is it good to watch. Some might think it’s not Test cricket as we know it, and they’d have a point, but when Test cricket itself is under threat from shorter and shorter forms of the game, to have the best and longest format become not just intriguing and fascinating, but thrilling on a constant basis, then that might just be the way to have everyone with a passing interest in cricket open mouthed in disbelief. Anecdote is never data, but I’ve had friends enthusing about the cricket in the past couple of weeks in a way I’ve not heard for years. People without Sky (and that issue doesn’t go away, no matter how the ECB would like to ignore it) following closely and considering the highlights as appointment viewing.

Which means that for the first time in quite a while there are genuine grounds for some guarded optimism. Not just about the England team, because the state of the game that is drawn from to comprise that England side is still in considerable trouble, but about cricket itself in this country. That’s not to say all our troubles are over, it’s scratching the surface. But if we’re quick to point out the problems we should also acknowledge when something offers a ray of hope, and in the space of a couple of weeks, a couple of appointments appear to have provided that.

For Stokes has made an extremely bright start to his captaincy, and not just because England have won a couple of Tests. He appears engaged and willing to gamble. It’s been years since an England captain appeared so willing to show such trust a spinner not called Swann, and in this Test at least, Jack Leach has repaid that faith. The spinner has for years been the last option to turn to when all else has failed – hardly surprising that whoever the spinner was didn’t feel entirely confident or backed.

You can see the same in the rest of the bowling attack – partly because England have by hook or by crook scored runs this series and they’ve actually had a rest for once. And their role has been less about trying to pull the fat out the fire and to sit glowering as the batsmen make a right mess of a chase no one ever believed they had a chance of in the first place. But also because they are hunting their opponents down to then turn it over to batsmen who are itching to have a crack at whatever target they’re set.

Mental attitude is always cited as being important in any sporting, or indeed life, endeavour. It is rare to see it change quite so hugely in such a short period. But it does work. The great Australian and West Indies Test sides carried on winning for a fair while after their finest players departed the scene, because they expected to win, and did, until they stopped running in thin air and finally realised there was nothing underneath them except gravity.

Jonny Bairstow is another who appears to be thriving. He has always been the most sublimely talented of players, but one who has failed to fulfil that talent on a regular basis. His interviews have always been the epitome of spiky aggression, but in years past they have also tended to be extremely defensive. Not any more, he’s embracing every moment, and goodness me his liberation is a sight to behold.

Ah, England have lost a wicket to a quite brilliant run out. Never mind, we move on.

England did this with their white ball team some years back, almost overnight changing their entire attitude to one of unbridled aggression to the point of declaring war. But few thought the Test team would do the same. There were hints last time New Zealand came over with McCullum in their side, and a series of rampant attack took place. But not even close to this level. Perhaps the most similar example in microcosm was the arrival of Kevin Pietersen into the 2005 team, when instead of prodding and poking at Shane Warne he kept depositing him into the stands. Even in defeat in that Lord’s Test, it signalled a shift in approach.

England will lose Tests. They might lose a lot of them. The players aren’t going to be averaging 50 where they were averaging 30. But it might just get the best out of them, and structural change takes a long time. But above all else, the England players look like they’re having a ball, and so do the supporters.

Cricket should be fun. My God this is fun.

Balance of Terror

thelegglance9 Comments

There are a few surprises today. First that we’ve had three days and the match is still going on, secondly that England are still in it, and thirdly that they’ve had a pretty good day. 62 needed and 5 wickets left, and most importantly Joe Root is still there. And that’s the key with this fragile England batting line up, that he’s the one genuinely world class batsman in the side – indeed the one obviously Test class batsman for that matter. If he scores runs, England have a chance. When he doesn’t, and he can’t do it all the time, they fold like a cheap suit. His game awareness pushing to take the second new ball out of the equation was just a small part of his continuing excellence. It really is a pity he’s having to carry this team all the time, because his record in a better one might be even greater.

Only 62 runs are needed, and if he’s there at the end, England will win it. Sure, it’s a statement of the bleeding obvious, but it emphasises how much they rely on him, or upon Stokes. With a normal side, and with so few runs required, there would be strong expectation of victory at some point in the morning, weather permitting, but this is the England team. If Root goes, getting 62 would be a tall order. Getting a dozen would seem challenging. So to that extent we’re learning nothing we didn’t already know – Root is a magnificent player, Stokes is a very fine one, and there’s not a lot else. The first innings collapse will leave New Zealand still confident that one wicket will get five.

That England have any shot at all is down to a fine bowling display in the morning session, particularly from Stuart Broad, who decided to do what he does and ripped a hole in the New Zealand batting order. Yesterday they went 60 overs without picking up a wicket, and the bowlers came in for some criticism for that. But it was a normal enough day, and the opposition are allowed to bat well. The only reason it ever stands out is because of the brittleness of England’s batting that requires the bowlers to skittle the opposition every single time without exception for England to get their noses in front. Let’s be pretty clear on this, the England seamers have been exceptional this match because they know damn well they have to be on their game constantly to have a sniff, and why it shouldn’t be a surprise when they fail to deliver sometimes having seen their own side shot out in a couple of sessions yet again.

Weather permitting, it’ll be a short day but a fun one tomorrow. Low scoring matches are exciting because every ball has a degree of peril attached to it, for both sides. But that doesn’t make this one a great game, it’s been far too flawed, and far too short. But England are still in it, thanks with one exception to their longer serving, class acts. Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

Magic Roundabout

thelegglance9 Comments

Here we are again, the start of an international summer, a first Test in the offing, and cricket in England continues to go round in circles with the same issues, same arguments, and fundamentally, the same tone deafness concerning how those crazy, unimportant people who love the game think – and including those who might fundamentally disagree with every word we ever write by the way. Just because some of what they believe happens, isn’t because they’re being listened to. So let’s have a little look through some of the current debating points – even the ones we’ve all talked about a hundred times before:

Ticket prices

It’s not new, and it is a Lord’s thing particularly. Sure, the Oval isn’t cheap, London prices are a thing after all, but Lords is a lot more across the board, and since they have two Tests a year, they deserve all the stick they’re getting. But it’s been this way for a while now, and it’s far from the first time people have complained about it. There is something of a difference in that tickets are still available, but it’s not going to be half empty as some have suggested. 20,000 unsold tickets over 4 days does not equate to that in any way.

Nonetheless, there’s now a fairly substantial group who refuse to go to Lord’s because of the cost, even among those who can afford it. It doesn’t matter to the MCC or ECB at all as long as they’re replaced by others who will, though their argument that the Jubilee holiday has made it harder to sell tickets compared to what would otherwise be a normal work day is a bit peculiar. Sure, there are plenty of options, but people are off work, that increases the potential pool, not reduces it. Arguing that people don’t want to choose the cricket over other things isn’t the killer argument they think it is.

The difference in cost between somewhere like Lord’s and Headingley or Edgbaston is always what grates – though it’s far from unusual across other sports too. The difference in season ticket price between Arsenal and Manchester City is quite astonishing, reflecting local demographics and disposable income differences. But that it prices people out of the market is beyond doubt, while that there are so many who have benefitted hugely from cricket’s largesse bemoaning the cost while continuing to rake in the income and never having to buy a ticket also grates. It’s similar to those who get in for free criticising the Barmy Army – they rub quite a lot of people the wrong way, sure, but they pay their way, which is more than many of their critics do. But let’s put it this way – a family could go to Headingley for a Test from the south, book a hotel, and still save a fair old wodge compared to going to Lord’s. That’s not a great position for cricket to find itself in.

Injured Bowlers

I’m not a sports scientist, I’m not a physiotherapist – on the subject of conditioning and biomechanics, what I know could be written on a postage stamp and still have room for franking. So nope, I don’t have solutions, nor do I have meaningful criticisms about what has gone wrong. But after several years of this, it’s not unreasonable to wonder what on earth they’re up to at the ECB and how come they keep breaking them.

Broad and Anderson

It might be their last summer. At this point, you never know if it might be their last Test. And if so many bowlers weren’t in the garage with the mechanics tutting and sucking their teeth, they might not be playing in this one either. But they deserved to be treated better at least in terms of the communication prior to the tour of the West Indies, and the recent comments from Rob Key about wanting to pick the best team were welcome: If the view is that Broad and Anderson (or indeed anyone else) aren’t part of the best team, there is no problem not selecting them, because that’s a judgment call everyone can argue about. The mire England managed to get themselves into far too often over recent years was in ignoring this basic premise and trying to be clever. The critical point is and always has been that if this is not the guiding principle, you’ll never pick your best side, because there will always be other issues butting in. It goes back a long way, and many will recall the infamous quote asking what Graham Thorpe brought to the England side apart from runs. Speaking of whom, every cricket fan has him in their thoughts.

Absent Friends.

We’ve lost a few of the most precious cricket characters over the winter. What is there to say? It’s dreadful. I will miss Shane Warne’s combination of banality and insight on commentary – I don’t mean that in any way flippantly, he was a magnificent cricketing icon and an infuriating commentator who we all deeply treasured and rather loved. Damn.

New Broom

Rob Key is installed as the Managing Director, while Brendon McCullum is the head coach. What even makes a good managing director when it comes to England cricket? The direction of travel in the organisation comes from the board and the Chief Executive, the much loved Tom Harrison, for whom there will be rending of clothes and wailing from the masses as he steps down having completed his reign of terror over English cricket. The Managing Director – of men’s cricket only, note – can then only work with what he’s given. Take Ashley Giles doing that job. It coincided with England being generally inept, which is rarely a good look, but what did he specifically do wrong? That’s not a defence of him, it’s to say that from beyond the boundary it is difficult, if not impossible to have a good insight into how one individual is performing in the structure and where the fault lines lie.

This is particularly true given the hand dealt. The Hundred, Harrison’s ugly baby, is not the reason for England’s woeful Test run, but it is the culmination of decision making that is behind the decline of England’s Test team. A symptom, not a cause. Key wasn’t about to get the job by stating at interview that the Hundred was an abomination, even if he did secretly think that was the case, and in his role he has to work with the structure as is, not as he might wish it to be. Where the ECB go with Harrison’s replacement, now that’s where it gets interesting.

Suggesting a reduction of first class fixtures from 14 to 10 per season, as he did in a podcast yesterday, has to be seen in the light of the shambles of a schedule across the season and the need to fit in the Hundred and the Blast. What it does say, is that where that pressure is most keenly felt, it is red ball cricket that must give way. That’s not new and it’s not news, it’s how the ECB have operated for a decade or more, salami slicing the foundation of the Test team and presuming it won’t have an impact.

Now, fewer red ball matches don’t in themselves have to have a negative effect on the production of Test cricketers, it may even improve it. The problem is the same one that has been there for a while, that there’s no sense of strategy behind it, it’s simply cutting back where they feel they can.

And herein lies a general matter that we are all guilty of not doing at times – that is listening and trying to understand what the thinking is. Take Kevin Pietersen’s push for franchise cricket in the red ball game. I have a lot of doubts about that, including but not limited to that no one will remotely care about the outcome of any of the games, which is an important sporting requirement, and not just for the county cricket supporters. But it’s an idea worth considering, even if that consideration leads to disagreement. But the kicker there is that it’s extremely hard to understand the logic of why such a system would improve the standards of red ball cricket – it seems merely assertion. And so it is with Key’s comments about reducing the number of Championship games. Plenty will oppose that for very good reason from their perspective – fewer matches to watch or play in. A legitimate objection. But if there is a rational plan as to why this would raise standards, it’s ok to be open to that. It’s just that it’s a bit hard to see what that rationale is. And that’s why people who have been repeatedly whacked over the head by a board that doesn’t seem to care about the actual game of cricket are suspicious and angry. Who can blame them? As one former ECB Managing Director said, it’s all a matter of trust. Rob Key is by all accounts a genuinely decent, intelligent and thoughtful man (our only interaction with him was that he thought our cruel entry about him in the Outside Cricket List was funny, so we’ll love him for that). But he won’t be at all surprised that now he’s stepped into the role, that lack of trust now applies to him. He can earn it though, and that’s interesting thing to watch.

As for Brendon McCullum, not a clue. He might be great you know. Or not. Or he might be unable to make a silk purse from a sow’s ear, which seems more likely. To me, the role of the coach always seems somewhat overblown anyway. Your mileage may vary.

New team, new captain

It occurs to me that when Root was captain, the There Is No Alternative argument always ignored that Stokes was the alternative. Now Stokes is captain there really is no alternative, and for the same reason that it was problematic when Root was captain, namely that no one else is sure of their place. He might be good at it, there’s no certain rule that an all rounder can’t do the job, and maybe he won’t bowl people into the ground which in itself would be a welcome development. Ultimately, captaincy candidates become apparent amongst those who play regularly and have a degree of certainty about their place. If we go back to the team of a decade ago, an argument could be made for about 8 or 9 people to be captain, not because they’d be good at it necessarily, but because they were a fixture in the side. Until the current merry go round of selection changes and there is a settled team – and that needs them to be good enough – this is how it will be.

Cricket Clubs

There is a lot of anecdotal evidence this year that clubs are struggling to fill sides and have players available. This may be indicative of the wider problems afflicting cricket popularity that has been talked about for several years. Or maybe it’s specific for other reasons. None of it suggests a game in rude health, all of it has been flagged for quite some time as a concern. Perhaps the most concerning is that women’s teams have been reporting similar, and since the rise of female participation has been the one bright spot in an otherwise depressing landscape, that’s not good at all.

Everyone ready? Play

We do have a Test match in the morning to watch and listen to. For all the issues in the sport, things do feel slightly better when the international English summer begins. The mess of the India Test will be something to pick up when we get closer to the time, but New Zealand do at least have three Tests this time around, and feel slightly less of an afterthought, so it’s good to have the World Test Champions here first up. Shall we enjoy the next few days and see how it goes?

Farewell to Greats

thelegglance8 Comments

I was thinking this morning I would write a piece about the love of cricket inspired by the feats of great players, not specifically about Rodney Marsh as the news of his death came through, but in one of those reflective moments when those you are familiar with as a child leave us. I was in two minds about doing it, there’s nothing worse than seeing such news breaking and immediately thinking of how to make it about me, or us. And then the shocking news of Shane Warne came through as well. I can’t write a tribute to them, I’m neither capable nor do I deserve to.

I didn’t know either of them, never met them, never anything more than seeing them across the field or on the television. I’ve no story about queueing for an autograph or a quick chat in a bar somewhere, they were and ever will be strangers to me. So plenty will tell their tales of when they did, while the chroniclers of cricket history will place them in their appropriate position as giants of the game, statistically and in terms of their impact. And we will read their wise words and nod in appreciation, as we should.

Their different generations make the reflections and memories so different, Rod Marsh for me was the permanent presence behind the stumps for Australia when I was a child, listening to the commentators (also largely sadly gone now) talking about how he was a truly special exponent of the art of wicket-keeping, which to my young ears was simply irritating, because he was an Aussie, and the reason they were talking about that was because he’d just flown in front of first slip to take a great catch, and thus yet another English wicket had fallen.

Warne was of course much later, and part of that dominant Australian team that ripped England to pieces for a decade and more. As a near contemporary, today’s news perhaps appals more, but in his case it was his sheer vitality, and larger than life presence that makes it such a shocking thing to hear about.

In both cases, they formed the backdrop of the rhythms of a game that is an ever present part of the lives of so many of us, the flow of opposition cricketers who evoked a feeling of grudging admiration and considerable irritation as they weaved their magic on hapless English victims – and it was always English in those days where matches between other teams were never shown on television. So to that extent it was always every couple of years you’d renew televisual or ground acquaintances who would proceed to ruin your summer most of the time.

Perhaps that’s why as an English person the fondest memories either came later or in other circumstances. Marsh might have had a fantastically brilliant career, but for me it was his shaking of his head, crossing of his arms and clear unhappiness at the Trevor Chappell underarm incident that raised him from opposing-far-too-good-player-how-irritating to three dimensional character. I doubt I saw that incident at the time either, but was familar enough with it at the time I was watching him. And of course towards the end of any great player’s career you start to appreciate them more than was previously the case.

Warne too, his brashness when he announced his arrival with that ball, was bound to wind up pretty much every English supporter, especially so when he backed that brashness up, again and again. There was that dawning horror in all England supporters as he became rather obviously far more than just a show-off, but in fact on his way to being one of the all time greats. And doing it for years. Saving his best for England, which invariably makes an Australian the pantomime villain, the one we adore but daren’t admit it. Thus it was that his last series in England, the 2005 Ashes ended with him becoming something of an honorary national treasure, the chants of “We only wish you were English” alongside the clear and abundant pleasure he was taking in being part of such a special series, even on the losing side. And perhaps it was partly because he was on the losing side he received that transparently warm and affectionate farewell from the English crowds. Either way, he deserved it.

And ultimately, isn’t that the point? Cricketers rise and fall, are new and exciting or veteran and grizzled, but what they leave behind even more than the runs, wickets and catches they score and take are the memories – the honour of watching them, the laughter or the frown when they end up on the front pages as well as the back. Feet of clay the lot of them, imperfect as all human beings are. Marsh was fantastically sardonic as a radio commentator, Warne endlessly frustrated because he could so often be banal, before suddenly being so extraordinarily insightful to the point you were hanging on every word.

But didn’t they seem fun? Characters you’d want to share a pint with and just listen to all evening long, at least while still upright. I can’t pay any kind of meaningful tribute to them, and the loss for their families is too much to take as it always is. But they have been part of the soundtrack of our lives, and maybe that’s as high a praise as can ever be offered. Cricket is poorer for their loss, but we’re all poorer for their loss.

The words are hopelessly inadequate. They’re the best I can do. I’m upset at the news of two people I didn’t know. And so are very many others.

Grated Expectations

thelegglance21 Comments

There’s been a lot of reaction to England’s latest capitulation, and what it might mean. The Australians are gleeful and fair enough too, the English would be the same if it was the other way around. As is ever the case in these circumstances, the more thoughtful think about the consequences of continued one sided encounters, hoping against hope that the English will get their act together. It’s not their problem, any more than it was 25 years ago when they were dominant home and away. What that decade or more of batterings did do was force the nascent ECB into action to do something about it. And with success too, albeit a fairly fleeting, complacent success. This time around, there’s no sense of a determination from the governing body to fix things, more just the opposite.

There are a few caveats to be offered up – that England getting trounced in Australia is far from new, and the Australians themselves haven’t won in England in 20 years, while a focus on the Ashes to the detriment of all else has long been an issue in the mentality of too many in England. It’s true of Australians as well, but the difference is that they see smacking England about as a delightful consequence of their overall aim rather than the aim itself. But the suited and booted at the ECB made lots of noise about their two year plan to deliver the Ashes and they have failed quite spectacularly, though it’s unlikely they’ll acknowledge that. This isn’t a surprise to anyone paying attention, England were always going to be lambs to the slaughter (how ironic that was the title of a cricketing book when the shoe was on the other foot) because they just aren’t very good, and are declining from a position of outstanding mediocrity.

So what to write about it? There is no shortage of outraged shock out there, no shortage of lamentations for the latest death of English cricket, and a fair degree of anger. But not so much from us. Which is why this tweet from a sports journalist allowed the writing of a post:

Lee is right. We’ve written far less, what we have written has been more with weary resignation than the molten steel of outrage.

Partly it’s that none of this comes as any kind of bolt from the blue. All of us have banged on about the way the policies of the ECB were going to lead us to this point, not because of our truly magnificent insight into the complexities of the game, but because it was utterly bleeding obvious to anyone paying more than cursory attention. England haven’t just been pumped in the Ashes, they’ve been beaten up by India and New Zealand at home this year as well. They’re two good sides, but that’s only an excuse if the expectation is for England to lose on their own patch to good sides, which is to set sights low enough to be subterranean. There is a fair element of the ECB justifying it precisely on this basis, which is to suspect they accept declinism.

It bears stating yet again that the Hundred is not to blame for this debacle, but the strategy that culminated in the Hundred is. We all salute and appreciate the might of Darren Stevens, but the issue is not a game that allows his longevity, but one where in his mid-forties he wouldn’t noticeably weaken the England team if he was selected. There are only so many times these points can keep being made without us being bored of our own voices, and fed up with screaming into the void given so little attention has ever been paid to it. Not to us, who cares if anyone listens to us, but to anyone in a more prominent position making the same points.

Talk to most cricket journalists and they’ll be saying similar things with varying degrees of emphasis, but little of this gets into the general media because the wider public isn’t interested in the detail of how a successful England team is created, but only that it happens. More than that, they don’t pay that much attention to them doing adequately, but they do tend to notice a complete shellacking and their relatives in Australia sending rude Whatsapps to them. In the specialist cricketing publications the frustration is clear, in the national press less so; it doesn’t get past the sub-editors and the general readership won’t invest the time in learning about the problems, and more pertinently, they shouldn’t have to. Broadcast media, particularly Sky, have revelled in their own domination of the right to watch English cricket, and as a commercial entity have spent more time talking about how good things are than they ever have the likely future coming. They are entitled to do that, for the disaster the ECB have created is not down to them, but it might affect how much they’re prepared to pay for the particular joy of covering England being crushed on a regular basis – their refusal to bid for this series could be a harbinger of the future.

It’s customary at this time to point to a post or a paragraph where we predicted this, but our output hasn’t been one of a couple of comments proclaiming Nostradamus level awareness, it’s been the whole bloody website for years, the whole set of responses in the comments from those who visit. The Pietersen affair, whatever the rights and wrongs, was about an organisation whose prime motivation was no longer putting out the strongest team possible onto the field, and that was the main reason for the rage involved, the justifications on any issue possible except whether the central one as to whether it made England stronger or weaker. It certainly wasn’t the personal tribulations of someone none of us know and aren’t in truth overly keen on.

That is in the past, the anger transmuting in the subsequent years as the ECB continued down a path of prioritising other things, anything, except the fundamental point of their existence in making the game of cricket – ALL of the game of cricket – as strong as it could possibly be. The removal of free to air cricket was a symptom of a complacent organisation that felt they were in a strong position to take financial advantage of their success, irrespective of whether it undermined the foundations or not. The refusal over many years to acknowledge that it might have caused other problems was symptomatic of that shift in focus, but once again, it is not the reason for this series and shouldn’t be said to be, not least because it was fifteen years ago that it happened. It is one of a myriad of decisions and policies that compound each other, year in, year out, progressively weakening the fundamentals of the game, no one item to blame or single out, all of them pushing the direction to where we are now. Even when some things change (such as the new found enthusiasm for letting the public see the sport) they are being responded to in isolation rather than with a strategic approach, a sticking plaster applied to a gaping wound.

The latest excuse for the abjectness of the Test team is that white ball cricket has been prioritised. It’s true, but it’s still not an acceptable rationale. Other countries have piled into the revenues created by T20 without destroying their Test teams, and while there is a wider issue at stake about the increasing domination of the short forms of the game, that doesn’t justify England going backwards relative to the others. White or red ball is a false dichotomy only the ECB seem to get away with. Australia don’t, India don’t, and with the disparity in income to the rest of the world, those are the nations England should be compared to. Only here is this given even the slightest credence. And that applies to all those years when England had a reasonable Test side and a piss-poor one day team too. It wasn’t an excuse then, it isn’t now, and winning World Cups is not a pretext for an inability to put 300 on the board in Tests.

Likewise, the way the debate around the public school contribution to the England team is framed is to miss the point entirely. Having more or less the entire batting order over an extended period of time having been privately educated is not grounds to attack the private sector, but to point out the hideous failure of English cricket to maximise the talent available to itself. There is just no excuse for that – it’s not about the 7% who make up the 94%, it’s about the 93% who only comprise the 6%. It is a total failure of the coaching structure to so appallingly waste the resources available, an abysmal flop in turning young players from an extraordinarily large intake into good cricketers

Shifting the county championship to the margins of the season, on green or tired pitches, undoubtedly has an impact, but it’s not just the hardware of when and where it is played, but also the software of the mindset of those who play in it. It might well be the case that players are choosing to thrash a quick thirty rather than knuckle down and battle through, but calling out a single player for thinking that way is all about that player. When it’s true to an extent of an entire generation, it’s about those in authority who have created the circumstances to allow it to happen.

The England hierarchy have encouraged it, the media have amplified it. Jason Roy was selected to open in Tests and the selectors applauded for their daring by far too many. There are still those calling for Liam Livingstone to be in the side, not because he might make a Test cricketer (for all I know, he might), but because he plays sexy cricket, hits the ball a long way and gains the pundit plenty of column inches to push the case.

What did anyone expect? There is no plan, except to make as much money as possible, not for the wider benefit of the game of cricket, but for the bank balances of those involved in the game professionally. Don’t expect those who rely on it for their living to come out and be publicly angry about it, because their livelihood and comfortable income is dependent on more of the same. The ECB officers have seen huge rises in salaries (well, apart from the expendables at a lower level who they made redundant) and it’s impossible to avoid the suspicion that lining their own nests is the principal reason for far too many ECB acolytes, as each big deal provides yet another large bonus, yet another big pay rise. Consequences? There are none. If they go, it’s with a fat cheque. If they play, they earn more and aren’t going to complain in a short career.

All of this was expected. All of it was coming. This is not accidental, it’s a consequence of repeated decisions made by those in power who remain entirely unaccountable to anyone outside the small circle of people for whom the mutual financial benefit overrides any other consideration. Sure, we can call out the players, who haven’t been good enough and have folded repeatedly. We can call out the coaching team who have made baffling selectorial decisions. And many of those will pay the price for this debacle, for sacrifices are demanded. What will it change though? What material difference will it make? England can get a better coach, but Duncan Fletcher had far more to work with than whoever takes over from Silverwood, and had the backing of an organisation that was determined to improve the quality of the player base.

Yes, I’m still angry. But not at the results, I’m angry it has taken this entirely inevitable shoeing for too many to wonder what has been going on. What the bloody hell did they expect to happen? What the bloody hell are they going to do about it? Because if the answer is to tinker around the margins, to call for the latest flavour of the month to be shoved into the team or to debate which bang average opener needs to replace the other bang average opener, then get used to more of this. Far too many people have been warning of what would happen and dismissed as cranks and extremists, well the ECB and all those who hang on to their coat-tails and line their pockets accordingly have made this. They should own it, they should take responsibility. But they won’t, and that, above all else, is why I might be still angry, but most of all, I’m contemptuous of them.

Down the Only Road I’ve Ever Known

thelegglance80 Comments

I suppose it’s always possible England will pull this one out of the fire. I suppose it’s possible that for the rest of the series they’re competitive, and even in losing, do so while having their moments. Knee-jerk responses to a Test disaster can make fools of anyone, when in the following match a team roars back and batters their opponents. It’s always possible. It doesn’t feel that way here, but if that happens this time, feel free to thumb your nose at me.

Getting walloped in Australia isn’t especially unusual either. Anyone who is reminded of their advancing years constantly by being referred to as Covid-vulnerable (who knew that was going to a signifier?) is pretty used to it, the exceptions in ’78/9, ’86/7 and 2010/11 being glorious interludes in a regular diet of being flogged and receiving gleefully abusive messages from friends and family who have unaccountably chosen to identify as Australian. But there’s always been a particular narrative around the reasons why and the happenstance that led to it. Throughout the nineties England were a moderate team, but Australia were extremely bloody good, and consolation could be found (to a degree) by the way they rampaged across the planet hammering almost everyone – which is another reason why we were all West Indies fans.

By the early years of this century, England were losing, but they were fighting – they were merely completely outclassed. We can accept that, and the way England were progressing generally meant that there was hope things might change. The 2006/7 whitewash was infuriating, but that was a good England team against a good Australian team bent on revenge, and England imploded. Sporting meltdowns happen without having wider ramifications, and in a team environment that sense of doom can spread like wildfire. 2013/14 felt like the end of an era, and it proved to be as well, and in any case the fallout from that swiftly moved off the backpages and onto the front, as the ECB embarked on a civil war with their own game’s supporters. In that, the sheer sense of anger (on both sides) left everyone engaged in the fight and what would happen next. Whatever the wrongs of what happened – and we may have said one or two things at the time – it was a body of cricket followers thoroughly invested in what was happening.

There was a degree of hangover from that four years ago too, though the fire had faded. Some of the media clung to the wreckage as though a few floating planks comprised part of the ship of English cricket, but the emperor (nothing wrong with a metaphor transition) was as naked as the day he was born, the pointing of fingers amounted to demanding to know what was going to be done about it.

This time around we know what was done about it. To make things worse. It’s not just that this is a poor England team, because God knows we’ve seen enough of those, it’s that there is no way of thinking anything other than that this is likely to be routine. The Hundred isn’t to blame for England’s Test woes, let’s put that to bed right now. But the decision-making process and strategy (loosely termed) adopted by the ECB that led to the Hundred as the culmination of their intentions is, and those behind it will be moving on soon enough leaving the trail of wreckage in their wake.

What did they expect to happen? Increasing the focus on white ball cricket was a reasonable enough aim, as English cricket had certainly undervalued it for a long time. It gave us a World Cup, sure. It’ll likely give England a shot at another one in the coming years, and maybe a T20 World Cup or two as well. Fine. But the either/or mentality of it has never made a great deal of sense when other countries have managed to create good Test and short form teams, and in any case England’s historic ability to have truly crap Test teams at the same time as truly crap 50 over teams was a notable achievement in itself.

But this team can’t bat. The best bowlers, even taking into account the loss of key personnel through injury, aren’t that far off the point where they too move into more vulnerable Covid categories, which is a damn fine tribute to their longevity and skill, and maybe it is the case that when they are gone we’ll appreciate their replacements more. But it’s the batting, stupid. The batting. We can all pile into Rory Burns for his series to date, but it’s not like there’s an 8,000 Test run replacement obviously in the wings. Sure, some will read that and say Sibley was discarded too quickly, or that Sam Robson ought to be given another go (a fair point too), but it doesn’t change the material shortage in players who might be expected to turn into Test level batsmen entirely because the structure of English cricket isn’t going to create them.

We have Joe Root, a batter who is genuinely outstanding and deserves all the praise he gets, and that’s it. Ben Stokes? In a stronger team he would be the wildcard, someone to come in and devastate the opposition, to be that special cricketer who can change a game in a session. In this team he’s the second best batsman. Stokes is wonderful. He should not be head and shoulders above all bar one of the batting line up.

The same applies to the role of spinner. We keep moving from one to the next, and the next will always be the solution and never is. They’re all ok, looked at in the right light and playing in the right conditions. None of them are going to change the world, because English cricket isn’t going to produce anyone who does. Shifting the deckchairs on the Titanic doesn’t even begin to cover it.

And then there’s their heads. We’re one and a bit Tests into this series and England look completely gone. It’s not just the clear awareness of impending collapse when they bat. The dropped catches, the disparity in no balls bowled, the frankly weird tactics (let’s bowl Joe Root as dusk falls in a pink ball Test) are not indicative necessarily of anyone in charge having odd ideas about cricket as much as evidence of a team and coaching staff whose minds are in a whirl and unable to think straight. That kind of bewildered groupthink is easy to see from the outside, but very hard to get out of on the inside, until someone yells “Let’s get back to basics”, which always goes swimmingly anyway.

All of which means the most probable outcome here is that things are going to get worse. Not just this series, though if there’s something to truly envy about Australian sporting teams it’s their manner of emulating their local sea fauna by hunting down their prey once it’s flailing in the water remorselessly. But beyond this series, indeed for the forseeable future. Many a fan in past series has considered a thrashing by our warmest enemies as the price worth paying for change. It’s not the same as wanting the team to lose, which has always been a lazy accusation when this subject comes up, but it is about wanting to see action on resolving the problems.

The ECB aren’t going to change.

That, in a nutshell is the despair felt by many, and the more problematic indifference and ennui felt by others. If England get the kind of tonking that looks distinctly possible, we are unlikely to see a Lord McLaurin institute a root and branch reform in order to stop this happening in future, we’ll instead have an ECB expressing disappointment along with a fair supply of platitudes about the lessons that will be learned. It’s not that the cupboard is bare, it’s that English cricket governance took an axe to the cupboard and turned it into an iced water dispenser.

It’s what happens when that reality dawns more widely than among the hardcore cricket fraternity that is the big question. And that, in itself, is the fight to come.