Boycott has his typical “in my day” whinge in the Telegraph.
Look at the players who capitulated so spinelessly at Sabina Park on Saturday, and you will see that almost all of them appeared in Peter Moores’ first series as coach back in 2007. Now I have nothing against continuity if a team are winning. But, correct me if I’m wrong, haven’t England been getting their backsides kicked around the world for the past two years?
Comment – Only Australia have really kicked our backsides in terms of results, and we did look like fishes out of water against Sri Lanka. But we gave India a huge fright in Chennai, and won, albeit scratchily, in New Zealand, and but for a piece of luck or two (you know, correct decisions being made) the South Africa series could have gone the other way. I’m not saying we’ve been good, far from it, but we haven’t been appalling – until now.
You can’t even say they are in a building phase, because no progress is being made. Yes, Kevin Pietersen and Andrew Flintoff are still great players who would get into any side on the planet. When those two do well, England can look a decent outfit. But what about the rest of this sorry lot?
Comment – No argument here, except I’ve been saying this for over a year now.
Alastair Cook still has the same technical issues outside off-stump that the Australians exploited in the last Ashes series. Ian Bell still keels over at the first hint of pressure. Steve Harmison still blows hot and cold. And Monty Panesar still bowls the same ball six times an over. The one man I excuse from criticism is Stuart Broad, who does at least have a bit of personality about him.
Comment – You’ll get on at Broad in due course, Boycott, we know you will. Fair comment on Cook (who, note, still managed to make a century on that tour – more than Strauss, Bell and Flintoff combined). You know my views on Ian Bell – welcome aboard all – and Monty’s stagnation is a crime of coaching. As for Harmison, when did he last “blow hot”?
If you’re looking for an explanation for this strange state of suspended animation, I can give you one. These lads just have it too easy. There is no motivation to improve when they have more than a dozen backroom staff to analyse their techniques, put out the cones at training, and virtually wipe their bottoms for them.
Comment – Here it comes. Batten down the hatches. I’m not sure how assisting players to prepare for a game is impacting on motivation, but there you go….
Let’s go through the entourage out here in Jamaica. We have Andy Flower (batting coach), Ottis Gibson (bowling coach), Phil Neale (operations manager) Kirk Russell (physio), Mike Stone (doctor), Sam Bradley (fitness and conditioning coach), Mark Garraway (analyst), Mark Saxby (masseur), Reg Dickason (security manager), Andrew Walpole (media manager), Colin Gibson (senior media manager), Hugh Morris (managing director) and Geoff Miller (chief selector). I make that 13 people. And if they hadn’t sacked him, we would have had Moores as well!
Comment – One by one. Batting coach – what has Boycott’s job been? Bowling coach – Boycott went off on one when Cooley left so he sees some merit in the role. Operations Manager – We always used to have a man who did the organsising – previously he was called a tour manager. Physio – well I think he’s necessary (4 down, all pretty much standard), Doctor – seems sensible for me – I wouldn’t want a chiropracter diagnosing my gastric parasites. Fitness and conditioning coach also seems like a sensible thing – maintaining fitness to make long innings longer, and bowling spells longer seems sensible and I’ll bet all major sporting teams have one. The analyst collates all the information a player might want to analyse his game, and in the modern era of technology this seems perfectly sensible. So far, no problems. Two media managers show what the modern world has become, but I would bet their interaction with the players goes as far as briefing and preparing people for interviews. That’s the modern world Boycs. Hugh Morris and Geoff Miller are on a jolly, and probably don’t NEED to be there. But I also remember the clamour for Ray Illingworth to go to Australia a decade or so ago when he contended he did not need to be there for the whole series. Boycott’s havinghis cake and eat it.
Old-time England teams managed to get by with a tour manager, a physio and a scorer. Back then, players were their own bosses. If you had a technical weakness, you would come up with a way around it or get help from a senior player. If you were vulnerable to a particular kind of injury, you would try to strengthen that part of your physique. In some ways, I feel sorry for these modern players, because they don’t have the opportunity to think for themselves and develop their own characters. How can they, when they have 13 coaches and advisers to plan out every minute of every day?
Comment – He has a point, but loses it in his obsession with the “in my day” shit. Are you saying that you should not use technology and professional advice to deal with any problems in your game? You think Tiger Woods gets to where he is in his profession without using the latest gizmos, training and media advisers? You telling me KP doesn’t think for himself with the reverse switch hit, or technical issues in his batting? Do you just want the players to shin up for a net, think something doesn’t feel right, and not use the tools of his trade to help him? Jesus, Boycott, you are an old codger.
What the England and Wales Cricket Board are creating here is a comfort zone, where players aren’t allowed to take individual responsibility. Not only does all this pampering insulate them from the real world, but it gives them an inflated estimate of their own importance and ability.
Comment – Far be it for Boycott to accuse anyone of having an inflated estimate of their own importance and ability. The comfort zone has been created by excessive loyalty. The one sacrificial lamb appears to be Hoggard, yet batsmen stay in the team regardless of form. It isn’t to do with them being pampered. Memo to Boycott – all top professional sports teams are pampered.
I would like to see a return to basics. It is time that England started putting the cricket first, not the whole circus that surrounds it. One of the big problems of the last year is that everything we have heard about the national side has been to do with money and politics. Meanwhile the cricket itself has become almost incidental, which I find rather sad. And I cannot see how any of this is the best way of preparing for a Test series.
Comment – Return to basics? What does that mean? You can’t, as much as you would like to Boycott, live in a vacuum. In India many top international players are making a fortune playing hit and giggle cricket. England’s players, quite rightly, want a bit of that, and in many ways I don’t blame them. You can’t just ignore that. As for the money and politics side, who’s fault is that? Why aren’t you popping off more at Morris, Clarke and Miller for running English cricket like the gin-soaked dodderers of Botham-lore?
We have had the Stanford million-dollar challenge, the arguments over appearing in the Indian Premier League, the will-they-won’t-they debate over going back to India, all followed by the sacking of the coach and captain. And behind the scenes, the players have spent the best part of six months wrangling about the details of their central contracts.
Comment – Stanford was a sick joke, and the ECB fell for it. That’s Clarke’s fault yet he gets re-elected unopposed. The IPL is a reality that you can’t wish away. The Mumbai massacre was awfully inconvenient wasn’t it Geoffrey, and England gained massive plaudits by playing there afterwards – I was proud of them for going. And if you were being stiffed on a contract, Geoffrey, you would have blithely accepted it. Don’t blame the players for this, you muppet. There’s plenty else you can pin on them.
Perhaps the challenge of dealing with all these issues explains why the ECB has now got something approaching 200 people on its payroll. For me, the bureaucracy has just become excessive.
Comment – And this has what to do with Ian Bell’s nonsensical shot before lunch, or the fact that Collingwood can look like a walking wicket?
It was David Collier, the ECB chief executive, who instigated the Schofield Report, which was supposed to fix English cricket’s problems after the Ashes whitewash. Instead, it has only resulted in the creation of another bunch of jobs. It’s time for the 18 county chairmen to get a grip of what’s going on, because none of this investment is actually making the team any better. Quite the reverse, in fact: I’d say it is making things worse.
Comment – The Schofield report was classic “jobs for the boys”. What a laugh, as if the 5-0 defeat in Australia came because there was a systemic failure in English cricket. In 2005 Harmison bowled well, Flintoff was a great all-rounder, Strauss scored two tons, Trescothick made valuable runs at the top of the innings, we had a great captain, our keeper scored vital runs, Simon Jones was on top of his game, and Ashley Giles wasn’t at the mercy of a hip injury. We lost in 2006-7 because Australia were at the top of their game, and we were an injury-ridden, form-shy team that lost a catastrophic second test and never recovered and those key factors mentioned above, due to injury and attitude, weren’t there. And we looked to blame a county system for that? Jesus.
To take one example: out here in the West Indies, Geoff Miller doesn’t have any official say over selection. Flower and Andrew Strauss pick the team, while Miller, who came up with the original tour party, is just keeping a watching brief. Somehow, they still managed to go in with only one spinner on a turning pitch. Things are not being thought through properly.
Comment – Er, the Windies only had one spinner, and an occasional one in Chris Gayle. KP is probably not in Gayle’s class as a spinner, but it is the same theory. The key bowler, the one who devastated our top order was twirler Jerome Taylor. Or does he need Geoff Miller to tell him that. Benn mainly dismissed our tail, No-one is denying Monty is in a funk, but don’t twist it.
England’s chances in this series are not dead: they went 1-0 down in New Zealand a year ago, and were still able to win the next two Tests. But I believe that there is something fundamentally wrong with the way the team is set up. Whatever happens over the next month, some tough decisions need to be taken at the top, or time – as far as England are concerned – will continue to stand still.
Comment – Let’s hope for the best, eh? England’s failure, in my opinion, is not recognising who has “ticker” and who doesn’t. Ian Bell has long since shown he shouldn’t be here; Collingwood lacks the class which his attitude can’t make up, and as I have said, should be a reserve in our team; Cook needs to play a big knock when we need it, not to keep his career going; and Flintoff is stuck at 6 averaging less than 30 in the last four years, which is not enough. It has little to do with whether we have a massuese, an IPL wrangle or county cricket. Consistency of selection is giving people a chance to succeed at the outset, not to give players a year to prove it is time they moved on. Boycott, as always, misses the point.
