England are caught out by failure of the system (7 January 1999)

7 January 1999

England are caught out by failure of the system

By Christopher Martin-Jenkins

AFTER all has been said and done, Australia have outplayed England again. We know all about England's potential and no one should doubt their commitment to winning this time or the hard work they have put in from the start to the finish of an 11-week tour which seemed, because of its intensity, to be much, much longer. For some the one-day challenge is about to start.

Australia, however, have won the main business and it is the winners who are the grinners. Mark Taylor continues as captain, perhaps for only one more series; Stuart MacGill (initials SCG) is suddenly a national hero and a hot commercial property whose manager has in 24 hours received endorsement offers worth almost a quarter of a million pounds; Shane Warne and Mark Waugh are in the process of being forgiven for past indiscretions; and cricket in Australia continues to boom.

England foundered once more on the rock of Australian intransigence. The reasons go deeper than the twists and turns of one series or the personalities involved, which is why blood-letting at the top cannot be the answer and criticism of the focal figures - Graham Gooch, David Lloyd, Alec Stewart and David Graveney - is wide of the mark.

Their roles need revision. Stewart cannot open the batting and keep wicket. Graveney cannot continue as chairman of selectors and sometime England manager as well as being chief executive of the Professional Cricketers' Association. If he chooses England, he and Simon Pack, the international tours director, will have to manage England between them during the hectic international programme which, for better or worse, is now planned at home and abroad.

Assuming Mike Gatting is now to be committed mainly to Middlesex, Lloyd should switch to a wider brief as director of professional coaching, with Gooch, a coach not a manager at heart, as national batting coach and Bob Cottam as the bowling coach. All of them need to work in harmony with county and youth coaches, passing on professional know-how to young players and concentrating on inculcating good, basic techniques.

To go to Bob Woolmer now would be a retrograde step. Lloyd has already introduced and expanded on his methods and, in any case, Woolmer has said publicly that his heart lies in South Africa. If there is to be a new broom it should be Jack Birkenshaw, an old pro who knows the game inside out and has embraced the new without sacrificing the essentials of good cricket.

But it is the system and the culture which have to change and which, little by little, are doing so. For eight years I have tried to explain why the Australian system works from bottom to top. Potential winners are spotted early, nurtured physically and mentally, and slowly baked hard in the oven of the competitive cricket which exists at every level. It is easier, too, for Australians to focus on getting into the national side because of the passionate patriotism which is part of the national psyche.

Deep down, even Australia cannot be complacent. The chief executive of the Australian Cricket Board, Mal Speed, brought into the job from a similar role in basketball, speaks of the need to market the game against "increasing rivalry from other sport and leisure pursuits". There has to be constant vigilance about the marketing of the game here, just as in England, but Australia have the advantage of role models to capture the minds of the young.

Their playing resources are not infallible. England proved at Melbourne, not for the first time, that Australians will fold under the pressure of tight bowling and fielding like any other team. There are ample batting reserves for the established five of Taylor, Slater, Langer and the Waughs - Lehmann, Ponting, Elliott, Blewett, Richards, Bevan, Law, Hodge - and a mature and talented batsmanwicketkeeper replacement for Ian Healy in Adam Gilchrist. But Glenn McGrath is the only world-beating fast bowler and, curiously, Australia have only two leg-spinners who regularly get into a first-class team. It is just that Shane Warne and MacGill happen to be Test match-winners.

No doubt others are being bred below because the climate and hard pitches encourage wrist spin. England have Ian Salisbury, who has failed on grounds of temperament and accuracy, and Chris Schofield, who still has to earn a place in Lancashire's side, against competition from Muttiah Muralitharan when pitch conditions suggest one spinner will be enough. A tiny cricket-based charity, the Brian Johnston Memorial Trust, have offered scholarships to other young wrist spinners but their resources are small and the commitment of the England and Wales Cricket Board's development department to uncovering and nurturing wrist-spinning talent has so far been half-hearted.

Patience is required all round because so many of the attempts to make English cricket catch up with Australia are in their infancy. Since the last Ashes tour there has been a new constitution for the game; a new body responsible for professional and recreational cricket; a decision to divide the County Championship; and more money spent on the game in schools, which is the only place to start.

It requires no great insight to explain why Australia won so well again. For a start they had a captain who is experienced, astute, determined, tough and lucky. Two of the five tosses Taylor won, at Adelaide and Sydney, had a strong bearing on their victories. Against that must not be forgotten the storm which saved England in Brisbane.

Australia batted and fielded more reliably. They made four totals over 300, England only one, in the first innings of the first Test. Even then their tail collapsed. To rise from seventh position in the world rankings, England have to find a batsman or two who can bowl usefully, like the Waugh brothers, and a bowler or two who can bat usefully.

The widely discussed, and acknowledged, additional hardness of the Australians was most obvious not in the occasional, unpleasant and unnecessary overt aggression of the superbly methodical McGrath (the referee threatened him in public three matches too late) but in the way they finished the jobs they had started well. Of the 16 half-centuries scored by Australian batsmen, eight were turned into centuries; of 15 English fifties, only Alec Stewart and Mark Butcher got the other half. Not half enough.

Only Nasser Hussain scored more than 400 runs; for Australia, Steve Waugh, Michael Slater and Justin Langer did so and Mark Waugh made 393. In a low-scoring series, a reflection of pitches which, other than the Gabba, always gave the bowlers some help, England made 22 ducks to Australia's 15 and there was a 10-run difference of runs per wicket overall: Australia 2,703 runs at 33; England 2,243 at 23. Not surprisingly, therefore, only one English bowler, the burgeoning Dean Headley, took his wickets at a cost of under 25, as against five Australians.

The main reason for England's defeat was their fallible catching in the first three Tests. The final count of possible chances missed by the two sides was 22 by England, nine by Australia. How can you measure the loss of confidence and morale on the part of the bowlers, and the encouragement given to reprieved batsmen? I do believe that if the count had been reversed, England could have won the Ashes. Top-class fielders must now be a priority for the selectors.

Source :: Electronic Telegraph (https://www.telegraph.co.uk)