Talking Sport (7 June 1999)

7 June 1999

Talking Sport

Michael Parkinson

I am offering a prize to anyone who can sing the Cricket World Cup song. First prize is a day with an MCC member at Lord's; second prize is a weekend with two MCC members at Lord's. The old ones are the best, as one England selector said to another. Or "Another fine mess you got me into", as the English bowler said to the English batsman. The World Cup signature tune arriving after the host nation had departed is one of the great jokes of cricket. It is the fanfare which became a requiem; the wedding march transmogrified into a muffled drum; the Last Post sounded over the inert body of English cricket.

Is the nation angry? Are there headlines demanding change? Have they called for David Graveney and his selectors on toast? No. It is as if it doesn't matter. The nation's resignation is significant. Either we have grown tolerant of cricket's incompetence, or we don't care. I think the latter is the case and the indifference is now rigid.

It would help if those most closely associated with the game's demise showed any sign of acknowledging a problem exists. The ECB seem to imagine their only task is to sell every World Cup ticket. Given they are flogging the biggest event in the game this cannot be regarded as an impossible feat. In fact, their most important job was to create a feeling of real excitement, to make the event live up to its billing as the Carnival of Cricket. This it has palpably failed to do. We were not to know that the decidedly naff opening ceremony was in fact an appropriate harbinger of things to come.

As Simon Hughes pointed out in these columns last week, English cricket wears a sour face. It is dull, humdrum and unimaginative. It seeks remedies in the jargon of chauvinism. Thus David Lloyd was banging on about his job going to a man who would die defending the Union Jack rather than some foreign Johnny who would only be interested in the money.

Mr Lloyd is one of my favourite people in all of cricket, and a man of great humour and common sense. Yet there are times when he talks tommy rot. And this is one of them.

For all his fervour, for all the Churchill speeches and the martial music, the warriors under his control have sometimes shown little appetite for battle.

For all his exhortations about the glory of wearing three lions on the sweater and what it means to represent the Land of Hope and Glory, his England teams have generally capitulated against teams who don't just talk tough, but act tough too, like Australia.

I am not blaming David Lloyd for England's lack of success, merely suggesting he was wasting his time. There isn't a coach in the entire world, nor indeed a collection of the best, who could make the present England cricket team into a success, because the fact is the players are not good enough. Not all of them, but more that aren't than are.

That isn't going to change until we find a way of creating cricketers of better technique and temperament than we do now. At every level of the game.

We can discuss what is required until the cows come home. And we have. Nothing will happen until cricket itself removes its objection to change. When will that happen? My advice is not to hold your breath. Only the other day one writer suggested the reason we produced so many ordinary players was one-day cricket.

If true then how can it be the best players in the world are to be found in the teams that have played the most one-day cricket. Tendulkar, Dravid, Srinath, Kumble, Wasim, Saeed Anwar, Inzamam, the Waughs, and so on and so on. These and many more besides have flourished in one-day cricket because, like all the best players, they are as adaptable as they are talented.

One-day cricket has been the saviour of cricket. It has introduced the game to a vast new audience. It doesn't challenge Test cricket; in fact at its best it creates an appetite for the longer game. It is still evolving and what we are seeing in this World Cup is that there are not one-day players and five-day players, only cricketers good enough to play both.

But there are still those who have their doubts about the limited-overs game. If it isn't the format it's the coloured clothing, the white ball, the noisy crowds. Paranoia due to dread of change.

There are still people in positions of power and influence who will argue that cricket started going downhill with the covering of wickets because it made for sloppy cricketers. Yet the best players today are those brought up on surfaces where only bowlers who bend their backs or give the ball a rip stand a chance of playing Test cricket.

All our good intentions to produce fair and true wickets are useless when counties make second-rate tracks in the hope of a result. Again, the horror of change; or maybe sheer bloodymindedness. Whichever it is it does our game harm, and thwarts any radical ambition.

It is no coincidence that the nations who embraced change are the ones making the most vigorous and positive contribution to cricket. Australia, India, Pakistan and South Africa have set the standards by which the game is played and marketed. Our position of power no longer exists. We are the pariahs standing on the outside looking in.

Anyone clinging to the belief we might still retain some influence is likely to be wearing an MCC tie and working for the ECB. But I'll wager even he won't know the words to the World Cup song.

Talking about patriotic humbug being used as a substitute for talent, we had much of the same when our football team played the Swedes. The message was: how could any team conceived in the womb of Wembley, sired by three lions, suckled by Britannia and managed by King Kev fail? Very easily as it turned out.

The sending-off of Paul Scholes in the 51st-minute was the perfect paradigm for a performance as brainless and inept as any I have witnessed from an England football team, and I have seen a few. Scholes's dismissal might have happened 50 minutes earlier after his tackle on Mild - as crude and as ugly as I have seen - was missed by the referee.

If we are kind to Scholes, who careered around midfield like a runaway bullock, we allow for the fact that he is young and daft as a brush. He might learn. Batty, on the other hand, never will. He is a senior player whose job is to set the example, to cool things down. Instead his nostrils flare at the sight of blood and he goes looking for trouble. Stupid, ugly. He is a terrible liability.

Sherwood is little better. There were times when England seemed to have a lynching party where midfield ought to be. The result was a shambles. The Swedish team stayed calm and strong, allowing England to demonstrate they are as short on temper as they are devoid of talent.

In such an ordinary team it seems unfair to single out one player for special mention but I am genuinely perplexed how anyone imagines Andy Cole to be a footballer of international quality. I think he agrees with me because he looks unhappy as well as inadequate. It is as if he cannot believe he is wearing an England shirt.

Nor is he the only England player short of international class. Take Beckham out of the equation and there is little to choose 'twixt England, Scotland and the Faroe Islands.

In the final analysis England's performance did not surprise those of us who don't believe in miracles and whose bulldust detector is in perfect working order. Kevin Keegan, like David Lloyd, is a talented and engaging man. Again, like Lloyd, he is a coach and not an alchemist.

If the England football team fail to qualify for Euro 2000 - and on Saturday's display it is a distinct possibility - it will be because they are not good enough. It might also have the effect of bringing the game to its senses by illuminating the woeful ineptitude of many of our home-grown players, and underlining the folly of a system where second-rate practitioners are paid upwards of £20,000 to be mediocre.

What Kevin Keegan is finding out, like David Lloyd, is that stirring words do not incite stirring deeds. Shirts with three lions on their badge make not the slightest bit of difference if worn by show ponies.

Source :: The Electronic Telegraph