Survival of the fittest in time for the millennium (15 June 1999)

15 June 1999

Survival of the fittest in time for the millennium

Trevor Chesterfield

Manchester (England) - Allan Border is the sort of shrewd analyst who, having run his rule of thumb over what he has seen of England this World Cup, is as disturbed as anyone with the image of Team England and the battering it has had since the frenetic pace of the Super Six without the host.

The former Australian captain wondered, almost out loud, how a team such as Zimbabwe, having caught India and South Africa on their 'off days' slipped into the Super Sixes and were looking at a semi-final spot as well. Zimbabwe then proceeded to get blown apart in both games when ended in conclusive defeats.

Despite the robust challenge offered Australia at Lord's where Neil Johnson batted with skill, care an the sort of cerebral attention of a confident man who knew what he was about. His game plan was solid and firm: all he lacked to help Zimbabwe through was another like him.

After the match Johnson acknowledge to the media the role played by Kepler Wessels in his upbringing as a provincial all-rounder. Wessels had played under Border for Australia and Queensland and the two have a lot of respect for each other as players and their off-the-field image.

Johnson's admiration of Wessels showed how different is the background between himself and the rest of the Zimbabwe side. Most of his high school and adult career has been in South Africa but it is not easy to compete with the Shaun Pollocks, Jacques Kallis' and Lance Kluseners of this world of competitive sport.

This is not a criticism of the work David Houghton has managed to achieve in his role as the Zimbabwe coach. The Zimbabwe first class structure base is as narrow as England's is as broad. In Zimbabwe there is no place for the mediocre; they all have to compete on equal terms and it is tough and hard.

Just how much recognition they will get in their own country and what sort of reception they will receive when they return will be an interesting exercise. If it matches the rejection Team England have gone through since their exit from World Cup' 99 there is something seriously wrong with the Ministry of Sport and Culture.

As Border pointed out in discussion the other day the success, or lack of it, has created an image problem. There are those who strongly suggest that the roots of the game are as deeply embedded as they have ever been. What has not been easy is the problem of attracting youngsters given the school system.

There are those, too, who say that in Scotland the game has a far wider attraction and membership in terms of players than rugby. And they have figures to prove the claim.

What Border would like to see, however, is a restructuring of the county format to create new, regional interest and a championship which gives teams broader identities in a national championship. It is not a new idea, either, with Derek Pringle, a former England all-rounder now senior cricket correspondent for the Independent, putting it forward as an answer to the game's malaise.

It is also a subject which has found its way into print in Spinner's Tales, a column I have written for about 25 years in South Africa. The idea was to use the regional system format during an A Team tour but this has been quietly shelved. The county chairmen would no hear of it. Loss of identity, history, tradition . . . etc . . . etc: you could count the mounting attacks of apoplexy with threatened membership resignations.

But the point of the argument is, for the sake of the long-term future and survival of the game in the millennium, radical changes are needed.

What we are looking at here is combining some countries: Glamorgan, Gloucestershire and Somerset into a South West team; Sussex and Hampshire into a Southern Counties side; Kent and Essex, or Kent and Surrey and Essex and Middlesex into regions; even Durham can be linked to Lancashire while wealthy counties such as Yorkshire and Warwickshire can stand alone.

Another option are West and East divisions; less messy and traumatic, perhaps, but the need to move on and out of this malaise for the sake of the game has be examined; also to play through to the end of September.

If England hope to become competitive internationally again and return to the glory days of 50 summers ago serious changes are needed. You have to move forward and while the rest of the world, Zimbabwe, Kenya, Bangladesh and Scotland included, move forward, England stagnate.

On the day a throwaway tabloid proclaimed in a page three lead story that a mini heat-wave had arrived we were served hot chocolate at Edgbaston in Birmingham, one of the less picturesque venues visited this World Cup.

We were even asked by the 'motherly' young woman of Pakistan descent manning the photocopy and fax machines if we had dressed up warmly enough as we were sitting in the front row of a media centre where an open window gave us the benefit of a brisk breeze and the 14 deg C 'mini heat-wave' noon-day temperature.

Whether the newspaper, handed out at your nearest tube station by a wistful member of the newspaper's 'sales' staff can ever be taken seriously after this bit of misinformation is another matter. Perhaps the idea was in fact a 'thumbsuck' to make the British met office feel happy after they got the previous day's forecast right.

After all, rocking up at Lord's in London the previous morning on a almost balmy spring day, with still a nip in the air to remind us that England and Siberia are linked by latitude, if not a form of 'spiritual weather bond', was almost out of character during a tournament where temperatures promising to reach the 20s were normally greeted with incredulity as the norm had them at least 10 deg C short of their mark.

About an hour after leaving the sun in London sullen grey clouds loomed and hung around the countryside the train passed through on the way to the big Warwickshire city.

It was at Clapham Junction where the throwaway tabloid, known as the Metro, was handed out. Page one carried a picture of some guy with greying hair holding his head in his hands and a headline proclaiming yet another looming disaster for England on some sporting front which should have been swept into the gutter with the last of the winter slush, and a brief item 'summer has arrived: see P3 for details'; events in Kosovo was relegated to page five and on page six as an item about Thabo Mbeki and the ANC 'declare a great victory' - and this more than a week after the event.

Little wonder there is the mistaken impression that the rag is a special project by O Levels students from a London comprehensive school with more time available than with which they know what to do.

'Oh no,' said the wistful one seriously: eyes growing wide and eyebrows raised higher than the mini skirt she was wearing. 'It is a most serious newspaper... ' 'Okay then, why has it not any detailed info on the World Cup?'

There was a puzzled frown.

'Er . . . World Cup? I thought that was last year . . .'

At which point the train for Birmingham New Street arrived and she was rescued from a further grilling. Which is what Rodney Hartman, sports editor of the South African weekly Sunday Times, went through when attending an international sports editors forum in Vienna. He tried to get Sir Donald Bradman's name on a list of the 10 world top sportsmen this century. The writers who purvey the fields of muddied oafs and some who work for papers who daily carry 20 pages of international coverage of the sport of terraced yobbos and tabloid-minded types, would hear none of it.

Hartman, who has penned a book on boxing and more recently has two titles on cricket to his name following the fortunes of 'Hansie and the Boys', was a little put out by the negative attitude of his European colleagues. They would not listen to any of his argument.

Perhaps if he explained that in India that a TV audience of more than 500 million daily watched India's World Cup efforts would have put them in their place.

At first it was really a job for that ace sleuth Sherlock Holmes when trying to discover the whereabouts of the media ticketing office at Headingley on Sunday. It was the big mystery of the World Cup, more complex than that at The Oval and more intricate than we faced at Edgbaston in Birmingham.

Dropped off at the Kirkstall Lane and taking out our magnifying glasses we began looking for clues, seeking the unfamiliar signs which pointed the way.

As we walked and stopped to ask those who were assumed to be ground staff, there was this awful feeling we had stumbled into the wrong venue. But as we had already talked to David Terbrugge, the South African fast bowler doing some light league work in the north, we dismissed the doubt that Headingley had become a drop off zone for Kosovo refugees.

So on we walked until a buxom woman selling programmes which indeed told us we were on the right trail. Perhaps if we walked along the east wall we might find what we were seeking. Then we entered the car park and suddenly the first sign 'media centre' and 'ticketing office'.

The young girl who was checking our ID passes and looking at matching tickets, treated us as if we were refugees and seemed far more interested in someone else than answering the question of where to go next. In fact she gave the distinct impression she could not really be bothered whether she was doing the job the way it should be done or not.

There was a dazed look as she became buddy buddy with her bosom chum while they made eyes at each other.

'Oh, follow 'im,' came the exasperated snarl from a girl who, had she been my daughter, would have been given a right ticking off about how courtesy costs nothing and a genuine smile means a lot more.

Yet during most of this World Cup there have been some really helpful and willing people. My special favourite is Francesca Watson. The Sussex media lass was one who really seemed to care; even if officialdom cruelly embarrassed her credibility with a 'sticking plaster' story when in fact Hansie Cronje had a earphone in his ear listening to Bob Woolmer.

There was also the 'Cornwall weather' story when questions were asked whether it would clear on the day South Africa were to play Sussex at Hove. To a suggestion the rain might be from a front sweeping across Wales, Ms Watson said, 'If the wind says "Right, Boy-oh" you would be right.' She was in Amsterdam and Edinburgh where the Kiwis swept in on run rate and knocked out the West Indies.

Then there were the Kiwis Jayne Broomhall and Chris Chapman, South African Shannon Moffatt, who fitted in everywhere, Derek Philpott for his kindness in freezing Canterbury and windy Southampton, and Paul Bush, media centre manager at Headingley, who gave me a lift to the hotel after Australia beat South Africa. They made up for the glitches and problems along the way which tried us sorely at times.