FROM the moment that Eoin Morgan retired, it was over. Morgan has led the transformation of the England One Day Teams and achieved what some of England’s greatest Captains failed to do in winning the World Cup. If the creation of the new team in 2015 was a joint venture with Trevor Bayliss and Sir Andrew Strauss, it was Morgan who set the example on the field.
Not the best quality but its my own! Morgan now is a media man – here at the Old Trafford ODI against South Africa
Perhaps it was over from the moment that Jos Buttler broke the stumps at the end of the World Cup Final. Let’s face it – that team has never played together again. That was also when Bayliss stepped away. Since then England’s results have not been quite as good but they needed Morgan to get the team through Covid. By the time of the T20 World Cup last year, he was blocking a slot in the team and not giving the performance required. As his batting fell away, he was not able to set the same leadership example with that bat, and it became about words and culture. Indeed, Morgan’s values became a bit too dominant at times with the strange treatment of Dawid Malan and the refusal to move on with Alex Hales. In my opinion, Morgan should have retired sooner, but it is easy to say – you are a long-time retired. He is gone now. Buttler and Moeen Ali need to make decisions and not just ‘do what Eoin would do‘. Of course, they would all be aligned in many ways, but Buttler has to show his own true colours.
England has not done transitions well. Duncan Fletcher tried to replicate the 2005 team in 2006/07 and it led to a predictable 5-0 Ashes thrashing. The 2013 England Test Match Team imploded in a spectacular way. Even those few teams that manage success over many years change. The West Indies bowling attack had to accommodate the retirement of the fearsome foursome (Holding, Garner, Croft Roberts became Ambrose, Walsh, Marshall and Patterson). Australia went from Taylor, Slater, Boon, Jones, S Waugh, Border to Haydon, Langer, Ponting, Martyn, Clarke, Symonds).
What unites those two great sides of the past is that they ruthlessly picked the best players. Australia had to drop Michael Slater to create the Matthew Hayden / Justin Langer partnership and had to drop Ian Healy to allow Adam Gilchrist into the team.
England will need to do the same thing, and cannot ignore all the talent that was evident in the T20 Blast and The Hundred (Salt, Smeed and Jacks come to mind). Jason Roy has to get back into the runs, Liam Livingstone has to make meaningful scores and the bowlers have to tighten up or be changed. Even Adil Rashid is not quite the bowler he was.
In some ways, Ben Stokes has got the easier gig. It is perhaps easier to take over a failing team. However, I am not convinced by Buttler the Captain, and wonder if Moeen would be a better option. With Buttler I am reminded of Marcus Trescothick, who was passed over in 2003 when the England Captaincy went from Nasser Hussain to Michael Vaughan. Looking back now, it is clear that Vaughan was a good Captain, but he would not have coped well as a Deputy. Trescothick was the ideal deputy, but not the leader.
Buttler might yet prove me wrong, but he needs to step out of Morgan’s shadow. Moeen has a chance to turn things around, and if he was to do so it would be an interesting dilema. But difficult decisions might be needed to avoid another transitional failure by England.
Eoin Morgan has retired from International Cricket, stepping down from Captaincy. Some would say that it is a case of leaving before being pushed – he could not have continued much longer without scoring some runs. Despite this, Morgan will go down as one of the best England One Day Captains. Equally important as his success as a leader is that he was given the chance to succeed in the first place, and a lot of that credit must go to Sir Andrew Strauss.
Finally England held the World Cup in 2019 – Picture from the BBC
World Cup 2015
One way or another, it all starts with the 2015 World Cup. Morgan had been around for a while and was probably England’s best One Day batter in the first half of the 2010s, along with Kevin Pietersen. He had failed to crack Test Match Cricket – the hope had been that Morgan would fill the Number 6 spot vacated by Paul Collingwood. Morgan had made a couple of hundreds, but it always felt like he would struggle technically – though he probably would have gone ok under the Ben Stokes / Brendan McCullum regime! In 2012, England had nearly managed to win a Champions Trophy somehow, but that flattered an England Team that, by 2015, was playing an outdated form of One Day Cricket under Sir Alistair Cook. Cook was a hero in the longer form of the game but was failing in the One Day arena both as batter and leader. England was terrible at One Day Cricket.
It was clear England needed to make a change before the World Cup, but every opportunity to do this was missed. The result was that Morgan was made England One Day Captain also immediately before the start of the World Cup. Morgan had no chance. He was given a squad that would have struggled in the 1996 World Cup, never mind 2015. For instance, Ben Stokes was not selected. The whole campaign was a disaster.
Morgan joined an ever-growing list of England Cricket World Cup Captaincy failures. It is a high-profile list, including Michael Atherton (1996), Alec Stewart (1999), Nasser Hussain (2003), Michael Vaughan (2007) and Strauss (2011) – all of whom only got 1 go at a World Cup.
Morgan went away to the IPL and waited for the phone call telling him he had been sacked as Captain. It felt like Morgan was going to be remembered as a decent One Day batter who was not quite able to make the most of his undoubted ability. However, when that phone call came, it would be Morgan’s big chance. From what I have read, Strauss was clear – Morgan was to be the One Day Captain, but only if he was certain he wanted the job. Unlike the others, Morgan would get a second go at the World Cup, and England meant business.
In 2015 Morgan thought it was all over – Picture from the BBC
2016: It all went mad
I remember the 2016 English Cricket season reasonably well. It was a summer when I spent a lot of time in the car, and it so happened that I must have been in the car on 30th August when England smashed past the 400 barrier, because I remember the incredulity of the Test Match Special Team when Alex Hales was battering the ball to all parts. By the end of the season, England was regularly getting well past 300 in 50 overs. Something had started.
It took the combination of Morgan, Strauss and Bayliss to set England on a new path. Picture from Sky Sports.
The obvious thing that happened was that England started to pick the right team, but it is a bit more subtle than that. It actually came down to deciding on an approach and assigning clear roles. The approach would be the very aggressive approach taken by New Zealand – but dialled up still further. So England finally started to pick Alex Hales and Jason Roy. England had the talent – people had been screaming for these two to be picked for a while – and it was time for that talent to be given a go.
Finally, England picked Hales and Roy. Picture from Express.
But while we all remember the 444/3, batting is only ever half of the equation. After the 2019 World Cup, we would hear about those early conversations between Morgan and new coach Trevor Bayliss. They quickly agreed on the need for a World-Class, wicket-taking spinner and Adil Rashid was to be that bowler, joining Moeen Ali.
As important as the approach was the assignment of responsibilities. This most obviously applied to bowlers. Liam Plunkett was recalled and given that clearly defined role in the middle overs – yes the objective was to slow the scoring rate but the way to do this was to take wickets, alongside Rashid who would also be encouraged to attack, but with well-set fields offering protection. On the other hand, Moeen would often bowl in the Power Play, and batters would perish as they took liberties against Moeen, knowing Rashid was coming at them later on. It is worth noting that England only won the 2019 World Cup games in which Plunkett played, and it is something of a mystery that he was cast aside after 2019.
Plunkett had a clear role from 2015 to 2019 – Picture from Sky Sports
Batters too were given clear roles. Jos Buttler would be the finisher, Root would accumulate while Roy and Hales would try and hit the ball out of the ground. You might think this was all put together by a committee in the dressing room, but it still takes a leader to ensure the individuals in the team were playing in the way they were being asked to. With the batting, this meant he took the super aggressive option, showing the batters that it would be ok to get out caught at deep midwicket on the slog-sweep. Funnily enough, it freed him up and made him better as a batter. With the bowlers, it was about communication – be clear in terms of expectations but also be supportive.
It set England on a path to winning the World Cup in 2019. Remarkably, some would say England underachieved, failing to win the T20 World Cup and the Champions Trophy. That to me was churlish – England had been rubbish at One Dayers for so long that to win a World Cup was the stuff of dreams, dreams that I had not dared to dream since 1992.
2019
By 2019, it was clear England had a serious chance to win that elusive World Cup. I remember a conversation on Test Match Special when they tried to pick England’s All-Time best One-Day Team, and it was basically the entire 2019 team. Legends such as Graham Gooch, Allan Lamb, Robin Smith, Marcus Trescothick, Paul Collingwood and Darren Gough were not getting near that All-Time team.
However, Mike Brearley, Mike Gatting and Gooch had already found out the hard way that getting through an entire World Cup campaign was not so easy. England powered through the early stages of the World Cup but then got in a mess and had to win against India and New Zealand to make the semi-finals. Those early days in 2016 were important, but it was those last couple of weeks in the 2019 World Cup where Morgan would really earn his money. In those last couple of weeks, he had to get the best out of a team that was under incredible pressure, and yet even in the super over, he was calmness personified. No loss of temper, no public panic, no tantrums, no lectures. He just got on with it.
Gooches 1992 heroes were not getting near England’s All-Time One Day team.
Batting
A word about Morgan’s batting. We knew back in 2007 that Morgan was different. He had all those sweeps and reverse sweeps, and his wrists seemed to be made of rubber. In 1988 we could tell that Gatting was going for the reverse sweep practically before Allan Border started to walk in. With Morgan, he could leave it incredibly late before swishing the bat round in a reverse sweep. They all do it now, but then it was unusual. Then he became a six-hitter.
I was at the Old Trafford game against Afghanistan in 2019. It was only after he had hit about 5 sixes that we started to realise something mad was going on. That day he was outrageous – Old Trafford is not small and the sixes were way back, particularly the ones over long-on. Not only was it amazing batting, but it also showed the team how he wanted them to play. He was prepared to perish in the quest for quick scoring – and so the rest played the same way.
Morgan at Old Trafford – Picture from The Guardian where Ali Martin made the point on 18th June 2019 that ‘Eoin Morgan’s brutal 148 shows he practises what he preaches’. That was vital for the rest of the team.
In 2022 his batting seems relatively normal – alongside Liam Livingstone and Jos Buttler. But in 2010 alongside Collingwood, Strauss and Jonathan Trott it was remarkable.
Legacy
Whatever Rob Key says, Morgan’s legacy is the 2019 World Cup. It was so important that England used that home advantage. But to achieve that, he had to redefine the way England played the game. He had some proper players to work with, but he freed them up to succeed. The England One Day team had been a laughing stock from 1992 to 2015. Now they are feared. It is quite the transformation.
CWC19 will always be Eoin Morgan’s legacy – Picture from the BBC
Joe Root’s performance is clear for all to see (outside of Australia). Since the start of 2021 he has scored 10 centuries – some of them were massive hundreds, and mostly he was on his own for England. Everyone has gone mad over his recent hundred at Trent Bridge. It was a marvellous effort but for me, his hundred against India at Trent Bridge last year will live long in the memory. That was a solo effort when he single-handedly dragged England into a game they deserved to lose.
Despite how rubbish England were in 2021, Root’s innings at Trent Bridge against India was a great innings. Picture from Trent BridgeAnderson had a great year too, here in Sri Lanka where, when England picked him, he took wickets. Picture from Inews
As for James Anderson, he has taken 50 wickets in the same time period. It does not sound special, except that England regularly did not pick Jimmy in that period. The more you think about that, the crazier it seems. Looking at 2021, Anderson took 39 wickets at an average of 21.74. If you are still unconvinced, look at his bowling figures at Trent Bridge in the first innings – 3 wickets at 2.3 per over. All the other bowlers went at over 3.5 and nobody took as many wickets.
While Root’s impact is obvious, for Jimmy sometimes you need context. For example, look at the England Bowling figures from the first innings at Trent Bridge in 2022.
These guys are not machines. They are just very good cricket players. We need to savour every stroke Root plays and every ball Jimmy sends down.
The problem with English Cricket fans now is that they are divided by The Hundred. Hundred fans want to constantly ‘ram it down everyone else’s throats’ – every fixture last year was combined with endless ‘this is the most exciting cricket ever’ messages on social media, which ‘really wound up’ the ‘anti-hundred’. Now the message says ‘The Hundred could never be as good as the Blast’. Once again we have two hopeless extremes.
This year I have so far been to two T20 fixtures at Old Trafford, watched a couple on Sky and also looked at various Live Streams (why are Sky not showing more?). I have seen some exciting moments including a Roses tie at Old Trafford. But I have also seen some periods of dull cricket and some pretty poor presentation. That abysmal effort by Leicestershire against Derbyshire did little to defend the case of County Cricket against the apparently ‘Perfect Franchise’ – Leicester and Derby are sides that need to justify their existence more than ever.
Presentation
I am not ‘anti-hundred’. I did enjoy The Hundred fixtures I attended last year, and my (then 5-year old) son loved it. The Hundred did not get it all right, but it did show some of the potential in terms of presentation, most obviously in the graphics and stage management – yes, I did not like The Hundred graphics but the idea of consistency at ground and game is obvious.
That being said, I wish we had just added these values to the existing T20, rather than created a new type of game. However, I suspect The Hundred is here to stay. The best way to safeguard the future of County Cricket is to make the ‘product’ better than The Hundred, and it is the counties that will have to do this, not the ECB.
To that end, ‘the Blast’ lacks ‘pizzazz’. At Old Trafford, the music played between the overs is sometimes the same as it was 20 years ago. At Old Trafford, we could not hear the interviews and announcements where we were sat in the first game – the PA system was not up to it, but this was better in the second fixture. The ‘countdown’ and entry of the players and teams is a bit of a damp squib. Things are a bit slow-moving. So much of this could be easily fixed.
The idea of the bands performing within the arena during breaks is slightly galling to the traditional fan – I yearn for quietness between overs – but it is good for budding bands and provides some more for young children to be entertained by.
Can we take the best bits of both competitions and make 1 perfect tournament? That would take the ECB and Counties to work together. Now that’s a thought.
What about the Cricket itself?
It is hard as a fan. Your views on what is going on are impacted by your own team’s performance. And the fact is that whatever the format, whatever the game, you will have passages of ‘less interesting sport’. The two ‘Lancs’ games I have attended were of similar formats in that Lancashire batted first, set a target that could have been 5-10 runs higher and then looked like a beaten team until a late collapse. Yorkshire collapsed but scraped the tie, Worcestershire fell away to some good bowling by Richard Gleeson.
Both of these games featured a period around the tenth over where the chasing team appeared to be coasting to victory. It was a bit dull. I am not quite sure what the answer to this is, but perhaps we need a little more imagination around bowling quotas and field restrictions to avoid that feeling of a team ‘coasting’. That being said, Lancashire are quite good at strangling a team. As soon as the batting team needed runs slightly more quickly, a collapse came. However, I cannot escape a feeling that the cricket still could be better quality. It needs to be ‘live’ for longer.
What about Lancs
Lancashire seem to be getting going as the season goes on. With Phil Salt, Liam Livingstone and Tim David they have ‘serious’ batting power. Perhaps the concern is the backup to these guys – though Keaton Jennings is able to find ways to score quickly at the start, Steven Croft and Dane Vilas have struggled a bit to keep things moving. However, Lancashire have posted scores around 180, so I do not think we need to worry about the batting.
Lancashire at times look short of a bowler. Teams so far have slightly milked Matt Parkinson, avoiding too many risks. Richard Gleeson has looked good, as had Luke Wood at times. It remains to be seen if the loss of Saqib Mahmood hurts Lancashire in the later stages.
So far though, they are unbeaten and look capable of beating most sides.
In all honesty, I do not think I would have chosen Ben Stokes as England Captain. But the more I think about this, the more I think it is the right call.
In recent years has been that it has all got so complicated. Yes, Covid made things complicated, but England managed to make it even more complicated than it needed to be. Strip away the complexity, and the choice of Stokes becomes a matter of common sense. He is the only person who is guaranteed to be selected (other than Joe Root). He had to be picked as Captain, and Rob Key was strong enough to ignore the noise.
Yes, The first thing that Stokes can bring is some common sense. In the first test match of a series, you pick the best players available. Sure, some may not be available due to workload, but of the best available, you take the best. In the first game of the recent Ashes series, the best available team included ‘Broaderson’ (Jimmy Anderson and Stuart Broad).
That also involves using your best players correctly. England’s best batters are Root, Stokes and Jonny Bairstow (plus Nat Sciver, Heather Knight and Tammy Beaumont). Stokes has already made 2 key decisions about himself and Root, and they both warrant exploration. Let us start with Stokes himself. He is the Captain, he gets to bat where he wants to, and he wants to bat at 6. Perhaps Root was too willing to ‘fit in with the team’ so hence moved himself between 3 and 4 in the order. Stokes has made a choice and he believes he can make the most impact at Number 6. The decision about Root is also very important. Root is one of the best we have ever had, so actually that should be enough – he bats where he wants to. But Stokes also pointed to Root’s record at 4. But the most important thing is that a clear decision has been made. Whether we think this is a good decision or not, the decision has been made and the debate is closed. Which brings me onto Jonny Bairstow.
Recent years have been blighted by a repeat of the The Stewart Saga, but this time the protagonists being Bairstow, Jos Buttler and Ben Foakes. When it comes to Bairstow, England have to make a decision and stick with it. I wanted Foakes to ‘keep, but he did not grab his chance. I would go with Bairstow at 7, keeping wicket. And I would give it a solid year. But if they go for Foakes they need to go for it consistently. And it is time for Buttler to move on, which I think will be easier. Rounding off the batting, perhaps Stokes’ common sense can also ensure that Rory Burns, Dom Sibley and Ollie Pope stop doing crazy things technically, and just go back to watching the ball.
As for the bowlers, picking the best ones is less clear cut, but choices have to be made and committed to. But Stokes must be the 5th bowler. That means going with a spinner and sticking with him – for me it would be Matt Parkinson, with second spinners picked when it is sensible. Normally it will mean 3 other seamers. If rotation is required, then make it consistent rotation (e.g. one of Anderson or Broad plays every game). And pick the best bowlers. The best bowlers, not the bowlers who can bat best. That has to involve Saqib Mahmood.
The other thing Stokes must bring is honesty. The appointment of Brendon McCullum as Test Match Coach will surely only boost this. In recent years, it has really annoyed England fans when England have blamed everything on Covid or rotation (which both did have a big impact). Some things were just poor decisions. For example, the fans supported the decision to rest Jos Buttler in India. But they did not support the decision to take him just for the First Test Match, then rest him. That was nuts.
It is back to basics. Pick the players who are the best, and do the right things with them. Own up when you get it wrong and learn from it. OK, sometimes it is debatable who is best, but as long as you have clear reasoning it is fine. Sometimes you will loose games. But do the best you can to win. Otherwise, England fans will stop going, which will be the end of the Test Matches.
Before we try and consider how Ben Stokes will get on as England Captain, let’s consider how Joe Root got on in the job. It is not that easy to give a definitive answer – eventually, it comes down to a matter of opinion.Mine is that, irrespective of many challenges, and some were self-inflicated, Root always promised, but did not deliver enough as Captain. It goes without saying that Root the batter is a different story.
The ambassador
Firstly, one overwhelming positive. It sounds a bit ‘corny’ perhaps, but Root has been an amazing role model. When my son asks who he should watch, I say Joe Root. I cannot remember such a positve example being set by an English cricketer. In my lifetime, perhaps Moeen Ali or a young David Gower (pre Tiger-moth) could stake a claim – Ali for the way he has shared his faith, Gower for the way he played the game. But Root has done it consistently, while his team has been battered despite his endless runs. It would have been easy to get a bit cross in those difficult interviews with Gower in Australia, but he never did. He backed his players, he backed the various initiatives of the ECB relating to racisim and inclusivity. He handled the Ollie Robinson fiasco so well – even having fronted up to that campaign he also treated Robinson fiarly and did not unduly criticise him.
His rebuke to Shannon Gabriel in 2019 will live long in the memory for many of us. Root consistently plays the game the right way. Whilst nobody is in doubt about any of this, I have often wondered with Root if he was just a bit too nice for Captaincy. I think this was the issue for Gower at times. Being a ‘good bloke’ is not enough.
The good news is that he can continue to do all this despite no longer being in charge. He can lead by example, and people will follow. Again he can take the lead from Michael Atherton, Alec Stewart, Nasser Hussain and Sir Alastair Cook, who all provided vital support for Stewart, Hussain Michael Vaughan and Root repectively when playing on after being the Captain.
We can dismiss the number of wins and losses as a pointless statistic. Let’s face it, Root won more games than most because he Captained more games than most. We could consider win percentage, where Steve Waugh is the winner – but whatever the merits of Waugh as a Captain, it was pretty hard to lose too many games with that Australian Team.
My next tack was to consider Draws. I do think a major weakness of modern International Cricket is the absence of Draws – it shows a lack of determination, and some of this comes from the Captaincy. When it comes to determination, Atherton managed to come out of 37% of his games with a draw compared to Roots 17%. But any attempt to utilise that Statistic fails too – Waugh only achieved 12% – and that is not for a lack of grit, more because he won so many games.
Picture from YahooPicture from the BBCA good day agaisnt Sri Lanka and a terrible day against Australia just about sums up the wins and losses
What we can do is try and compare Root’s record with some of those England Captains who were not blessed with the resources that were available to Vaughan and Sir Andrew Strauss, or Mike Brearley for that matter. Root did have some world class players available, but rather like the 1990s, he had to carry too many passengers. Atherton and Hussain tried to make England ‘hard to beat’, and a justifiable criticism of England in 2021 was that they were easy to beat, so here we will focus on loss ratio. Atherton lost almost 39% of his games, Hussain 33% and Graham Gooch, another England Captain lacking resources, 35%. Root lost 40% of his games – not much different to Atherton who many considered to be an good Captain.
I remember hearing David ‘Bumble’ Lloyd talking about Atherton the Captain – he described him as a great Captain, if only he had had the players. And of course, that has also been an issue for poor old Joe – a Captain can only be as good as his players.
Whilst a Captain needs to win some games, we do have to look at Root’s batting, which, outside of Australia at least, has been out of this world. As Captain Rooot scored over 5,000 runs at an average of over 45. For England in modern times, only Gooch came close to that record as a Captain – his batting got better when leading. I think Root’s batting also got better as Captain – or certainly he became more determined to get the really big scores, after his relatively lean patch around 2019 (relative being the key word here). In 2022 it felt as if the more the Captaincy dragged him down, the better he batted.
Picutre from Sky Sports – Root the batter was incredible in 2021 and his innings at Trent Bridge was something else.
Where both Gooch and Root both failed was Australia, where they both have moderate records. The Aussies know how to sort a Captain out – just ask Atherton. One thing that sets Strauss and Mike Gatting appart is that they won that Ashes away as Captain (and they only got one chance). It is no coincidence that both Strauss and Gatting scored important centuries in the series they won down under. Let’s hope Root gets one more chance to conquer Australia.
Picture from ESPNPicture from ESPNLike Gooch, Root has not yet been able to conquer Australia, with notable exceptions in 1985 and 2015. Gooch eventally did get on top of them with the bat late in 1990/1 and 1993, and Root will get another go surely?
Tactically?
And I am sorry to say that this is where things go downhill. I know that David Lloyd said that a Captain is only as good as his players, and he is right. But my word, some poor decisions have been made on Root’s watch.
Root rarely had his best players over recent years, and even when he did have England’s best ever bowlers available he did not manage them well, or even select them at times. Jimmy Anderson and Stuart Broad have clearly been a challenge for Root. Add in the white ball focus and Covid and it cannot be doubted that Root was unfortunate in his timing. Cook was not a great Captain either, so Root lacked a strong leadership role model in the team. If all this was not enough, the hapless ECB have really offered little support.
Yes, we must accept these mitigating factors, but we must also accept that basic errors have been made. You only need to look at recent Ashes series and the West Indies tour for those decisions to jump out. Selection has consistently been awful, and if you want to put some of that blame for that down to Chris Silverwood, Root is entirely responsible for some poor decisions the toss.
Worse, Root also lacked presence on the field. Often, it was not clear who was in charge. The game was allowed to drift too often, when a quick bowling change was needed or a field change. Hussain was full of emotion on the field, and took it too far at times, but I would rather Captains err that way than become too passive. At times, Root needed to ‘bang heads together’. Equally, Root often lacked patience – none more so than when England worked so hard to successfully snatch defeat from the jaws of victory against India at Lords. That hour at Lords in 2021 was one of the worst passages of Test Match Cricket I have ever seen, and Root did nothing to change it. When a good team wins it is one thing, but on that occasion India were gifted a win. What was needed on that dreadful day of cricket was dicipline, not bouncers.
A further observation is that England have been obsessed with this concept of a ‘brand’ of cricket in the last few years. In Root’s early years the ‘brand’ was aggression. It resulted in that game against West Indies at Headlingly in 2017 being thrown away, but, retrospectively, perhaps he should have stuck with this method, as the best players available were aggressive ones. Later, the plan was to be attritional – something that worked for Strauss, but he regularly had 500 on the board combined with a world class spinner.
The problem with having a pre-determined approach is a loss of flexability. At times, it has felt like Root has been playing yesterdays’s game with tomorrow’s plan. For example, at Brisbane last year England were so fixated with a plan for the second game at Adelaide, they picked the wrong bowling attack. Then at Adelaide they picked the bowlers they should have picked at Brisbane. Constantly, England were focussed on ‘what was next’, forgetting about what was right in front of them.
Summary?
For me, things just did not work for Root as Captain. He failed to manage his key assets (Anderson, Broad, Jofra Archer and Stokes). His longevity is impressive, but in other eras Root would have been gone in 2018 or 2019, and certainly he should have been encouraged to resign after the 2021/2 Ashes. One could aos argue that longevity has contributed to the lack of replacement candidates for the Captaincy. In 2019, Broad would have been a good choice, but by 2022 it felt too late.
On the good days Root had a gameplan, and on the occasions he could stick to the plan he was successful. For example, he was successful in Sri Lanka and South Africa when big scores were made. In the home summer of 2020 it also felt like Root made lots of good decisions, particularly at Old Trafford against Pakistan.
But when things when wrong for Root, they went massively wrong. It is easy to look at the batting collapses, but also one cannot ignore the awful sessions with the ball when games of cricket were handed to the oppoition. Some might wish to point out that it was good teams that beat England in 2021, but I do not think they were as good as England made them look. And Root also lost two series away to the West Indies.
His professionalism, courtesy and dignity are greatly to be admired. His class as a person and a batter is obvious for all to see, but I never felt Captaincy sat comfortably on Joe Root’s shoulders. Without doubt, it was time for a change.
It is a sign of the growth of International Women’s Cricket that it is increasingly hard to pick a favourite player. At one time earlier in the millenium, it could only have been Charlotte Edwards, who was clearly the supererior player in the England team. I have always slated Sarah Taylor as my favourite women’s player, but Heather Knight and Anya Shrubsole would be close behind.
Knight and Shrubsole strike me as players that have had to make the most of every bit of natural talent they have. And both have had to be willing to put in the ‘hard yards’. Knight’s recent Ashes Century being a standout example of what I mean, Shrubsole’s six wickets in the 2017 World Cup Final another. Shrubsole has at times been the one to perform when others failed, particularly in the high pressure games. While Shrubsole is rightly remembered for that World Cup Final, it is actually the semi-final that sticks in my mind. Engand had taken a leaf out of the men’s playbook, and made life quite difficult for themselves in a game they should have ‘walked’ against an opponent that they had thrashed earlier in the competition. Shrubsole walked out with England 8 down, belted a 4 through the covers and walked off, pausing to console (from memory) Dane van Niekerk. She actually looked slightly annoyed that she had to come out at all. Shrubsole did something similar in the 2022 World Cup.
I have obviously never met Anya Shrubsole, so any impressions I have of her are purely from the cricket field. But I have always had the impression that I don’t think I would want to end up on the wrong side of her. On the field, she showed the sort of grit and determination that the men’s test match team would do well to emulate. In the 2022 World Cup, she was ropy at the start but when the pressure was on became one of the best players on the park.
That being said, at times in the last couple of years Shrubsole looked short of a yard of pace, and was a bit too ‘hittable’ for some of the best players in the game. Over her career, she did sometimes look like an easy target but would then suddenly take three wickets. However, it was hard not to form an impression that it she was starting on the journey down, having achieved highs in 2017 that will not easily be matched. And England will need to find a little more pace before they can hope to beat Australia in a Final.
This is a player who has gone out on a high. Yes, England did not win the 2022 World Cup, but making a World Cup Final the last game you play is not a bad way to go out – perhaps Ian Botham wishes he had done so back in 1992. It makes it a wise decsion, and I am pleased to see her go out on her own terms.
It is pretty easy to conclude that the current England Test Match team is terrible. What is rather harder is to put this team into historical context. Richie Benaud always said that you can not compare teams of different eras. Despite this, I have wondered for a while how this current team would fare against the England team of the 1990s.
It is a bit crude, but I still think Averages are a good metric in Test Matches. So, I have identified representative teams from 1999 and 2022, added up all the batting averages and subtracted the bowling averages. For good measure, I threw in England’s all conquering team of 2011.
Before I talk about the results, a word about the teams. Originally, I was thinking in terms of an early 90s team – undoubtedly, this representative 99 team would be boosted by the inclusion of Graham Gooch, Robin Smith and Angus Fraser (replacing Mark Butcher, Mark Ramprakash and Dominic Cork I imagne). However, I felt we should compare England’s two ‘worst in the world’ teams, so 1999 and 2022 it is.
I then considered taking 2 specific teams – specifically the England teams from the 4th test match of 1999 against New Zealand and the 3rd test match of 2022 against West Indies. For various reasons, this did not quite work. So I picked ‘representative’ teams.
The 1999 one is arguably one of England’s more powerful sides, based on England’s 1997 Ashes team plus a couple of players who became good England performers in the early milenium. It represents the team I might have chosen at the end of 1999.
The 2022 one is again representative, but I wanted to reflect the England teams we have seen over the last couple of years to make the stats more comparable. Plus, I do think Joe Root should bat 4, which means Zak Crawley at 3. I could have picked any of the openers of the last couple of years. Right now, I would go with Jonny Bairstow ‘keeping, and I would give him an extended run again (Jack Russell never got an extended run!). Still, I would pick Saqib Mahmood* and Matt Parkinson*, and I used First Class Averages for these two.
The 2011 team are only here to show us how quickly things can improve and decline, but they do show us the gulf in class. The only question was who to pick as third seamer – I went with Steven Finn.
The results are exactly as expected. The 2022 team comes out botom (131) with the 1999 team 25 runs better off in terms of the batting averages subtract the bowling averages. The 2011 team is another (almost) hundred runs ahead.
Don’t get me wrong. The ‘Edward Reece team metric’ is not perfect. For example, I disregarded Paul Collingwood’s bowling average. It does mean the other two teams have 5 bowling averages to subtract, whereas the 2011 team only have 4. But if I was to include Collingwood’s bowling, I would have to include Root and Michael Atherton etc.
However, it does have some interesting observations. We look for batting averages to be 40+ and bowling averages to be under 30. In 2012, even the ‘weak link’ in the 2011 side in Finn had a bowling average of 30.4, so only just over that benchmark. But if we look at the other 2 teams, the batting is not THAT different in terms of pure numbers – only Graham Thorpe and Root top 40, though Atherton and Alec Stewart are close. However, Andy Caddick, Darren Gough and Cork are all sub-30. In 2022, it is hard to find bowlers except for Anderson and Broad.
In the end, it is all a bit of nostalgia. But I think that 1999 team under Nasser Hussain would run rings around the 2022 team. With Gooch, Smith and Fraser it would be as one-sided as the recent Ashes joke. –
I recently said that England had regressed to 1993, when they had 1 world-class player in Graham Gooch. Joe Root now occupies the Gooch role. But they have jumped forward to 1999 when England were officially the worst in the world. He has not taken the Nasser Hussain role on yet and he either needs to or needs to go.
I remember watching in 1999 when England beat a reasonable New Zealand side at the Oval and won the series 2-1. Except that they didn’t. Chris Cairns was on form that summer – he battered England for 80, but it was the batters that failed big time (again) and collapsed from 122/2 to 202 all out. Mind, nowadays, that collapse does not seem so bad. In 1999, rather like 2021, England were dreadful all summer. To start with, Captain Alec Stewart and David Lloyd presided over an awful World Cup where they were given little chance because of some terrible selections. After that, Stewart and Lloyd were out – though Stewart had done OK as Captain overall. In came Nasser Hussain and Coach TBA. It turned out to be Duncan Fletcher of course, but he was not available until after the English season ended.
In the case of 1999, you can find mitigating factors. Hussain got injured, Mike Atherton was injured, Darren Gough missed the whole series. England’s new Coach was not available. However, England made some classic errors (again) – they jump out of the scorecard. The Alec Stewart conundrum should have been resolved by 1999 – we knew Stewart was England’s best keeper option once Jack Russell was out of the international picture and Stewart was no longer Captain. Yet Chris Read kept wicket for the first 3 games and Stewart opened with Mark Butcher for the first 2 games. Atherton came back at Old Trafford for the third game so opened with Mark Butcher. This would have created the ideal chance for Stewart to keep wicket as he batted at 3 in this game. Instead, England waited till the last game of the series to do this when they also dropped Butcher (actually I am not certain if he was dropped or injured but I think he was dropped despite being Captain in the third game at Old Trafford in Hussain’s absence to injury). All of a sudden England had gone through 3 opening partnerships in a summer (Butcher / Stewart, Butcher / Atherton, Atherton / Darren Maddy) and England had messed Alec Stewart about again. Even worse, Ronnie Irani (never a test match cricketer in a million years) played at 7 ahead of Andy Caddick at 8 (a number 10 at best) and 3 real tail-enders in Ed Giddins, Alan Mullally and Phil Tufnell. I guess we should be glad they did not throw in Devon Malcolm.
Does it not all sound incredibly familiar? Except in 1999, the England Captain was quite new and took action. The fans booed Nasser Hussain at The Oval, and after initially being defensive (“proud of the lads” etc), he reacted. Yes, he showed some frustration, but he also pledged to use that low point in English Cricket to change things.
In 1999, Hussain was mortified by being booed by the home fans. He made a decision that it would change. Picture from ESPN
“But people must understand we don’t just turn up at 10am and think, ‘Who are we playing today? Oh, it’s New Zealand.’ We work damn hard. I’ve been waking up at five or six every morning with nerves in my belly because I so much want England to do well. We have a hell of a lot of desire.
“I’ll use the papers,” Hussain concluded. “We’ll be reminded we’re bottom of the heap and I hope all my players read them. I’ll tell them ‘That’s what people think of us.’ It should hurt them.”
Nasser Hussian – August 1999 at the conclusion of The Oval test match
Kevin Pietersen is keen to let everyone know that England have a terrible system that needs to change. He says Joe Root should stay as Captain because nobody could do better. Well, English Cricket was different in 1999 but it was still the same 18 counties, and that set up England’s run to being Number 1 in the World by 2012. We have gone full circle, but we must look back at 1999.
We saw a Captain visibly distraught, who vowed to make a change. Nobody called for Hussain to be sacked after 4 games because he was new, unlike Root in 2022. Duncan Fletcher provided common sense and clarity of roles. He was also darn good and changed everything about England Cricket along with Hussain’s attitude. A year later England beat West Indies to embark on a winning streak where they won 4 series in succession, but many of the players were the same. Atherton, Stewart (with one role), Hussain, Graham Thorpe, Darren Gough, Andy Caddick…even Graeme Hick made important contributions, though never the big breakthrough sadly. Later on, Butcher came back in a big way and was a vital part of the 2005 buildup, though his career was curtailed by injury.
In 2022, we talk of the red-ball reset, but as yet, we have not seen the red ball attitude reset. We do not possess great players and will not for some time. But I do think a better attitude would help. This would start with an acceptance that these players are not playing as well as they can. We need to accept that basic mistakes are being made all the time, and they need to be stopped. It all comes from attitude.
Yet so far, Root, who is by no means a new catain, refuses to accept this. He does not get past the ‘proud of the lads’ part. He certainly does not talk about using the papers to create a reaction. It is simply not good enough.
I cannot see Root being able to do an Hussain. Picture from The Mirror.
We need a bit of grit. A bit of attitude. We need a willingness to accept England are not a good Test Match Team. How bad does it have to get before things change? England will definitely lose games this summer. But perhaps they could show that they are learning.
How could I not say something today about Shane Warne today after today’s news? It was announced today that Warne has died, aged 52. This news came just hours after the sad news about Rod Marsh who was before my time. Somehow, Warne is more shocking to me. I remember that first test match against England, and “The Gatting destroyer” which set the tone for the next 15 years.
Think Shane Warne, think of totally lost batsmen. Mike Gatting in 1993, Alec Stewart in 1994 (the ‘flipper’) just for starters. Not to mention Devon Malcolm. And I shudder at the memory of Mark Ramprakash (who did ok against Warne) and Sir Andrew Strauss, in different decades, leaving balls that were miles outside the stumps….to be clean bowled (at least Gatting was playing a shot).
Shane Warne was the name that struck fear into the heart of an England fan. Yes, we think of Warne alongside Glen McGrath, and McGrath was a fabulous and very accurate bowler. But Warne was something else.
I have very clearly stolen this picture from the BBC. Because it was hard to find an early picture of Warne, with the 4-ex sponsor and the peroxide blond which in 1993 was outrageous. Fred Truman commented that it was surprising he did not have a pony tail but changed his tune when he got Mike Gatting.
In 1993, England were not a particularly good team, though I would argue a better team than England in 2022 (that is another conversation). But it did seem like England could bat. Graham Gooch, Michael Atherton, Alec Stewart and Robin Smith sound like a good top 4. Graeme Hick had belted Warne all over the place in a warmup game. And then, of course, Mike Gatting, one of the best players of spin around. I was at school, but I saw the highlights. Gatting looking at Ian Healy – “surely you knocked those bails off mate”. Dickie Bird was in shock. So was I, and I knew it was coming. Perhaps the only person not to be surprised by ‘the Gatting destroyer’ was Richie Benaud who calmly uttered the words “He’s done it” on television. On the other channel, Tony Lewis was a bit more flustered; “now what’s happened”. All of a sudden, England could not bat.
In 1995 it was the hat-trick and David Boon taking THAT catch, in 1997 it was dancing on the balcony at Trent Bridge. I mean, he took 195 wickets against England without even taking part in the 1999 series. Poor old Stuart MacGill would have been a guaranteed selection in any other era for Australia.
Of course, Warne’s career spanned eras – not many bowlers would have been able to claim wickets of Gooch and Gatting alongside Strauss and Kevin Pietersen. Arguably, only Gooch had any mastery of Warne – who greeted Gooch by saying “Good morning Mr Gooch”. That meant that he came under the influence of Allan Border, who taught him (and Australia) how to be a winner – for example by hiding all his variations in that warmup against Hick. Then Mark Taylor was tactically brilliant. He knew what to do with Warne. Steve Waugh was brilliant enough that he was not intimidated by Warne – he even dropped him in the West Indies. I think that gave Warne the determination to carry on. Ricky Ponting was an average captain but Warne knew his game by then.
What was it about Shane Warne? Obviously, he was darn good which helps. But the thing was that he knew when to deploy his skill. Consider the Adelaide disaster in 2006. Australia could not win that game after England scored 550, surely? Well, firstly Warne tied England down. He led them into a great big hole. Then he pounced. I cannot share any more from that miserable day – but look here if you must.
More than anything though, Warne never gave up. I first saw that in 1997 when England thrashed Australia at Edgebaston (another false dawn). Nasser Hussain scored 207 and took Warne apart…until Warne came up with a perfect ball and Hussain was gone. England still won, and Warne never gave up (he was also Australia’s top scorer in the first innings of that game).
Picture courtesy of Sky Sports. Finally, Warne got his man.
The ‘never say die’ was more obvious in 2005. England won the Ashes – just. Yes, Warne dropped THAT catch which added 18 months to his career. Warne kept bowling and bowling. Then he became a world-beating allrounder, almost out of nowhere. Imagine if he had not kicked his stumps at Edgebaston? His 90 at Old Trafford was the difference between a draw and a loss. And at Trent Bridge he took 4/31 and Matthew Hoggard had to hit the winning runs. Gosh, it was close.
In 2009 I felt that England would win the Ashes at home – and they did. The only time I got concerned was when they talked about Warne making a come-back. He was probably right not to, but I think just by being in the team he could have induced 2 or 3 collapses of 2021 proportions. By saying silly things (see Ian Bell, The Shermanator), pulling funny faces (1994 hat-trick) and inventing new names for his deliveries (what even was the Zooter) he got batsmen to do crazy things and reduced Robin Smith to a gibbering wreck. It was such a relief when he packed it in! Though of course, he went on to be an amazing part of the Hampshire team and did a few other things pretty successfully.
England fans like me loved to hate Warne. Even on television, as a commentator, he drove me mad but was annoyingly good. As a bowler he was brilliant. But he was a showman. I sat in the crowd at Old Trafford in 1997 while thousands of England fan’s sang “You fat *******” and “who ate all the pies” and Warne turned round and joined in! But even I had to chuckle when he danced on the balcony at Trent Bridge, having once again retained the urn.
Lord Botham says Warne was a legend on and off the field. Cricket will not see the like again.
Trent Bridge 1997. Being an England fan was not easy.
On this sad day for Australian cricket, I do not want to ignore Rod Marsh. He was before my time, but I have seen many replays of that famous catch off Gary Gilmore in 1975. It is always wonderful to hear Jim Laker as well (he was just the best!). That catch is included here, along with a nice interview with Allan Knott, surely Marsh’s contemporary.
Cricketed 