Another Case Of England Mutual Assured Destruction?

 

 

Ashes 2013

 

Let the blame game start

 

January 9^th 2014

 

The series is finished. The whitewash is complete. The mental disintegration has been accomplished: Graeme Swann has gone; Jonathon Trott is out for the foreseeable future; Monty Panesar’s international future is in grave doubt, as is Steve Finn’s; Joe Root and Matt Prior have been dropped; and Jonny Bairstow simply has not made the grade. However, all the talk is about Kevin Pietersen, supposed dressing room malcontent and gadfly in the Flower power regime. Whatever happened in 2012, it is obvious that it is not forgiven and even less is it forgotten. Being the top runscorer in the series (albeit with fewer than 300 runs at an average under 30) is not enough to compensate the fact that the face does not fit and that if he refuses to use his degenerative knee injury as an excuse to retire, he may be pushed anyway, accused of not playing for the team.

Andy Flower is playing for his professional life. From a peak in 2011 when it seemed that he could do no wrong and the fear that he might decide to go after this tour was real, things have gone horribly downhill:

• 3-0 whitewash in the UAE v Pakistan
• 1-1 in Sri Lanka where a win in the second Test broke a series of four consecutive defeats.
• Win 2-0 v West Indies in England
• 2-0 v South Africa in England (England could have won the 2^nd & 3^rd Tests but did not and was comprehensively outplayed overall)
• Win 2-1 v India (after the 1^st Test, England’s 2012 record stood at 7 defeats in 12 Tests)
• 0-0 v New Zealand with England lucky to save the series
• Win 2-0 v New Zealand in the return series
• Win 3-0 v Australia at home
• 5-0 whitewash in Australia

Nine series, 4 won, 3 lost (10 of the 11 Tests were lost in those series defeats), 2 drawn.

A record of P 30, W 10, D 8, L 12, with ten of the twelve defeats coming in just three series.

It is not impressive. Something has gone seriously wrong. What is more, when England lose, they are losing very badly indeed.

Against Sri Lanka and against India, England managed to turn around series that had started with a defeat. However, the turnaround against India came in that same Test where, in the second innings, Cook and Prior were probably just an hour away from saving the game on the final morning, after an epic partnership. Although eventually England lost by 9 wickets soon after lunch, the Indian bowling was being ground down, it can be argued that India would have been unlikely to risk a chase of a target of 180 in 45 or so overs. Similarly, against Sri Lanka, a first innings deficit was turned into a rather more nail-biting win than Sri Lanka could have imagined as, first, only 87 runs for the last two wickets allowed Sri Lanka to set a challenging target and then Trott and Prior threatened to reach it. In both cases, England started the fightback in the third innings of the match.

What made the Australian series predictable was the meek surrender in the 1^st Test, where the fightback never came. When the 2^nd Test started the same way, a 5-0 result looked inevitable. England-watchers know that, if the fightback does not come quickly, it will not come at all.

There will always be comparisons with 2006/07, but a closer parallel is probably 1958/59, when England also went to Australia as holders of the Ashes after three consecutive wins, with an apparently strong side, but lost 4-0. In 1958/59, the batting failed and the bowling was too one-dimensional: sound familiar? In contrast, after three days of the 2006 Adelaide Test it looked as if England were going to be fiercesome rivals to Australia. After two days of the Test there were even suggestions that England were burying the career of Glenn McGrath (0-107) and Shane Warne (1-167), who had come in for some terrible punishment as England ran up a massive total of 551-6d. However meekly England surrendered after that catastrophic fifth day collapse, no one can say that they had not shown themselves capable of competing for four glorious days. In this series there has been no such consolation.

Fans, even cricket writers, are split. Fine, knowledgeable pundits such as George Dobell argue that Andy Flower should take the blame and that his methods are no longer working. The huge defeats against Pakistan, South Africa and Australia suggest that when Plan A fails, there is no Plan B. However much you say that it is the players who have failed in the middle, not the coach, such an obvious flaw in the preparation as the lack of a Plan B has to be blamed on the management. No one argues that Andy Flower has been even better than Duncan Fletcher at his best in taking England to the top but, like Duncan Fletcher, when things have started to go wrong he has failed to adapt and to keep England there. There are plenty of suggestions that the very high degree of control and discipline of the Flower regime are beginning to grate on some of the players, who are beginning to feel the need for some breathing space.

Australia, famously, had a discipline and homework regime and that ended in tears. More than one of the players attribute the turnaround in Australian fortunes to the relaxed and fun atmosphere that Darren Lehmann has installed in place of Mickey Arthur’s more aesthetic methods.

Andy Flower has said that he wants to lead England back to success and is planting the blame for the problems firmly at the door of one or two troublemakers for upsetting the dressing room atmosphere, with rumours that he is trying the “either he goes, or I go” tactic that led to the Mutual Assured Destruction of Peter Moores and Kevin Pietersen. The solution, apparently, is not a liberalisation of the regime, but the need for even greater control. There are already rumours that this is evolving into a power struggle with Paul Downton, a player who remembers the bad years of the ‘80s all too well. Maybe Hugh Morris knew what he was doing when he decided to get out now.

Not even Andy Flower can lay the blame with Kevin Pietersen for the squad taken to Australia having too many passengers and too many players who seemed like a good idea at the time: the blame for that lies firmly with the management. Neither was it the fault of Kevin Pietersen that the schedule that England agreed to was hardly ideal, with only a single two day game against what was little better than a School XI in an out of the way country outpost after the 1^st Test. And Kevin Pietersen is not to blame for the fact that Australia agreed to play strengthened squads in the warm-ups and then withdrew players and were allowed to do it, possibly because there was more than a suspicion that the ECB were not overkeen themselves to encourage counties to select credible sides against the Australian tourists in the summer and so were in no position to protest.

A strong manager would say “we screwed up – X, Y and Z seemed like a good idea at the time, but I got it wrong”. Admission of guilt and a promise to do better next time. That though is not exactly the line that is being taken. What is happening is a lot of infighting that will only weaken the team still further. The beneficiaries may be a Sri Lankan side who are proving difficult opponents for Pakistan and whose skilful seamers could just prove a handful when they arrive in June. Asian fans are already joking that it will be a major shock result if England manage to win that series.