Is County Form Still Relevant to Tests?

 

 

Ashes 2015

 

Is County Form Relevant to Tests?

 

May 28^th 2015

 
Yesterday there was a marvellous debate on the CricInfo County Cricket Live Blog about the England spin bowling situation. Different supporters pushed the case for their own county’s bowler. Just about the only thing that everyone was agreed upon was that Moeen Ali’s form with the ball is more than a little worrying and that “The Beard that is Feared” is threatening to become “The Bowler who is slapped to the Boundary”.

Spin bowling debates are nothing new to England fans. No one expected a post-Swann and post-Monty era to be easy. What to do about it is though becoming a major issue.

The Moeen situation exacerbates things. From being a #6 bat for which, by definition, his bowling was a bonus, Moeen is now playing at #8, which is a bowler’s slot. Contrariwise, he is now scoring runs. For some fans, if you are batting no higher than 8, the major consideration should to be to have the best possible spinner because runs are secondary to taking wickets.

An alternative point of view is to look at the Ashley Giles role: he was not a great spinner – although he was a lot better than his detractors suggested – but he was a specialist gulley fielder and averaged over 20 with the bat (20.89 over 54 Tests), with 4x50. Giles was a utility player in that he contributed wickets (2.6 per Test), useful runs (26 per Test) and catches (0.6 per Test), meaning that he was as valuable or more so to the team than Monty Panesar who was a better bowler, but a far inferior bat and fielder.

Right now, Moeen Ali is very much in the Ashley Giles role. The question is: is there a better spin option?

Many fans are frustrated with the way that Adil Rashid has been treated. He has now been on no less than four full tours and has barely played a match, let alone a Test. Despite respectable figures in the County game, it is evident that the captain does not trust him and nor did Peter Moores. Many fans would like to see Adil Rashid get a chance, just to see what he is capable of; others though think that he will prove to be simply too expensive and too ineffective at this level.

In theory, the #2 option is James Tredwell.  His problem though is that he rarely plays 4-day cricket now. Last season he was loaned out to Sussex where he took 12 wickets @ 43.2 in 5 matches to add to his 11 @ 38.7 in 4 matches for Kent, where Adam Riley is preferred to him. Hardly figures to strike fear into Michael Clarke, David Warner and Steve Smith.

If you want the leading English-qualified spin bowler in the 2015 season, a quick scan down the averages will find Simon Kerrigan of Lancashire. 20 wickets @ 26.1 and a career average of 28.3 surely make him the best option? The fact that, bar 2014, he has been high in the averages for several seasons reinforces his credentials. If you look for county form, is Simon Kerrigan not the obvious choice?

The fact is though that probably Simon Kerrigan is no more than sixth or seventh choice right now at very best. Probably, in the minds of the selectors, the pecking order is something like:

Moeen Ali, James Tredwell, Adil Rashid, Adam Riley, Zafir Ansari, Stephen Parry, Danny Briggs, Simon Kerrigan.

Quite possibly, even Scott Borthwick is up there ahead of Simon Kerrigan too, or even Samit Patel [note to that poor old Monty Panesar, who had a reasonable season in 2014, is nowhere on the list – his chances of a recall seem to be practically zero].

The problem for Simon Kerrigan is an obvious one: he had a difficult debut at The Oval in 2013 and his captain had no faith in him. The way that he was handled was pretty awful: after a single, poor spell, he was not allowed to bowl again. A sign of how far his stock has fallen is that Parry, Riley, Adil Rashid and Samit Patel were on the Lions tour to South Africa last Autumn, but no Simon Kerrigan. Zafir Ansari was also picked ahead of him for the game in Ireland.

For Simon Kerrigan, unless he can do something so utterly eye-catching that his claims can no longer be ignored, he is not even going to be mentioned when squads and tour parties are selected.

The suspicion is increasing that County form is now less important than ever in selection. To force your way into the England team you have to show sustained form for a long period (as Sam Robson and Adam Lyth did), or do something really eye-catching (Steve Finn went from net bowler for the Lions to a Test spot by sending down a brutal spell of bowling in the nets in the UAE in front of Andy Flower), or just be in the right place at the right time (as Mark Wood has been when a quick bowler was needed urgently).

As Nick Compton, Sam Robson, Ravi Bopara and Simon Kerrigan have found, once you lose your place, getting it back is almost impossible. However, if County cricket is to have relevance it has to produce England cricketers. Once you say that your form players are not good enough to step up, something is going badly wrong.

A look at the current First Class statistics is revealing. Of the five batsmen with 600+ runs after about a third of the season, four are England-qualified: James Hildreth, Alex Hales, Michael Carberry & Scott Borthwick. Of them, two are England rejects, one is a current player who cannot hold down a place in the ODI side, let alone challenge for a Test place and one is a player who never quite made it to the top. There are five bowlers, four of them England qualified, with more than 30 wickets: Chris Rushworth, James Harris, Liam Norwell and Matt Coles: the only one even remotely on the England radar is probably James Harris, although Matt Coles did have a Lions tour (that ended in him being disciplined). One of those names will probably only produce the reaction “Liam Who?” – actually he is a young Gloucestershire seamer, born in Dorset, who is making a big impact this season: maybe one to watch.

At present, there is a real chance that the Championship will pass to a three-Division structure with seven teams in each and a reduction from 16 games per season to 12. This would require three extra teams to enter, potentially Ireland, Scotland and a Minor County (perhaps Staffordshire, the 2014 Champions and one of the traditionally strongest of the Minor Counties). However, you can make a case for any number of sides such as a Combined Universities team, a Minor County, or even The Netherlands to be invited to be team #21. There is also the option that the ECB could decide to cut the First Class programme even more and to stick with 18 teams in six divisions of three, with no extra sides: that would cut the Championship programme to just 10 games.

They could even go for a hybrid solution where two divisions are kept, but a side only plays the nearest sides geographically home and away in a Championship of 10 or 12 matches (so, in a hypothetical 10-game Championship in Division 2, Kent would play Surrey and Essex twice and other sides once, Lancashire would play Derbyshire and Leicestershire twice, etc.) Some of the combinations make your head ache and would devalue the Championship even more.

The danger is, if England players are not released – those days seem now long passed – and the County Championship is cut back so far, it will become even less relevant to anything or to anyone. How much enthusiasm will Division 3 cricket generate in a side such as Leicestershire that is currently propping-up Division 2 and that has spent almost two and a half seasons waiting to win a game? Most likely Division 3 will become semi-professional and Division 3 players will leave the player pool of potential Test candidates completely. Talent will be concentrated in a highly competitive Division 1, but with so few games, how to distinguish a run of form from a batsman showing real sustained class that would prosper at Test level?

The biggest winners of such a re-structure would be likely to be Ireland, who would have an incentive to develop a First Class structure as a feeder to County Ireland that would, in turn, lead its push for Test status. If you were an Irish player, which would you prefer: a game against Namibia in an empty stadium, or the chance to play al Lords, The Oval, or Headingley in front of thousands of fans (and, yes, even County Championship matches do attract crowds that some lower-Division football sides would envy), against sides with near Test-level attacks?