The ECB Takes Aim And Consistently Shoots Its Own Foot

 

 

Ashes 2015

 

The ECB Shoots from the Hip… Again!

 

May 17^th 2015

 

Shooting from the hip is good form in Westerns. The good guy moves with lightning speed to gun down the baddie and bring peace to the saloon. The ECB has shown its own sharpness with a six-shooter over the last couple of weeks. However, when you shoot from the hip, good style is to remove the gun from its holster first. This is the bit which the ECB is somehow failing to master.

And all evidence suggests that the waiting Australians are falling over themselves with laughter as the ECB manages to handle each situation worse than the one before.

It is not just the Australians. A New Zealand side that was rather expecting to be sacrificial victims are seeing an unexpected opportunity to validate their improving Test ranking and at least draw the series that starts on Thursday.

Alistair Cook went after the ODI series in Sri Lanka. His ODI place was increasingly shaky and the impression was that his stereotyped captaincy was not ideal. Step forward Eoin Morgan who, after a decent start, has gone into an increasingly steep nose dive. There is no guarantee that he will keep the ODI captaincy.

Paul Downton went after the World Cup. No one seemed to know what his role was. No one seemed to know what responsibilities he had. Fans of my age remember Paul Downton as Alan Knott’s successor with the gloves at Kent: the wunderkind who displaced David Bairstow from the England side in 1981 after only a handful of games and turned out to be a courageous bat, willing to take on any challenge. Here though the almost unanimous opinion is that he was totally out of his depth.

Paul Downton has been replaced by Andrew Strauss. Strauss was an underrated captain – often brilliant – who took England to #1. Often unfairly criticised as a defensive captain, Strauss did what Michael Vaughan had not be able to do and made the England side one to fear. Even before Andrew Strauss’s appointment had become official, news that Peter Moores had been sacked was leaked. Then came the news that he was to have a meeting with Kevin Pietersen after play on Monday.

KP is not one to make life easy for anyone. “Play First Class cricket” he was told. “Score some runs and we’ll see how things stand”. 170 against Oxford MCCU in a non-FC match was followed by 19, 53*, 32 & 8*. Nothing there to make Andrew Strauss modify his script. Modest returns against Glamorgan and Essex. The day of the meeting, Surrey were struggling at 241-6 against Leicestershire and depending on KP to obtain a first innings lead of any kind. The much-improved Leicestershire kept chipping away. Suddenly though all hell broke loose. KP added 240 for the last two wickets with Tremlett and Dunn, finishing with 355*. Not a bad presentation card you would think to the new England supremo.

“Sorry Kev, we don’t trust you. No Tests for you, but you can be our ODI advisor, if you want”. If this was Andrew Strauss’s own script he managed to make himself look rather foolish. If it wasn’t, one wonders why he allowed himself to be manipulated this way. Presumably KP’s advice is more trustworthy than his batting.

Having handled the Peter Moores sacking so abysmally badly, the KP re-sacking seems to have been handled even worse. In different polls in Internet the pro-KP margin has been around 90-10% in favour of him being considered for selection.

When the Test side was selected for Thursday’s 1^st Test Jonathon Trott’s retirement meant that there was really no choice other to go with Adam Lyth as opener. Fine, but he has neither played for England in the Caribbean nor for Yorkshire in the County Championship save for a couple of token innings: great preparation for a Test series. Liam Plunkett and Adil Rashid, both of whom could and possibly should have played in the 3^rd Test v the West Indies have been dropped. The former has only himself to blame as a missed training session led to him being dropped from Yorkshire’s game before the side was selected. The latter took 8-118 for Yorkshire v Hampshire. With Moeen Ali still struggling, people will ask what Adil Rashid has to do.

The England XI is likely to be unchanged apart from the introduction of Lyth but some interest has been added by Mark Wood’s addition to the squad. Also unwanted on voyage in the Caribbean he is close to a Test debut. However, Caveat Emptor, he is very injury-prone. However, a decent debut v Ireland in what little play was possible followed by a strong game for Durham against Nottinghamshire with six wickets and an innings of 66 make him an interesting alternative to Ben Stokes should he get the nod.

The problem for England is that there is no feeling of stability and very little of progress. New Zealand’s tour form has not been anything to fear – they are currently making very heavy weather of a Worcestershire side tipped by most for relegation – but then neither has England’s. New Zealand would love to take advantage and their recent Test form has seen them start to rise rapidly up the Test rankings.

Ian Chapple thinks that Alistair Cook will not survive the summer as captain. He fights for survival over 10 rounds in 2015: the 3 in the Caribbean were unexpectedly shared, he needs to land some solid punches in these next two if he is to have any hope in the rest of the contest.