At around 9.30 on Monday night, while Bob Willis was busy reeling off every synonym for stupid that he could remember on The Verdict, Matt Prior sat in his hotel room (ignoring Stuart Broad jabbering about ghosts in the corner) and packed his England bags for possibly the final time, a single tear caught in his beard. Or maybe he didn’t, who knows, but the fact remains that a player who had for so long been the answer to cricket’s version of the ‘left midfield problem’ bowed out after essentially sacrificing his career to save his captain’s. Matt Prior has always struck me as a belligerent bugger, but to continue for two test matches with a torn quad strikes of the same boneheadedness that saw him hook Ishant repeatedly despite the obvious trap set by Dhoni, whether he continued in the role under the fear that retiring would result in Buttler never giving the spot back, or because he views himself as one of Cook’s key allies and wanted to help his friend is beside the point (for the record I think it may have been a combination of the two). Wicketkeepers find themselves in view more than most players in the side, and while Prior has arguably been out form for far less time than Anderson or Cook and has been a far greater asset for England than anyone over the past decade, the nature of his role means that he has less opportunity to recover that form and almost no opportunity for him to leave the side to find form or fitness before a return.
What has really let Prior down is the same issue that will let down England players for a while to come, and could easily be argued to be letting down the entire team right now. For a long time we have heard players complain of too much cricket and for a long time we have heard the scoffs coming from certain areas of the press and the public but that fact remains that if a player has a slight niggle or a minor drop in form they have no time to step away from the test scene to fix it or relax, they simply keep plugging away at the top level, their problems becoming ever more apparent until they are forced out or retire years before they should have done. In recent years the only England player to continue to the age of 35 or beyond is Andrew Strauss, and his career was interrupted by some extreme drops in form in the years before taking the captaincy. Strauss was lucky, he got back into the fold almost exclusively because no one else was capable of filling the role, a belief that is also likely to save Cook this year. Anderson could easily also be said to have been saved by an astonishing drop in form and fitness at the start of his international career, if he had come straight back from his injury into the England fold his career would probably have been over 3 or 4 years ago and he would have been unlikely to ever reach the heights that he has. The only international cricketers in recent years (that I can think of) who have managed to continue their careers well into their 30’s have been those that opted to retire from one form or another and occasionally have asked to be rested from tours that they aren’t interested in, the only tour I can recall that saw England rest big names was the 2009-10 tour to Bangladesh.
A hectic schedule wouldn’t matter if teams employed rotation policies, or selected players based on form and fitness, but England don’t and are unlikely to ever do so. The recall of Stokes (a definite key name for England going forward) despite a lack of form and Jordan having made excellent claims for his spot smacks of a selection committee that (a) doesn’t seem to follow county cricket or (b) is so obsessed with continuity of selection and having a settled XI that they are willing to get their men into the squad despite better wisdom. Now it is certainly unfair at the very least to suggest that England selectors don’t pay attention to county cricket, they may not pay as much as some would like them to, but they definitely pay more than some people who claim to know to know the circuit better than them. Unfortunately this means that the more unsavoury option is the more likely, that cricket is an old boys club and only the right sort of person from ‘the right sort of family’ will be allowed in, while this claim is not necessarily ground-breaking in the absolute slightest (in fact it’s probably the polar opposite of that) it does seem to be true and is leaving England in particular in a bit of a rut.
The selection policy that England (and most of the cricketing world) seem to be stuck on is the shockingly incorrect idea that there are 11 players in a country that are better than everyone else and can conveniently be used in the roles required and will continue to be the best 11 for the foreseeable future, which quite frankly bollocks. I’ll admit I am oversimplifying slightly and that the mantra of ‘Horses for courses’ is often rolled out by a Pattinsonesque selection (or simply a Pattinson as I’ve taken to calling them), but these are often rubbish selections born of pure desperation and so for the purposes of this can be easily ignored. In fact, ignoring selections born of injury (and the return from injury) or retirement England have only made long term changes in one position in the past two years: Opening batsman. Strauss -> Compton -> Root -> Carberry -> Robson, admittedly Carberry’s selection involved Bairstow getting the boot but one could argue that Bairstow’s chronic lack of ability is an injury in itself. This model simply won’t last (and neither will the players) if the ECB intend to continue with their rammed 10 month season schedules, they will have to choose between heavy and lucrative schedules or regularity of selection.
Selection regularity is something we are repeatedly told is a good thing in test cricket and I am still to hear a convincing argument why. Cricket is essentially an individual sport masquerading as a team sport and suggesting that you need the same settled 11 each week as you might in other sports is nonsense, the only reason in favour of a settled eleven is that without one the ECB are wasting money on central contracts, which isn’t much of a big issue for anyone other than the businessmen controlling the sport. If anything International cricket is rapidly heading back towards the era of works teams with only players employed by the national boards getting a look in until one of them gets injured or gives up, this actually works on two levels considering that Cricket Australia, the ECB, and the BCCI are now run more as businesses than governing bodies.
If England want to make money they’ll probably be OK going on the way they are (so long as someone finds a bit of form in the next couple of years), but if they want a return to the top spot they will need to do something radical and find a way of keeping all their players at the top level and in good fitness for as long as possible. As far as I can tell there are two ways of doing this, (1) give Lance Armstrong a call and ask for some pointers… which they really shouldn’t do, or (2) develop an intelligent rotation policy, find 3 good openers, about 5 good batsmen, a couple of keepers, one or two spinners and 5 seam bowlers and rotate them depending on form, fitness, and whatever other factor they feel like. This is how things operate in most sports around the world and seems rather astonishing that it is not a feature of cricket, and so long as these players were allowed to go back to county cricket during games they weren’t playing then the counties would probably be onside. The players would get much more rest and opportunity to find form, but there would also be the guaranteed motivation to perform as there would always be a player in the wings to take your spot.
To make it simpler I can name a strong 17 man squad using predominantly players on the England radar right now and I’m sure many others could find their own preferences to take spots in the side:
Cook (c), Robson, Compton, Ballance, Ali, Root, Bell, Taylor, Buttler (+), Read (+), Panesar, Kerrigan, Anderson, Broad, Stokes, Jordan, Woakes
I’ll admit that a system such as this isn’t foolproof and with a poor coach and a meek captain would result in the same situation we have now but with slightly more frustrated bystanders but if used properly it would bring through young players in a sensible manner, would provide more senior players with the rest their bodies need and would never really weaken the team, as all of the cover players would be prepared to a high level and have been playing test cricket simply as a matter of course. Of course the ECB will never take on such a drastic option as this, even if it is their best chance of saving players careers and the future of English cricket, because (as has been proved by KPgate) they are all idiots.
Tom
Diary of a Lonely Sports Fan 