The Andrew Strauss interview has already being doing the rounds for a day or so, but I still couldn’t resist giving it a good fisk, even though Dmitri, with his lightning-quick fingers, has already got in there first (including, in the comments, SimonH’s own superb fisk of Stephen Brenkley’s hard-hitting encounter with Matt Prior).
To be precise, the Strauss piece was less an interview than an open chat with several journalists. In return for Strauss’s time the hacks were obliged to append their copy with the following text:
“Andrew Strauss is an ambassador for pensions and employee benefits group MetLife. See www.metlife.co.uk“
Old habits die hard. We’re now well used to England cricketers giving interviews only when appearing on behalf of a sponsor, who must be credited. In Strauss’s case, as Dmitri put it, “they can’t stop even after they retire”.
Paul “windows” Newman, in the Daily Mail, ran the longest piece, so I’ll use his copy as the primary source.
“The fact that there was so much negative comment from Kevin about such a successful period for English cricket was hurtful for all of us that had been part of it.
“That is why the pride feels diminished. We all worked incredibly hard to achieve something special and it doesn’t seem so special anymore. I still have great memories of that time as does everyone involved, hopefully including Kevin, but the problem comes when there is so much emotion over things”.
This is all suspiciously similar to the lines trotted out by those still within the ECB’s employ (Broad, Anderson, Dear Leader). Hurtful? Tick. Diminished? Tick. Tarnished memories? Tick.
It’s a deeply evasive and disingenuous response, and one which suggests Strauss has not read the book he’s talking about. Pietersen does not claim that the achievements during Strauss’s captaincy were worthless or invalid, unworthy of celebration. What he actually does is shine a light into the murkier corners of Team England, especially during tougher times – of which there were quite a few on Strauss’s watch. It wasn’t special all the time.
Is Strauss arguing that two Ashes victories and a briefly-held number one position make the team, the coach, and the ECB, inviolate from any scrutiny?
While we’re about it, the Qatar football World Cup bid team have achieved something special. It would be churlish to “diminish” their “pride” by “making so much negative comment”.
Strauss is under no obligation to discuss Pietersen’s claims in detail, but it’s a shame he didn’t take this opportunity to do so. He is now an analyst and commentator for cricket’s principal broadcaster, as well as a columnist for the Sunday Times. These are journalistic roles.
Pietersen’s book was a huge story, like it or not. The account he provides of his experiences has genuine substance because, far from playing a cameo role, he is a former England captain with 104 test caps.
As a fellow leading protagonist in the narrative, Strauss has unique insight into a saga which gripped the cricket world. He might have thought it interesting to share this with the public. Instead he preferred to sweep everything under the carpet. What a pity.
If Strauss is so reluctant to discuss the nitty gritty of English cricket, and loath to be candid about senior figures who also happen to be his friends, why did he become a commentator? And why is he giving sponsored interviews?
He continues, in similar mien:
“I think it’s sad that Kevin, who had an outstanding England career, chose to concentrate on negative subjects rather than the positive ones”.
Pietersen’s career was brought to a premature and unnecessary end when he was sacked without explanation and then made the victim of a smear campaign. The ECB lied about him, over and over again. So what do you expect him to write about in his book?
“Everyone was dreading what was going to be in the book and we had to go through that crazy circus for a couple of weeks but it’s over now. It’s finished.
“Now everyone can move on, including Kevin. I said at the time that it was disappointing we had to talk about what was in the book when it was actually a successful period for us and I still feel that.
“But the cloud has now lifted and despite all the fall-outs and mud slinging I sincerely hope that over time everyone can come back together. This is a moment in time and if, as life goes on, everyone can remember the good things instead then we will all be better off for it”.
Strauss and the ECB might wish it were over, but it’s not. A toxic smog continues to pollute the English crickosphere – less dense than before, but still there, making us choke. Merely saying the words “move on” does nothing to dispel it.
Why does Strauss so desire it to be ‘finished’ and ‘over’? What most strongly influences him? The charitable view is that as a lover of the game he simply believes a ceasefire is for the greater good. If so, he is naive. English cricket’s schism is no broken toe which time will naturally heal. It is a festering wound – a weeping, septic, sore which only the Dettol of truth and gauze of accountability can clean and dress.
He misses the point in other ways. The majority of the Pietersen book’s most provocative passages don’t relate to successful periods. Fundamentally it is about his sacking, because if that hadn’t happened the book would never have been written. For me, the other key events are his dismissal as captain, the breakdown in relations in 2012 (when Strauss’s team were losing to South Africa), and the 2013/14 Ashes.
During the fortnight following the book’s publication the governance of Team England came under heavy scrutiny. Was there a bullying culture? Was KP Genius mishandled? Do the ECB systematically leak against their own employees?
A day after the book emerged, so did the ECB solicitors’ “due diligence” dossier, which exposed, on their own evidence, that Andy Flower – still ECB staff – is a tyrannical egomaniac who throws tantrums and spies on his players.
For Strauss to dismiss all of this as a “crazy circus” is not only insulting and facile, but reveals the limits of his imagination.
Strauss was then asked about the time he called Kevin Pietersen an “absolute c***” on live television.
“I don’t think it was my proudest moment and I didn’t feel good about it. I tried to get hold of KP afterwards to say so but couldn’t. That sort of stuff is no good for anyone”.
The tone smacks of MPs caught fiddling their expenses – note the use of supine, impersonal language in the second sentence. A forthright apology – to his viewers – would not have been too much to expect.
The conversation moved on to Alastair Cook:
“You talk to a lot of people behind the scenes and they all say Cooky has been phenomenal in the dressing room this summer. He has stepped up to the plate after last winter and ultimately when you’re leading people you have to show you really are willing to lead.
“I think Cook has done that and he will have gained a lot of respect from players over how he went about things this summer under incredible pressure.
It’s always encouraging to hear a broadcaster refer to someone in the news by their nickname, just to make clear their detachment and independence.
The rest is just arrant nonsense. For a start, what exactly does Cook get up to in the dressing room which is so “phenomenal”? Does he make tea of such a superb quality it galvanises the whole team? Does he lay out fresh towels with a precision so inspirational it changes the course of the match?
In what way has Cook stepped up to the plate, after a summer when his form and captaincy deteriorated yet further? How did he earn respect for his conduct under pressure when, every time pressure was applied – against Sri Lanka at Headingley, and India at Lord’s – he completely lost the plot.
“If you’re sitting in a meeting room saying, ‘Right let’s design a schedule that gives us the best chance of winning the World Cup’ then this is pretty much perfect. A complete focus on one-day cricket, then getting used to Australian conditions in the triangular series and then they’re off to the World Cup”.
Strauss has been derided for suggesting that the best preparation for a World Cup in Australia is an ODI series in Sri Lanka, during the rainy season. But I suspect he was trying to make a different point. In 2011, when he was captain, England prepared for the World Cup by slogging their way through a gruelling Ashes series. Ditto 2007 and 2003. This time, England have a six-month break from test cricket to prepare for the tournament. Remember, the ECB bet their house on the World Cup by rescheduling the Ashes around it.
On England’s form:
“There’s a lot of improvement needed but in terms of the personnel I think England look pretty good. I don’t think it’s the brand that’s the problem. I don’t think anybody is sitting in team meetings saying ‘OK, we’re going to bat at four an over for 35 overs and see where we’re at’. I think people are being asked to go out with intent and react positively to conditions but the players are going out there fearful and if you want to play good one-day cricket you just can’t do that”.
I have no idea what this means. Anyone? Is he saying England are getting it right, or wrong? What is their ‘brand’?
Back to Cook:
“England have invested three years in the guy as one-day captain and to have made a change now would have been absolutely nonsensical”.
This is probably the most insightful thing Strauss says in the entire piece. Cook is unsackable – not because he is the right person to captain, but because the ECB have put their shirts on him, and to cop out now would make them look stupid. The Clarke-Downton ego trumps every other concern.
“It’s harder to think of a more difficult nine-month period for any England captain ever. There was the whitewash in Australia, the KP situation and then what happened here over the summer and his own poor form. For him to stand up and say, ‘I’m not going anywhere’ shows the inner steel he has. You don’t always see that because he is a nice self-effacing guy but there is a huge iron rod that keeps him going”.
Now we’re into the realms of self-parody.
The arguments here – leaving aside huge rods – are so well-rehearsed I’ll only skate over them. Was Cook’s refusal to quit an act of stoic selflessness? Or stubborn selfishness? Did it stem from his inner steel, or was he reluctantly talked out of resignation by a combination of his wife and Paul Downton?
Reading back through everything Strauss said, I’m struck by two words he uses early on – sad, and diminished. I was a huge and loyal admirer of Andrew Strauss the player, and as a servant of English cricket. He was in most respects a fine captain. He won us those two Ashes series far more than Andy Flower did. But the figure he strikes in retirement diminishes him, and that makes me sad.
Strauss is an intelligent man, younger than me, with the world at his feet. He could use his skill and status to change cricket. But here is, a young fogey adopting the manner of a golf club bar-bore, ladling out half-baked platitudes to flog pensions.
That line “It’s harder to think of a more difficult nine-month period for any England captain ever” really makes me smile. Consider the caseof JWHT Douglas who was white-washed badly in the Ashes tour of 1920-21 and then had to travel back to the UK with his team, together with the Australian team that had routed them, on the same boat. And then he went on to lose the first 2 tests of the English summer, in humiliating style, before being replaced by the Hon Lionel Tennyson. That must have been a tough 7 months.
Or how about Walter Hammond’s disastrous Ashes tour of 1946-47, when both he and his first-choice wicket-keeper, Paul Gibb, seemed to have nervous breakdowns? That must have been a tough gig too.
Ian Botham’s stint as captain of England cannot have been an unalloyed pleasure either – 2 5-test series against a very effective West Indies team home and away (although the Guyana test got cancelled because of political pressures), including the sudden death of the team manager, Ken Barrington.
I think Cook would have been crying in his wardrobe if he had been subjected to such pressure.
I doubt that Cook would have been crying in his wardrobe. He’s a man of steel, with an inner steely core.
This is only tangentially related to the topic, but as an example of the self-importance and insularity of sports people and sports journalists, it simply cannot be beaten.
Ladies and gentlemen, KICCA:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y_pObnJ_FbI
Warning: don’t watch in public. It really is something special. Like Alan Partridge never happened.
There are some great comments on Twitter too. Enter “kicca” or just check Dave Tickner’s timeline.
Hilarious. I tried to take it seriously, but I lost it at “great friends with 50 Cent”. My overriding impression is of all these famous sportspeople thinking “who’s the guy in the plane?”
Trying to think of a positive outcome from all this, perhaps Investec, metlife.co.uk and their ilk will fuck off onto Kicca in future and leave the sports pages of our newspapers for sport. Even if the journalists have to go out and write stuff instead of being spoonfed it.
You probably noted, after seeing the pages of Mo Farah, Shane Warne etc, that Waitrose has its own page….
Lizzy Ammon is currently tweeting about a report that claims 64,000 fewer people are playing cricket this year than last.
Certain people claim to welcome debate and then either fail to engage, or bugger off somewhere else when the heat is on.
Sky, no FTA cricket, the Big Three, “pipe down”, etc etc etc…
There is a real stench of elitism surrounding cricket. It’s not just Giles Clarke and “right kind of family”, it runs through many of the articles we plebs read week in week out. Kicca is just yet another symptom.
Here’s what Lizzy has been tweeting about:
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/sport/cricket/11241729/Number-of-people-playing-cricket-in-England-and-Wales-has-plummeted-ECB-survey-shows.html
“ECB surprised by results of its own extensive report”
Thanks for this, Arron. There’s a lot to discuss in that story. If I may, I’ll pick it up for a full post – hopefully tomorrow.
I was too late – it’s now been made private only. Anyone know why? Or is it available elsewhere?
Thoughtful post. You’re right to let Strauss off for the odd thing that (in the manner of a straw on an overloaded camel’s back) could be shrieked at – in this case the comment that Rodders’ captaincy is too far gone to change before February, and the upcoming SL tour.
I’d also let him off for the ‘c**t’ quote. We’ve all said stuff to a particular audience that we wouldn’t like to hear outside of that context. Those who exist in a testosterone-fuelled atmosphere perhaps more than others. I feel it shows Strauss as the one trying too hard to fit in with his new mates. But that’s by the by…
On the other hand:
Good analysis Maxie when you point out that the smoke-screen about the KP book is … er … shall we say extremely disingenuous? Straw-man Strauss repeating the line about ‘hurt’ is in fact hurtful to anybody looking for answers and honesty. KP wrote a book about being a victim. Whether you buy that line or not, for everyone else to come out playing the victim card in its wake is insultingly high-handed and is avoiding the question. Which brings me to the role of the journalists sitting on on this ‘handed down from on high’ monologue. I blame the lack of intelligent, interrogative questioning for the wave of blandishments that is meant to wash us to peaceful sleep. (I know this is not a blinding insight to you all here!)
If we’re in a captaincy cul-de-sac, and it’s too late to back out, how did we get here?
How exactly did Rodders ‘step up to the plate’ after last winter, as you say he did?
What could have been done differently? At any time? Any time at all since, say, July 2012?
If you say “there’s nothing wrong with the brand”, how can you expect to be taken seriously?
Most important question for all figures connected to the cricketing hierarchy:
Do you really think English cricket is riding the crest of wave? Assuming the answer ‘no’, what can be done to improve its state?
This could even be a question we should send out to the 18 county chairmen (following Maxie’s and Zeph’s ideas that the re-election of That Twat is a major focus of the next few months).
Sorry for the disconnected rant, but having been name-checked the other day, I feel I should try and contribute more than just my usual one-liners!
One line from Strauss that has been bugging me was this one – “We just need to be smarter and adapt to conditions better, which has never been a strength of English cricket”.
No problems with the first half but that second half? “Never been a strength”? What about the first half of the Noughties when we managed to win in Pakistan, Sri Lanka, West Indies and South Africa? Those are some different conditions to adapt to! Also, in the 1970s we were able to win or draw series in very diverse conditions. This trying to pass-off recent problems as some eternal condition of Englishness is maddening. It isn’t something in the water or our DNA but something to do with how English cricket has been run in recent years. If players always look to the coach and his stats rather than develop their own match-intelligence then they aren’t going to get smarter or more adaptable. They also (another vice of English cricket) aren’t going to make great coaches themselves. Looking at Australia recently I was thinking how Chris Rogers and Ryan Harris would make great coaches when they retire as players if they choose that path – how many England players does one feel that about?
There is a good point on Switch Hit about your “This is probably the most insightful thing Strauss says in the entire piece. Cook is unsackable”. One of the reasons they have scheduled seven ODIs is presumably to allow some experimentation with the team. So they rest Cook and try a different opening combo – say, Hales and Bell. What if different opening combo comes off? What if stand-in captain wins? TINA can’t be challenged so Cook has to play every game.
In the memoir Tom Cartwright (Warwickshire, Somerset, England) wrote with Steve Chalk, it comes down to knowing your own game. he helped bring Botham, IVA Riochards , Brian Rose into the game….i think all those 3 would acknowledge him as a massive influence. Richards never rfedited coaches…but he gave credit to Cartwright.
Lawrence Booth in the DM claims the openers for the first warm-up game will be IronRod and Moeen.
Four matches and Hales gets the chop? Four matches against the No.1 ranked side and WC and CT holders? A top four of (presumably) IronRod, Moeen, Bell, Root?
With that top 4, if we could bring back Tavare at 5 and Eddie Hemmings at 6, we’d be sorted.
So Andrew Strauss, once successful captain of England’s cricket team is now reduced to a few rungs of the ladder up from double glazing salesman. Hawking himself out to whoever wants to listen, in return for pushing his employers pensions. But then this is very appropriate in the new ECB world we now live in. ECB should stand for England’s Corporate Brand. Because Brand and money is now the prime objective for the ECBs existence. The whole thing has become a giant gravy train of sponsors, ex players, so called journalists, and handsome rugged captains with film star looks that can sell product.
And that leads directly to Cook. Never mind inner rods of steel, the man is made of Teflon. Teflon Alasdair they should call him. I have never seen an English captain be treated with such kid globes by the media. In the old days a couple of failures and the jungle drums would start beating. Nobody wants to go back to those times. However, when a player keeps failing and other players who are doing better but getting sacked , something stinks, questions have to be asked.
Is Cook the captain of England because he is a great cricket captain? Or is he the captain because his image looks good on Sponsors logos? We are constantly told TINA. But Cook had no great pedigree of captains experience or talent before he was appointed. So therefore on that basis anyone can do it. Cook had no qualifications for the job, so any Tom Dick or Harry could try. But that is not the prime objective of the ECB. Flogging stuff is now the name of the game, and that is all there is to it. Even those journalists who kept saying TINA at test level admit he should not be in the ODI team let alone captain.(although they have all gone quite quiet on that front lately)
The ECB must have their market research, and focus groups in full swing. And they must tell them Teflon Cook is a great look for the brand. He is the Milli Vanilli of cricket. He looks great but he can’t sing.
Am I the only person who thinks that Cook actually looks a bit odd with his square face and bizarre non-focussing eyes? He’s certainly not the sort of male I would imagine would ever be pin-up material. He looks like a cardboard box with a hole in it for a mouth.
Well according to Pringle (not sure what qualifications he has on this issue) Cook is the darling of the home county female population. He has wax lyrical about Cooks looks, and appeal to the ladies.
Mind you ,Pringle can come across as a sort of demented Swiss Tony type when he ventures into these areas.
The splendid Guardian commenter known as Hieroglyph, who is young and female, once said she thought Cook looked like a gargoyle, which I thought was a little harsh.
I think he looks rather like the male models in clothing catalogues, they sort of have the components but it doesn’t quite add up to good-looking. Yes, he has nice dark hair and eyes, but the jaw is definitely odd, and he looks as if he has a lazy eye, though I’d have thought that would be a big disadvantage for a batsman.
He apparently has very nice manners, and a lot of women like that.
But he totally isn’t sexy. Eoin Morgan is sexy. Jos Buttler is very sexy. IMO anyway, tastes differ of course.
“I think he looks rather like the male models in clothing catalogues”.
That nails it, Zeph. That’s *exactly* what he resembles. He really should be modelling polo necks, blazers and chinos, and vaguely looking off into the distance.
In fact, he actually has modelled clothes – for Austin Reed. Google Image search his name and Austin Reed.
Lady friend of mine described him ” as ugly as a blind cobblers thumb”
You are being silly Mark. You can’t seriously believe that Cook was selected because he would look good on a sponsor’s logo. Apart from that, I share your feelings about selling things. I was disappointed to see the employers message at the end of the Strauss interview. I thought more of him.
I did think Strauss had a point when he said the team did not play very well. Even if things were perfect, no matter how good the administration and the coaching staff, if the team don’t go out and do it, we don’t win.
Talk of brands and stakeholders when it comes to cricket sets my teeth on edge.
thinks himself into Pringle mould…. bowling slow medium, at the death is like making love to a beautiful woman…..you have to tempt her with your lack of speed and guile….you have to seduce her with your lack of movement….you have to reassure her with your lack of threat…then you strike
“England have invested three years in the guy as one-day captain and to have made a change now would have been absolutely nonsensical”.
Keeping Cook as one-day captain because of the length of time he’s already done it is an example of an extremely well-known decision-making error, known as the sunk cost fallacy or escalation of commitment.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Escalation_of_commitment
Strauss once did an Economics degree and he should know this kind of cognitive bias when he sees it.
But he seems to have put his brain away in the cupboard when he set his sights on an ECB job. Obviously realised he wouldn’t be needing it.
And just look at the scrambling around they’re doing with the ODI openers. The opening partnership doesn’t work, so what do they do? Keep dropping the one who isn’t Cook. Why can’t they see that Cook is the problem and that constantly changing his opening partner won’t make much difference.
The most worrying thing about Strauss is his complete ignorance about his own teams success. He thinks it was because they built some kind of team spirit that can be reproduced if everyone buys into the team dynamic.
Actually, the main reason his team had success was because he had some very good players. Including a certain Batsman that everyone now hates, and A very good spin bowler at the peak of his powers? The problem for Strauss is if you understand the real reason for his teams success, it diminishes his role as team leader.
Strauss and Flower think it was all down to their ‘management’ and planning. I think not. It was down to the players he had around him.
A huge iron rod. So now we now what he’s got stuck up his backside.
Whoops! Anonymous is in fact I.
This website just keeps giving and giving.
Well done
I would like to know what Cook thinks when he reads this vomit inducing drivel. Surely he can’t believe the hype. How can he face the cameras knowing most players and fans are sniggering behind his back. It is really sad when someone has to be hyped up to this extent to bolster his ego. I just keep remembering the tooth fairy remark in KP book, I can’t think of Cook as a man but as a little boy tucked up in bed while Alice reads Curious George books to him.
As a postscript to Arron’s remarks about the Kicca-Waitrose site: I posted a comment on the Agnew promotion video on youtube under my google alias, and a few hours later the site has been made private access only!
Whoops, posted previous comment before I’d finished.
…You no doubt recall that a very similar thing happened to Aggers’ advert for Waitrose a few months ago after people suggested a conflict of interest. After Aggers tweeted the promo to his thousands of followers, it suddenly became private access only after a few people raised questions of conflict of interest. My comment on the Kicca video was something like this: “Kicca video presented by Jonathan Agnew has its own Waitrose page…whose magazine features the writing of…Jonathan Agnew! What a small world. I look forward to the first Kicca plug appearing on TMS.” (I tweeted something similar.)
We may be outside cricket, but those inside are awfully sensitive to what we post on scare quotes social media! Well, Voice of Waitrose certainly is.
Agnew flogging Waitrose, Strauss flogging pensions. Nothing wrong with that on its own. But they are mixing these contracts with their other jobs. Namely, independent cricket journalists. (What’s that you say? Neither would have got their jobs flogging pensions and supermarkets if they couldn’t use their media exposure in cricket to sell product?)
Its all a giant gravy train with tentacles and conflicts off interest all over the place.
Meanwhile the cost of cricket goes up, the exposure of cricket on TV goes down. And according to The ECBs own survey so does the number of players participating in playing the game. In addition T20 audiences were down, and the London cup was not well attended.
Some of the comments on the Cricinfo site on this article point out how the ECB have poked their noses into Saturday cricket, and made it something that is not pleasurable any more for some. They have forced many clubs to have very expensive coaches pushed on them by ECB dogma. But hey , we are all upper middle class shoppers with plenty of money so what’s the problem?
Sorry that was me. Not sure why anonymous came up.
Oh, I’ve changed colour now from green to red.
Maxie
One of the things which surprises me about the affairs of the last year or so is the lack of comment about Geoff Miller’s influence, or lack of it, in absentia. Much of these shenanigans started almost the minute he announced his intention to resign as Chairman of selectors. That was the cue, it seemed to me, for Whitaker to give himself greater prominence and for the distinction – made clear in GM’s period of office by dint of his personality – between playing matters and ECB admin issues (and GC’s political agenda) to become increasingly blurred. Can you imagine, for example, the announcement that the Chairman of selectors could not, should he want to, pick the highest scoring batsman from the previous Ashes series, being made during Miller’s tenure? Can you imagine Downton or Cook making some of the, frankly embarrassing, statements attributed to them were Miller still in situ. It is not only on the playing side that the ECB has ensured that those picked are those who can be managed. It is throughout the organisation.
Hi John – what a great point. You can’t imagine that Miller would have stood for it, nor Graveney before him.
It underlines the ridiculousness of it all – that an administrator who is neither coach nor selector has sacked a player for undisclosed reasons and banned future coaches or selectors from picking him.
Generally the role and profile of the chair of selectors has been diminished in recent years. He used to be the face and voice of the management but now you rarely see or hear them, and Downton interferes with selection meetings.
This is spot on. I genuinely laughed out loud. If only there was a TLA for that.
I have to disagree with those who let Strauss off for calling Pietersen a c*** on air. Sure, such things can happen and are forgivable, but Strauss should have realised that it also disqualifies him from issuing public statements criticising Pietersen. He has no right to expect to be taken seriously as an objective commentator on this issue.
Part of me, I confess, finds it all quite hilarious — there’s an element of high farce that the ECB can achieve that no other cricketing body manages. When CA f***s up it’s just stupid and embarrassing, but these guys really know how to milk a situation for all it’s worth. They’ve been trying to demolish KP’s reputation since at least 2009 (I believe they only named him captain in order to cut him down)… Talk about mental disintegration…
But as a cricket fan, I’m disgusted by all this. The whole set up from the elitist c***s in the ECB who should have resigned when Stanford was imprisoned, to the squadron of backroom staff, the players themselves queuing up to parrot the party line to yellow journalists, until they themselves fall unwittingly into the meatgrinder…
Sorry for the rant. Very funny blogpost…
Hales is out of the first warm up match in Sri Lanka. Moeen will open with Pit the Younger. With Bell coming in at number 3.
So yet another opening partner for the Teflon captain. It’s always someone +Cook. Of course it’s early days, and this may not be the partnership for the World Cup. But looks like the steady as she goes approach with Cook and Bell in the first 3 continues.
They’re making the statement that they’ll have no big hitters or specialist one day batsmen in the top four…nice steady test players if you please! I know Moeen can whack it, but he’ll be under team orders and Rodders will trust him!! The strategy seems set…build a steady platform then go big at the end! Oh dear God, it doesn’t work, and hasn’t done for the last thirty years!! I think I’m gonna get my wish and they get utterly trashed 7-0 and the whole rotten edifice collapses, or at least, major cracks begin to appear?
…..on the other hand, someone might have caught Hales looking out the window at the team meeting?
I think what actually happened was that Alex made Alastair a cup of tea and only put one sugar in and not the three that had been requested.
They haven’t been on speaking terms since.
That was me…..somethings wrong with the mechanics?
I remember Hales whistling once..
Two words re: Strauss. Managing upwards. Isn’t it obvious?
Straussy wants to get ahead. He wants to run English cricket. He has to play the game. Let’s just hope that when he gets there, he does something bloody useful. He might you know …
I thought he was quite keen to run for parliament.
Very good point James. Strauss is a company man, and that’s fine. We can’t all be revolutionaries. I think he’d make an excellent MD.
Good point Kevin. Not totally sure that cricketing MD is the height of Strauss’s economic ambition. He did say that he was grateful to cricket for saving him from accountancy, so maybe.
All problems solved this morning:
1.6 Fernando to Ali, FOUR
1.5 Fernando to Ali, FOUR
1.5 Fernando to Ali, 1 wide
1.4 Fernando to Ali, FOUR
1.3 Fernando to Ali, FOUR
1.2 Fernando to Ali, FOUR
1.1 Fernando to Ali, FOUR
:)
0.1
Gamage to Cook, no run
0.2
Gamage to Cook, no run
0.3
Gamage to Cook, no run
0.4
Gamage to Cook, no run
0.5
Gamage to Cook, no run
0.6
Gamage to Cook, no run
No comment !
Cook is doing his job. That’s what he is there for.
Interesting:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/0/cricket/30129255
Captain Ironrod will continue to plod on doing his thing – hitting 50s in a non-match changing way like today, and looking slightly bemused when the opposing batsman are carting his bowlers around the field.
As far as Strauss is concerned, I live in the hope that we will get more involved in the England set-up, be less afraid to air his opinion about other people rather than just KP and make a positive difference. He was a good leader during his captaincy. Its just a shame that Strauss mark II, aka Ironrod, has been found completely lacking in the leadership department
Apparently Ali felt the need to have a word with Rodders after he belted 25 off the over and explain that he didn’t really intend to do that!!!
I wonder what he really said? “Get your bloody finger out Rodders, maidens are no bloody good in this game!”….or words to that affect? :-)
Thanks for the laugh! Much needed.