Around the houses

Here are a few (admittedly disconnected) thoughts on some of the talking points over the last few days.

Yesterday my colleague James Morgan wrote in defence of (no relation) Eoin Morgan, the beleaguered England one-day captain. Every England captain finds himself beleaguered eventually, but Morgan has achieved the feat in record speed. He’s only been in charge for six matches.

Nick Hoult made a good point in the Daily Telegraph yesterday.

There has to be a level of sympathy for Morgan. Most captains at this tournament have had the benefit of years of planning for the World Cup. Captaincy was thrust on him in the middle of the night while he was playing Big Bash cricket in Australia. He has not had time to put his stamp on the team and had no say in the selection of the squad. He is playing catch-up at the worst possible time because England were not ruthless enough in removing Alastair Cook earlier last year.

The team are still playing in Cook’s mould with Test players dominating the batting line-up while aggressive strikers such as Alex Hales and Ben Stokes are not in the team.

If England succeed in this World Cup, it will be despite – and not because – of the management’s strategic planning for the tournament . We are witnessing the execution of a masterplan which is part wonky Excel spreadsheet, part scribbled-on-the-back-of-fag-packet.

In the debacle against Australia on Saturday, it wasn’t that England didn’t have a gameplan. They had a plan alright, but it was devised by Peter Moores, who has an uncanny knack of confusing his players through a combination of over-complication and last-minute panic.

Moores may be the outstanding coach of his generation, but his methodology is sclerotic and his philosophy incoherent.

Try and pick the logic out of his comments after the Australia match:

We asked James Taylor to go into the middle order. He’s played there a lot. He feels he’s very strong there because of his adaptability. He likes the role. And it was the first time Gary had been available for selection a month. He’s had a broken finger. He played in the practice game and played very well. He looked in good form, he looked good in practice and he did his fielding. We felt he was ready. It gave us a nice balance to have him at No. 3.

Have we under-used the yorker? Yes. We have under-used it. But it wasn’t just about execution in this game. Our plans weren’t as good as they could have been.

I think, in this game, the players were sucked into the width of the wide boundaries and felt that was the best option,” he said. “You have to set the right fields for that and we didn’t always get the right fields. So we have to go away, look at that and decide what we are going to do.

The yorker is a really good ball. But you you’ve got to bowl the right ball to the right field. If you look at the stats for the best in world cricket, they don’t just bowl yorkers. They bowl to simple plans.

Mitchell Starc is a yorker bowler, but some are not and they bowl a heavy length with slower balls. You have to go to your strengths. So we have certain bowlers who lend themselves to going full with yorkers; others won’t use it quite as much. The key for whoever bowls at that time is to be clear and committed in what they’re trying to do. And then bowl to their field.

There are areas where we didn’t deliver.

So far, so very Moorseian, but this was the most Moorseian remark of all:

The players have to ask: did we play the game, and the style and brand of game, we wanted to and if we didn’t, we have to look at how we’re going to do that going through the tournament.

Earlier today, Paul Collingwood said Moores is coming under pressure. In any normal professional environment, he indeed would be, but at the ECB the politics will protect Moores for at least another couple of years.

In other news, the ECB have announced that black is now officially white. As George Dobell reports on Cricinfo (and many of you will probably have seen this already)

With confirmation that Eoin Morgan will be involved in the IPL – it was not certain he would be bought – comes confirmation that he will be unavailable for the ODI against Ireland in Malahide on May 8. Nobody, either coaches or players, involved in the England tour to the Caribbean, which is scheduled to finish on May 5, will be considered for the trip. So candidates such as Jos Buttler, the team’s official vice-captain, Joe Root, Stuart Broad and Ian Bell are all unavailable. Morgan has been assured by the ECB he can miss the Ireland ODI.

Time was that an England player putting the IPL before his country was seen as the ultimate act of treachery. Previously, another high profile player – who wasn’t even captain – was labelled as a greedy, selfish mercenary for having the temerity even to ask.

But now we have this (courtesy of Dobell):

There is a growing sense within English cricket that one of the problems with the national side’s limited-overs form is their lack of experience of the biggest domestic tournaments around the world. There is an understanding that more experience of big crowds, high-pressure situations and the chance to share ideas with other leading international players might outweigh the short-term disadvantages.

Changing times, or double standards?

Dobell also reports an interesting nugget of gossip.

It seems that Mark Robinson, the Sussex director of cricket, is favourite to coach the team [for the Ireland ODI] – manage might be a more appropriate term – while James Taylor must have a great chance of becoming an England captain. Don’t be surprised if Andy Flower also returns to the coaching team in some role.

Well blow me down with a feather. Who thought that that might happen?

Returning to Eoin Morgan, there were some interesting comments from Geoffrey Boycott in his Telegraph column:

England moaned about my Eoin Morgan comments before the game against Australia but perhaps instead they should have been concentrating on improving their fielding and looking up the definition of common sense.

Before the match I made some comments that were critical of his batting. I never said Morgan can’t bat. I just believe he is a finisher of an innings. That is it.

Some people forget that it is my job as a commentator or writer to be honest. I am not in Australia to be England’s cheerleader or sycophantic fan. My moderate ability as a one day batsman has no relevance to any opinions I give on the current England team.

The facts are recently England have lost more one day matches than they have won so they can’t all be batting and bowling well can they? There must be room for improvement. If that comes across as criticism and people don’t like it then too bad because I’m not going to change.

What a shame that more of the correspondents in the press and commentary boxes don’t share his philosophy.