Ashley Giles has failed his audition

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And that was that. Sigh. I suppose we all knew, deep down, that we stood a minimilk’s chance in hell of winning the T20 World Cup, but it doesn’t make it any easier to swallow.

Although we batted well in three of the games, the bowling was poor and the fielding embarrassing. What’s more, it must not be forgotten that we won two crucial tosses against Sri Lanka and South Africa. It could have been a lot worse.

So where do we go from here? I think we all know the answer to that. Despite his lamentable record, it looks like Ashley Giles is a dead cert for the test job.

He did his chances no harm on Sunday. When asked about the future in an interview with Sky, Gilo eagerly reiterated the ECB’s disingenuous commitment to establishing the ‘right culture’ and ‘team ethic’.

Well played, Ashley. No wonder you’ve gone so far, despite being so vanilla, during your short coaching career. It sounded like Paul Dowton already had a hand up your backside.

I’m sorry if that sounds harsh. I don’t like calling Gilo an ECB puppet, but that’s how thousands of fans feel. The King of Spain seems like a good bloke, and I really wanted him to succeed, but it just hasn’t worked out.

As a result, I’m feeling very pessimistic about the future. Although I’m delighted to see Graham Thorpe coaching England’s batsmen, and Paul Collingwood also involved in the set-up, I just can’t see Gilo turning things around.

Here’s a few facts for you to chew over. In August 2012 England reached number one in the ODI rankings. We had just won ten matches in a row (including a 4-0 whitewash of Australia) and we were still the reigning World T20 Champions. At the end of that domestic season, Ashley Giles was made our limited overs coach.

Eighteen months later we’re now 5th in the ODI rankings and 8th in the T20 equivalent. That’s right, in T20 cricket we are ranked below every single major cricketing nation. We’re one place above Ireland and Bangladesh.

Since taking over a successful team, Giles has won three series and lost seven. I’ve just double-checked all his results on the BBC and cricinfo websites, and the individual breakdown of matches is as follows:

ODIs: Won 12 Lost 15

T20s: Won 6 lost 13

Total: Won 18 lost 28

These stats are for completed matches against major nations (excluding no results). I’ve excluded the win against Ireland last summer, and included the World T20 warm-up matches. You can add another loss if you include the pathetic defeat to the Netherlands (which I haven’t included as this piece was written on Sunday).

When Sky analysed Giles’ performance at the weekend, they massaged the figures somewhat by ignoring the warm-up games. Overall, they claimed his win percentage was 42%.

It’s actually just 38%. Giles has won just 18 internationals out of a possible 46. It’s a terrible, terrible record, especially when one considers how good the team was when he took over.

The sad thing is that I sense none of this will matter in the final analysis. Giles is the reliable ‘safe pair of hands’ the ECB wants. But is he even that? A safe pair of hands implies someone who can be relied upon to get decent results. Thus far, Giles has done nothing of the sort.

Apologists for Giles point out that he’s taken England to the Champions Trophy final and he’s never really had a full strength side in ODIs. Let’s just knock these two excuses into touch:

England’s record in the Champions Trophy was won three and lost two. We beat New Zealand, an Aussie team that was on their knees at the time, and a South African team missing their big guns in the semis. We lost to Sri Lanka, a good team, in the group stage, and India, in conditions totally alien to them, in the final.

The truth is we blew a brilliant chance to win silverwear on home soil. We failed. What’s more we played an anachronistic brand of cricket that targeted 270 as a good score (the best teams were making three hundred plus). The best teams would never field a top three of Cook, Bell and Trott.

The excuse about Giles fielding weakened teams is also complete baloney. All teams rotate players these days. In effect, Giles’ weakened teams were playing other nation’s weakened teams. In the 1-4 catastrophe following the Ashes humiliation, Australia rested more players than us! We were basically playing Australia’s B-team and still got stuffed.

So what exactly do we have to look forward to? The answer is a supposed new era under a coach that’s anything but new; a coach that has taken us backwards dramatically in both ODIs and T20s. Forgive me, but it doesn’t sound like a new dawn to me; it will be the same old England, but with a sprinkle of less talented players trying vainly to replace Kevin Pietersen.

Some of you might have heard that the ECB are interviewing four candidates for the test job next week. Maybe there’s hope and they’ll appoint someone else?

Don’t count on it. Nobody knows who these candidates are, but I can assure you they won’t be very good. No coach worth his salt will tolerate being told A. Who the captain will be, and B. Who he can or cannot pick.

How telling that Gary Kirsten, who turned England down, has just appointed Pietersen as captain of Delhi Daredevils. The world must be laughing at us.

James Morgan

4 comments

  • Hard to blame the coach for this particular mess. After all, it’s played in the sub-continent.

  • It would be nice if England could just take a year off cricket, then come back in 12 months with a completely new coaching setup and with every player having proven himself again in county cricket.

  • What AB says.

    I’d suggest witholding 20% of a central contract, to be paid in the event of series wins

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