The Simon and Paul show

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Here in the TFT office we have a desk drawer labelled ‘rainy day’. It’s where James and I store away bits and pieces which might come in handy at some unspecified future occasion.

As it’s been a quiet week, I had a little forage around in the drawer and found something I’d forgotten about. Even thought it’s now a little aged and musty I still thought you might find it worth a glance.

On 15th December last year, Paul Downton gave a series of media interviews, including one with Simon Mann for BBC Test Match Special. I decided to get it transcribed, in case it proved a useful reference source in the future.

Some of you may have had the chance to listen to the interview at the time. Others may not. Either way, it makes for interesting reading when written down in this form.

Here it is.

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PD: It’s been quite a traumatic year, hasn’t it, in terms of the amount of change that we’ve had. But also an exciting year in terms of the way in which we come – came back in the test series to beat India. The way in which a one-day side is forming, the way in which young players, should’ve dominated the headlines – they haven’t been the headlines – but that’s actually been the real story of this summer. The way that Joe Root having been dropped in Sydney has come back to score six international hundreds. The way people like Gary Ballance have come out as the emerging test player of the year. The way in which Moeen Ali has taken to international cricket. It’s been very exciting.

SM: The first big decision you had to make though in this year was to sack Kevin Pieterson. Are you satisfied that was the right decision and do you think it was handled as well as it could’ve been?

PD: I’m absolutely convinced it was the right decision, that England cricket had to move on. And I think all that’s happened since then has shown that we are regenerating. Let’s remember we just lost 5-0 in the Ashes, I think probably half a dozen of the side were either incapacitated or out at the time. We had to rebuild in a major way and to do that we had to move in a slightly different direction. So I think I’m absolutely convinced it was absolutely the right decision for English cricket. Have we handled it well in terms of have we explained it? I doubt it. I’m not sure how we could’ve done it any better. But…it is as it is.

SM: There was a confidentiality clause at the time – was that unhelpful that it created so much uncertainty; there was a lack of explanation?

PD: There was a vacuum, and of course if you create a vacuum then it can be filled by all sorts of things. When you end up with dealing with unemployment law then you have privileges and issues and it’s just the way that that happened. And here we are ten months on and actually the game’s moved on, the side’s moved on and we’re moving forward again.

SM: Why was there a confidentiality clause?

PD: Simon, you’ll have to talk to lawyers about that. I mean…

SM: And whose insistence? Whose insistence?

PD: Both sides. Both sides. Kevin’s lawyers and ours.

SM: So what was the benefit from the ECB’s perspective?

PD: I’m not going to go down this route. This happened eleven months ago, okay? If…what I said before was, was that was it for the benefit of the English cricket? Absolutely it was. And so we’re not going to get caught up in detail about something that is past history and frankly not that relevant to where England is going.

SM: More recent history regarding Kevin of course was his book – have you read his book?

PD: I have, yeah.

SM: What were your thoughts on it?

PD: I’ve got a good new nickname; I’m now called ‘Google’ by my family, which is great. I mean in all seriousness as most players have said, the book was actually just very sad to read, because it tarnished, in their mind, the other players’ mind, a very successful period for England. Uhm, so it’s sad. I’m sure readers would’ve liked to hear about, more about cricket. But Kevin obviously chose a different route.

SM: Did the book though raise issues that concerned you and that you will have a look at, or have had a look at? For example, claims of a bullying culture and accusations that quote, “a clique choked our team”.

PD: Uhm, I…I’ve read the book, okay? I wasn’t around for most of that time, there were no issues as far as I’m concerned and gone through the records, where there was any formal accusations of bullying. That’s not the recollection of the majority of other players who’ve said anything. So no, it’s not something that worries me. Of course going forward, you want to create an environment where people thrive and that I think is what we’ve got at the moment.

SM: He was critical of you. I mean two things really. Firstly, that you had no right to comment on his batting and secondly that you didn’t actually ask him why might have been disengaged in the first place. How do you respond to that?

PD: Simon, I’m not responding. It’s irrelevant, it’s happened, it’s old. You know, we have parted company, we have come to a settlement with Kevin and we’ve moved on. It’s much more – and I’m sure your listeners – are much more interested in what’s happening with young players coming through and how well we’re going to do in the World Cup and how we’re going to compete with Australia next summer.

SM: Well, some listeners might be, but some listeners might want an answer to that question. How do you feel about that when someone writes something like that about you?

PD: It doesn’t worry me at all.

SM: You talked earlier about, you know, rebuilding a team ethos, has that happened? Is it obviously better now that it was before?

PD: You’d have to ask the players. But the fact is that young players have thrived in this environment, and we’ve continued to you know, welcome young players into an environment. I think Peter and Paul Farbrace have done an excellent job, you know, under enormous pressure. Because the spotlight has been on them to create what has become a winning environment in test match cricket and we’re working towards in one-day cricket. And you know, from what I’ve seen – and I don’t go into the dressing room, the captain invited me there the other day, but this is not a dressing room job – from what I’ve seen and from what everyone else has said the environment was fantastic.

SM: Two issues have dominated all others really, this year. I think most would accept that. Kevin Pietersen’s sacking and the issues around Alastair Cook’s captaincy, especially in one-day cricket. Peter Moore said in his opinion Alastair Cook ought to be England’s captain in the Cricket World Cup, do you agree with that?

PD: Yeah, I do actually. I mean what’s happened here is that Alastair to my mind during the test series absolutely the person to back to take England forward. His track record in test cricket is exceptional and despite a lot of pressure on him and from commentators around, you know, we’ve turned a corner there, in my view, and he will lead out and I’m delighted – bar injury and all the rest – he will lead out England against the Ashes. Because I think that he absolutely gives us our best chance of beating Australia next summer. He was less obvious for the one day side, he’s a good player, his track record is very good, but he’s not a dominant player in the way that, you know, he can be in test cricket.

So you know, the selectors spend a week in September, after the end of series, just really analysing and discussing. James went to see Cooky at his home, just to talk through from his point of view how he was mentally. Because lets face it there’s been an awful lot of criticism poured on him daily, some of it fair, some of it unfair. But he was up for it, so then you analyse the situation. He’s been captain for three and a half years, the one time when he had his full strength side we reached the Champions Trophy Final and should’ve won it.

As we move forward now we’re going to Australia, a place where he’s scored a lot of runs before. We’re going to New Zealand, a place where he’s scored an awful lot of runs before. When you’ve been in charge for three and a half years and you’re now within the cusp of a tournament, actually he becomes – and I should say, having gone through the rebuilding that we went through in the summer and that team is very much his team now, then actually, those are the reasons that Alastair Cook is captain. That he’s a good one-day player, he’s horribly out of form at the moment and he knows that more than anybody else and it’s hugely frustrating for him. But as we all know with form that can turn tomorrow and in the summer.

SM: So Peter Moores’s revelation or indication that there will be a review, that won’t affect Alastair’s captaincy at all as far as the World Cup’s concerned?

PD: Well, Peter said was that there was always a review. Alastair hasn’t been appointed as captain because that doesn’t happen until the selectors sit down. And there was always a review but I’d be extremely surprised if Alastair Cook wasn’t the captain.

SM: What’s your involvement in that review as managing director?

PD: I will sit down with selectors and coaches and we will go over everything. I will be at the selection meeting on Friday but I don’t have a vote. If people want to talk to me about it then I will contribute. Luckily, well, you know…from a – from my point of view I’ve got selectors who are good cricket people who spend a huge amount of time watching going up and down the country. I’ve got savvy people and I’ve got every, every faith that they will make the right decisions for England.

SM: So you don’t actually make the final decision?

PD: No, no, no, no. I appoint the selectors. If I had lost faith in the selectors then it would be my role to sack the selectors. I haven’t.

SM: What do you say to those who say, well, you made a tough decision over Kevin Pietersen? Why didn’t you make a tough decision over Alastair Cook’s future as a one-day captain and an opener? Even if the World Cup is just around the corner, because England have lost four series in a row since the Champions Trophy Final and Alastair is really struggling for runs, he almost doesn’t deserve a place in the team just on his batsmanship.

PD: I agree at the moment, but the fact is that when we sat down as I’ve just explained to you, we’re trying to predict into the future, we’re trying to predict who’s going to play well in Australia. In Australia you play on bouncier pitches, it’ll suit his style of cricket more. You’ve got two new balls. You can’t have everybody trying to whack it out of the ground. As we saw only the other day, Sri Lanka, by having wickets in hands, doubled their score in the last, well, they scored two times as much as they scored in their last twenty-five overs as they did in the back overs. And we’re backing, and I’m one of those to say that Alastair Cook is a proven scorer at one-day cricket who hasn’t scored a run for a while, I’d say he’s due.

SM: When you move around with this job, around the UK, do you get the sense that the public is behind you or do you sense a hostility over the decisions that you’ve taken this year?

PD: I find absolutely people are so upbeat about these young guys coming through and I think it’s a great shame that that hasn’t come across in terms of, as you say, two stories have dominated. Because actually it’s been sensational if you look at it, we’ve gone through it before. But we’ve had a test series where we’ve had six players almost making their debut. We had three at Lord’s, Woakes had played one test match, Ballance had played one test match, and Stokes had played four. All of those players contributed in the summer and it’s been fantastic to watch. I’d much more get that coming back to me than anything else.

SM: You don’t find any hostility around the country?

PD: No. Absolutely.

SM: What would be an acceptable World Cup for England?

PD: Listen. We’ve never gone to the World Cup as favourites, alright? So we will go there as underdogs that people don’t fancy playing against because everybody knows if we get it right we’ve got people that the world fear. Australia fear Jos Buttler, Moeen Ali has emerged as somebody who can hit the ball out of the park and time it beautifully. I like to think we can get all the way. We clearly want to get out of our group and then we’ll have three games to play, a quarter final, a semi final and final. Let’s see.

SM: Semi final will be okay, would it?

PD: I’d like to be in the final frankly.

SM: Have you set any other goals for this England team and what’s your sort of vision for the future?

PD: My vision for the future in one-day cricket, and you know, the fact is over the years England has been the one nation that hasn’t put as much emphasis on one-day cricket as everybody else. We’ve got a global tournament in 2017 with the Champions trophy and a World Cup in 2019. And whoever’s in this job, I hope it’s me, but whoever’s in this job needs to get a side certainly by 2019 and when you look at the players you know, aged 23 to 25 now, we should be one of the favourites in England in 2019. I hope that we can get there by 2017.

SM: Has this year has been a bit of a eye opener for you, you came in from – not quite outside, you’d been working in the City – have you suddenly thought, goodness me this job wasn’t what I was expecting, it’s much tougher, there’s a lot more flack flying around, there are bigger decisions that I’ve got to make than I realised?

PD: No, I’ve enjoyed every minute of it because I think – wonderful thing – the other opportunity I’ve had is that I’ve been out of this bubble. I haven’t been dominated for the last twenty years by cricket. I look at the press box now, the people that are still there in fact Scyld [Berry] and I went on tour in 1977. I mean actually to get some perspective on what real people think sitting in the office, they want to hear good news, they want to be positive, they want to hear good things about young people coming through. And actually to me it’s been a privilege to be back in English cricket again and the decisions I’ve made I think have been helped by the fact that I’ve been outside of this bubble.

SM: What have you learnt, what do you feel this team and you as the manager have learnt from this tour?

PD: I think that what’s been really positive actually is the way young players have played spin. And from what the [coaches?] are doing at the moment and what our development programs are doing – I mean, you know, I have the pleasure of going and watching our development programme with our best young spinners, bowling to our best young batsman, with Andy Flower at one end and Graham Thorpe at the other putting pressure on all those guys. And then to see someone like James Taylor come in and play as well as he did in his first couple of games or major games has been fantastic. I think that’s been the key thing that we’ve had a reputation of not being able to play spin and we’ve started to debunk that myth on this tour.

10 comments

  • Pretty much exactly what we’ve come to except from Downturn:

    1) Ignore all opinions that dissent from your narrative (even if that includes most England supporters);
    2) Only talk about the positives (no matter how few);
    3) Ignore all the negatives (no matter how many);
    4) Refuse to answer any question that doesn’t allow to you to do any of the above.

    The MO of a Communist dictator.

  • I listened to the interview at the time. But it makes interesting reading and shows how disgraceful Paul Downton and the ECB are. Simon Mann did well. Much better than Jonathan Agnew would have done.

    • Not been around much – too ill – but I agree that Simon Mann did very well here because he was very clever with his questions. Clearly Downtown was unnerved by SM’s questions. Downton should, surely, be seen for masterminding the worst period in cricket I have ever seen whilst watching the game. Downton should be put out to grass sooner rather than later. I expect I am whistling in the wind here but hoping that the new man will get rid of him. Downtown has brought the reputation of England Cricket down into the gutter. It may take a very very long time for England Cricket to ever recover from his shenanigans! Actually reading this made me very angry all over again. I despite the weasel.

  • Hints at some attitudes shifting at the ECB in an article today by Paul Newman in the DM about Eoin Morgan entering the IPL auction (with Bopara and Hales as well by the looks of it):

    “The ECB will have no qualms about Morgan throwing in his lot with the IPL this time because there is a growing acceptance that it is in England’s best interests for as many of their players as possible to experience the IPL and the Big Bash, which has been incredibly successful here this year.
    There is also so much cricket now, particularly this year, that the ECB realise it will become harder for players to feature in all formats and accept England will increasingly move towards different teams for different cricket”.

    Simon Mann didn’t ask about these but the IPL and ‘picking and choosing formats’ felt like a major part of Downton’s “too many agendas” in Pietersen’s sacking. Now it seems essentially they are admitting he was right.

    There has been some interesting stuff out of the ICC in the last few days. There has been the return of Mohammed Amir (under PCB supervision so he won’t be in county cricket – at least not yet), the reinstatement of the Super-Over if the WC Final is a tie and the clean slate for captains on over rates. Perhaps most of all, there was the announcement that Ireland and Afghanistan could apparently compete for places at the 2019 WC without any incentive (let alone compulsion) for any Test-playing nation to schedule fixtures against them. A meritocracy where teams can decide who they play against? Zimbabwe and Bangladesh find it hard enough to secure fixtures (England aren’t playing either before 2020) so what chance have Ireland and Afghanistan? And then there is the issue that a Full Member can’t be relegated….

    The ICC show no real interest in growing the game. Excellent analysis here –

    http://www.cricketeurope4.net/DATABASE/ARTICLES2015/articles/000026/002671.shtml

  • Interesting to read again and useful to remember that the “extremely surprising” selectors’ decision to drop Cook was made mere days later, with the benefit of just one more ODI having been played (in which Cook made a very typical 32 off 49).

    You have to ask who on earth thought it was a good idea for Downton to be giving interviews at that specific point. Not just that, but actively trying to pre-empt selectors’ decision making rather than just dead batting the relevant questions.

    I wouldn’t be surprised if the dissenters among the selection team heard this interview and redoubled their determination to ditch Cook.

  • Shame SM didn’t ask PD how he felt about the ECB having to pay KP compensation for breaking the confidentiality clause when he did speak about KPs sacking last year…

      • Yes, I was told this a couple of months ago by someone who is involved in the county cricket set up. Unbelievable really. It was not a huge amount but it is the principle. Must have grated the ECB to write that cheque..

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