We’re really not surprised that England lost the first T20 yesterday. Judging by the team the England management put out, we can only assume they didn’t actually want to win.
How many teams need three wicket-keepers? It’s ridiculous. Two usually suffices in sixteen man squads for five match test series, so why England needed three for a short T20 match is beyond us.
If you can think of any rationale for such a perplexing strategy, please let us know. We phoned up all the psychiatric units of major hospitals in the London area hoping to talk to Geoff Miller, but we were unsuccessful.
Of course, England’s management will argue – as they surely have to – that Kieswetter, Buttler and Bairstow are three of the best six T20 batsmen in England. Therefore they can justify their bizarre decision on the grounds that all three get into the team as batsmen on merit.
Yeah right. If Andy Flower can say that with a straight face, he’s an even better politician than I first thought.
What made the selection unbelievable was that Alastair Cook, who was one of stars of the recent ODI series was sitting in the stands watching. Although he was originally scheduled to return home after the 50 over stuff, an injury cloud over Ravi Bopara meant that Cook stayed with the squad.
Consequently, Kieswetter, Buttler and Bairstow were all selected ahead of Cook – despite the fact that our ODI skipper had scored his runs at a remarkable strike rate during the previous two weeks.
What’s more the aforementioned youngsters hadn’t faced international class spinners on subcontinent style pitches in their lives. No wonder our middle order folded like the proverbial pack of cards and England lost the game.
Don’t get us wrong. We’re all for giving youngsters a go – but not at the expense of one of our best batsmen. England desperately needed a calm head in yesterday’s game. Pakistan’s batsmen have underperformed throughout this tour, so England were never likely to need a huge total to win.
So why wasn’t Cook playing? Probably because the selectors made Stuart Broad T20 captain last summer, and they didn’t want to undermine his authority by picking Cook in the same side. There’s nothing like compounding one mistake with another, is there.
James Morgan
I don’t really care about how many of the team are theoretically ‘keepers’, as none of them keep very well anyway. It’s like saying Trott’s a bowler who also bats a bit.
The real issue I have with England ODI and, latterly, T20 selection is the insistence on ‘specialists’ who aren’t really good enough, but are more short-form oriented. The most successful ODI teams have always looked pretty similar to their corresponding Test teams. The reality is that not many batsmen have the ability to dominate the likes of Steyn or Lee or Akmal, for that matter. Atherton was a very good ODI player, but he was nearly always overlooked in favour of Ali Brown, who never scored more than 8.
Quality Test batsmen have the ability to adjust their game to the short form – think of Waugh, Chanderpaul, Kallis, et al, all of whom batted pretty slowly in Tests, all of whom have very impressive ODI records – and then think of the likes of Fleming, Brown, Solanki, and the endless list of third-raters we’ve picked because they were the right sort of player.