Fletcher v Flower, county unrest, and the ‘Asian gap’

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Let’s discuss a few of the talking points from the last few days. We might as well start with yesterday’s announcement of the Lions squad to face South Africa ‘A’. As we previewed on Sunday, Jonathan Trott was named in the party. Beyond that, here are your starters for ten.

Q. Sam Robson, Alex Lees and Adam Lyth are effectively fighting it out for the privilege of opening the batting alongside our Dear Leader in the test team. Who will prevail? And if the chosen one fails in the West Indies, what happens then?

Q. Does the inclusion of Samit Patel mean he has a chance of reclaiming a test place?

Q. Why are they taking Gary Ballance? It’s unusual for an established test player to tour with the Lions. Their fixtures also clash with England’s tri-series in Australia. Ballance wasn’t picked for the Sri Lanka ODIs, but does this mean he’s already been ruled out of the World Cup?

The tournament will be Peter Moores’s first World Cup. Can he by some miracle improve on the record of both his predecessor and successor? Both Duncan Fletcher and Andy Flower saw their reputations founder on the World Cup rocks. But how similar were their records overall? Yesterday on Cricinfo, Kartikeya Date posted an enthralling comparison of their England careers. (Thanks, by the way, to Matt Butcher for drawing my attention to it).

Flower’s team produced a slightly better overall win-loss record. But they seemed to fall short every time they faced a quality opponent. With three possible exceptions. The 2009 and 2010-11 Ashes, and the 2012-13 tour to India. Those Australian and Indian teams were all either ageing or in transition and had lost many world-class players but they were still good teams.

Unlike Fletcher’s team, Flower’s team always came up short against the best team of their day. They got hammered 2-0 by South Africa in 2012, and barely stayed with the South Africans in 2009-10, despite Dale Steyn missing a Test due to injury. It would have been 3-0 in 2012 but for Kevin Pietersen’s breathtaking 149 at Headingley. Fletcher’s team found a way to beat Muralitharan and Jayasuriya. Flower’s team was demolished by Saeed Ajmal and Abdur Rehman. The Australian team that beat England 5-0 in 2013-14 had a couple of superb new-ball bowlers whose achievement was of historic proportions, but Michael Clarke apart, their batting was hardly comparable to that of Steve Waugh’s team.

England’s overall record under Fletcher does look worse than that under Flower. Keep in mind, though, that 14 out of the 30 defeats under Fletcher came against arguably the greatest Test team in history and against the most successful bowling pair in Test history. After all, Glenn McGrath and Shane Warne won 71 of the 104 Tests they played together over 14 years, and lost only three series out of 37. Even Fletcher’s team didn’t beat that pair.

It does seem peculiar that while Flower is spoken of in such hushed tones of reverence, and acclaimed as the master of his craft, such praise is rarely these days extended to Fletcher.

Even aggregating both coaches’ tenures, you could comfortably count on the fingers on two hands the number of Asian-heritage cricketers who represented England during the Fletcher and Flower era. That’s not to mean, of course, that they were personally responsible. Last week a BBC online article asked why the Asian demographic group is under-represented in English cricket.

An England and Wales Cricket Board survey, carried out last year, showed that 30% of those taking part in grassroots cricket come from a south Asian background, but that figure drops sharply to just 6.2% among players who appeared in first-team county cricket in 2014.

For once the ECB want do something useful, in this case “engage” 10,000 British Asians. But what are the underlying dynamics?

Moeen [Ali says] that although young Asians were willing to work on the game’s core skills of batting and bowling, fielding drills and fitness training were less attractive to many.

“I also feel we lose heart too quickly. A lot of people think it is easy to be a professional cricketer, but it is difficult. There is a lot of sacrifice and dedication,” he said.

Ravi Bopara told the BBC that:

“There are not enough Asian players that are good enough at the moment.

“They give up halfway and probably do not pursue it as far as they should. With anything in life, if you give up halfway then you are not going to make it.”

My hunch – and it’s nothing more – is that formal club and league cricket is unappealing or inaccessible to many Asian-heritage cricketers. James and I play village cricket together (along with a few TFT commenters), and in our form of the game there is fairly substantial British Asian representation, especially in urban clubs. Those players are often far too good for village cricket, but that’s all they play – they have no connection with ECB-recognised clubs. And so counties will never get a sniff of them.

The issue is obviously much more complex than just that. I’d welcome your views.

Speaking of counties, they’re putting pressure on the ECB to get domestic cricket back on terrestrial TV. That’s according to an insightful piece the other day by Nick Hoult, which you may have already seen.

The board’s new chief executive, Tom Harrison, and chairman Giles Clarke, are under pressure from the counties to push for at least a highlights package from the Natwest T20 Blast to appear on terrestrial television. It would be the first time county cricket has been shown on free-to-air television for a decade.

The counties believe a presence on terrestrial television is vital to grow a new audience, and stem falling attendances.

But the problem for cricket is it depends heavily on its deal with Sky and they could drop the fee they are willing to pay if they were to lose exclusivity.

This could be a case of irresistible force meets immoveable object. If Giles Clarke is caught between his paymasters at Sky, and his voters, at the counties, what will he do?

Politically these are tense times within English cricket with Clarke’s current term of office ending in March. There is no sign he is ready yet to step aside and many counties are waiting to see if Colin Graves, the Yorkshire chairman, declares his hand.

To win the votes of counties in any future election, Clarke, who has ruled English cricket with an iron fist since 2008, will have listen to his electorate, many of whom respect his ability to cut good business deals for the game.

As Hoult explains, Clarke has already given one sop – a new revenue-sharing deal to counties hosting the less attractive test matches.

But if he’s right, and Clarke really is standing for another term, god help us. Will he keep on going until he’s finally killed English cricket? Is there no end to his vanity and arrogance?

In other news, Waitrose have again refused to pass our letter on to their managing director. I’ve asked them for a statement to explain properly. Depending on what they say, we’ll consider what to do next.

Elsewhere, Pakistan are out to achieve their first series victory over Australia for twenty years. Your predictions? And over at Dmitri’s place, it’s quiz time.

52 comments

    • We’ll try that, although it might just go through to a PA. Reason for trying official channels first is (a) chance they might actually take it seriously (b) if you don’t, they send you straight to the back of the queue.

      But now we have every justification.

      • If you dare to Tweet Waitrose that they have refused to pass on a letter to the CEO, they may well react very quickly. There is democracy for you though. All the information comes one way from them to the punters! God help us all if our Human Rights Act is removed. We will no longer be able to say anything at all. Must protect ourselves.

        Unless Clark is sent on his bike then the death gong will be sounded very loudly. I do not understand why the Counties are dragging their feet on Clark. He is responsible for there being no terrestrial viewing of our cricket on any level. We are told by government that this is the “market” working, but for whom? If those with a bit of beef in cricket want to see the complete decline of the game in this country then by all means vote in Clarke for another term. All of us should write to the county bosses and tell them what we think? IMO (and I’m still not arsed to be Humble!) Clarke cares about two things and two things only: Money and Power. The future of England Cricket is well down the list of his priorities. ECB needs to be gone!

        The great and the useless Cricket need to realise that we are in a different age now. They may understand the money and power side, but they do not understand what is required to engage our young people to want to play in cricket. Attracting Asian youngsters into cricket will need a damn sight more than the ECB feeble handouts. Kids need to cricket being played on TV, and it needs to be accessible to everyone not just those that can afford to pay Sky for the privilege. Not just our Asian kids but our African-Caribbean kids and young people from anywhere in our communities. It is not enough for the ECB “trickle down” stuff. Here is my bit on this: Whilst you have people at the top saying that they want the right kind of people from the right kind of background at the helm of Cricket then you have your answer. Cricket is being dragged backwards by the current ECB incumbents. If Clarke gets another crack at it then cricket has had it.

  • The reason I like the Kartikeya Date article is that I think it is a truth which needs reiterating. A lot of the media continue to sing Flower’s praises despite the 5-0 and the KP revelations. I think Lawrence Booth on Dmitri’s site stated that we would have been stupid to lose Flower’s expertise. To be honest this massively overplays his impact. Yes, he took us to number one in the rankings but do we really believe we were the best (and then only of a mediocre bunch)? Surely the South Africans were always better than us then, as they swiftly proved. And rankings lie. I seem to remember SA being ludicrously (albeit briefly) number 1 ranked when Australia were in their prime.
    Effectively under Flower we beat Australia closely in 2009, hung on for grim life in SA, beat a chaotic Pakistan in 2010 and a one man India in 2011 to take is to number 1. I have of course left the 2010/11 Ashes out of this list. This remains a major acheivement but was it really better than 2005?
    So, my point is Flower has been hung on to desperately when Fletcher was let go. Despite being demonstrably the better coach. Think of the players Fletcher introduced – Vaughan,KP, Trescothick, S Jones, Hoggard, Harmison, Bell, Strauss, Anderson. How many long lasting test quality players did Flower discover? I can think of Trott and that’s it, Any others? Even Moores has a better record. None of which would matter so much if he wasn’t now in charge of our next generation. Flower’s skills seem to be organisational and discipline. Arguably the biggest need when he took over. But I don’t think coaching is his greatest asset.
    We are told we need to move on from KP. Maybe we do. But we need to move on from Flower. If there was no long term role for our greatest coach then why for Flower? Both ended on 5-0 to Australia, but ask yourself which team were less excusable to take that sort of beating from.

    • Because the points system has a significant lag and is calculated over an extended period, the genuinely best side is often ranked number 2.

      England was actually at their peak whilst ranked number two, then fell off the cliff when they got to no 1. SA had overtaken England in real terms whilst ranked number 2, and very nearly (one wicket away) lost the number 1 spot almost immediately upon gaining it.

      India, of course, got thumped all over the place as premieres. The points system is like looking at stars. They look contemporary but really you’re looking at something from two years ago.

      On a related note, Andrew Strauss wrote an interesting piece about why England dropped off so fast after becoming no 1. He said that they had been chasing it for so long that when they achieved it they ran out of ambition, lost direction. He said they should have refocussed on new targets but instead drifted. It’s a good indicator of why the no 2 side often looks best – they’re chasing, they’re hungry.

      One more reason that the Australian dominance through the 90s was so incredible. Being head and shoulders above everyone, beating them all home and away, and yet still getting better and striving for more. Extraordinary.

      • The point about the lag effect in the rankings is a vital one, and it’s so often overlooked by people who should know better. Test matches coped without rankings for about one and a quarter centuries, and we all intuitively knew where we stood. The absurdity of ODI rankings was never better illustrated than when England reached no.1 purely by dint of winning that “quid pro quo” home series against Australia, having been hammered 5-0 by the ODI World Champions eight months earlier. T20 rankings, frankly, aren’t worth a light.

        The Test rankings have come to dominate so much cricket writing, and I find this depressing and irritating. In 2004 England went a complete calendar year without defeat, winning 11 of 13 Tests. The following year they won in South Africa for the one and only time since readmission, and beat one of the finest of all Test sides to regain the Ashes. They had come from rock bottom, and since 1999 only the best touring side in a generation (and possibly since 1948) had beaten them at home. I still regard all of this as a greater achievement than anything from 2009-13. England were never ranked higher than no.2. But, rightly, NO-ONE CARED ABOUT THE RANKING.

        On your related point about Andrew Strauss, I always find that this article speaks for itself. Remember, it came after a winter in which England had lost 4 out of 5 Tests:

        http://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/0/cricket/18042293

        I just don’t think Glenn McGrath or Shane Warne would have dreamed of saying something like this within a year of beating the West Indies in the Caribbean. Steve Waugh’s rhetoric focused on India as the final frontier, rather than legacies or historic significance.

        Flower’s England team were hyped up to the eyeballs and ended up believing it. Remember, for instance, England’s unbeaten 2004 side (which won in the West Indies for the first time in 36 years, for goodness sake, before winning every home Test for the first time in 45 years) didn’t win BBC Sport’s annual Team of the Year award. In the calendar year they had a record of W 11 L 0 D 2 (at the date of the ceremony it was W 10 L 0 D 1). Yet the men’s side did win this award in 2009, in spite of starting the year in utter disarray, losing in the West Indies and losing an Ashes Test. They won it on a calendar year record of W 3 L 2 D 7; at the date of the ceremony it was W 2 L 2 D 6.

        http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BBC_Sports_Personality_Team_of_the_Year_Award

        The women’s side were unbeaten in 2009, but were overlooked. Personally I thought this was a much worse example of sexism than the infamous 2011 men-only shortlist that led to such self-flagellation at the BBC. It was even more clumsy given that Claire Taylor had become the first woman to receive a Wisden Cricketer of the Year accolade in the same year. And if it wasn’t sexism, it was one of the worst examples of disproportionate Ashes weighting there has ever been.

        And of course the “three Ashes, win in India, no.1 in all formats” mythology has been dismantled many times BTL already.

  • Speaking of County unrest…I understood that Yorkshire’s appeal against the petty and vindictive additional penalty against Andrew Gale was to be heard this month?

  • I think Flower is rated higher than Fletcher by many people because
    a) he got England to number 1 in the rankings
    b) he “won” 3 Ashes series (and we all the only series that really counts is the Ashes)

    • True but Fletcher > Flower every day. Fletcher turned around a team with a tail of malcolm tufnell giddens and mullally to one which beat a team consisting of McGrath and Warne. Flower was left a team which included Strauss Cook Bell KP Prior Anderson Broad Swann. Just need a number 3,6 and a 3rd seamer. He left us in a far worse position

  • The ICC Cricket World Cup 2015 will be the 11th ICC Cricket World Cup, scheduled to be jointly hosted by Australia and New Zealand from 14 February to 29 March 2015. 49 matches will be played in 14 venues with Australia staging 26 games at grounds in Adelaide, Brisbane, Canberra, Hobart, Melbourne, Perth and Sydney while New Zealand hosts 23 games in seven cities, including Auckland, Christchurch, Dunedin, Hamilton, Napier, Nelson and Wellington. The final match of the tournament will take place at the Melbourne Cricket Ground. It will be one of the world’s largest international sports tournaments, with 14 competing teams and more than 400 accredited players and officials taking part in it.ICC Cricket World Cup 2015

    • A good point, well made taran! In my view, the Ashes, as compelling a match as it is, is just a “derby” game, with little relevance in a “World” cricket context? By focussing on that game, England seem to take their eye off every other ball in the game, and thus appear to be way behind every other nation in strategy and skills in ODI’s and T20.
      The ECB have even devalued the Ashes to try and accomodate World Cup preparation….and then appoint an out of form Test plodder as Captain, in order to win this premiere competition….yeah right!!

  • Can somebody clear up an issue I have with England being so-called number one in the world? Exactly how long were England No One? In what format? When? My understanding is that England were top of the world only for a number of days , maybe 10 before South Africa reclaimed the pinnacle in their next match! Hardly a great feat by England in my mind

    • No, England became Test number 1 when they beat India in August 2011, and they lost the spot to SA in the series a year later. During that period they also became no 1 in the other two formats, although I think they missed holding them all at the same time by a couple of days, such is the vagaries of the way the points apply.

  • Under Fletcher we went from bottom in the world to build an incredibly talented, exciting, personable team that the public loved and who stepped up their game against the very best. We played against some of the best opposition in test history. It was an era of almost wholesale success with a handful of blips along the way.

    Under Flower, an exciting team was turned into a turgid, grinding machine that beat weak teams comfortably but were hopelessly outclassed by any competent opposition. It was an era of misery and failure with a handful of good results against hugely overrated and generally disorganised opposition.

    Personally I think the only vaguely impressive thing Flower did was win the world cup, and that was mainly thanks to KP, the slow bouncer, and whoever came up with that probables vs possibles match.

    • The other point is – no evidence has ever been presented which poses questions about Fletcher’s personality and conduct. By contrast, the ‘due diligence’ dossier suggests that Flower was a paranoid egotist who spied on his own players and threw temper tantrums if he doubted their loyalty.

  • Counties: A highlights package would be good, but the real exposure would come from a live match. Just one a week for the length of the season would do.

    Asian players: a lot of the Asian players I play against seem to have incredible natural talent, but very little sense of game awareness. I wonder whether this somewhat naïve, maverick nature is what makes them like kryptonite to the ECB establishment?

    • I think Clarke needs to fight for live matches on terrestrial TV. Makes a big difference to levels of interest and excitement. The issue with Sky could be a major obstacle.

  • I think Jesse Ryder situation in NZ might look similar to readers of this blog. A link here http://www.stuff.co.nz/dominion-post/comment/letters-to-the-editor/10677806/Get-Ryder-back-in-team-now
    and extracts from that link below

    We fans put up with a lot of suffering in the hope that we might just see the rare performance where our boys punch above their weight.

    When we lost match winners like Hadlee, Crowe and Astle, the feel-good results became rare as hens’ teeth and many fans switched off.

    The Dominion Post (October 25) expressed concern about Jesse Ryder potentially undermining ”years of hard work” and unsettling the team if selected.

    Those years of hard work have got us to the cellar-dweller end of world rankings in all forms of cricket, and provide precious little relief for fans.

  • Right – a Waitrose update. I’ve just spoken by phone to their press office, who now say the information they gave me yesterday was incorrect – our letter *has* been sent on to Mark Price, their managing director, after all. We’ll now wait and see whether he responds in any way.

  • I’m quite suspicious of these coach comparisons because in general I’m quite suspicious of the importance of the coach. Particularly in International sport. Great international sides have great players. In my life time the two greatest teams I have seen were the WI in the 1970s and early 80s and the Australian side of the 90s and 2000s. Both teams had some of the greatest players of all time in their ranks. Who was the coach? Who cares?

    I’m willing to bet that if you set a timeline against a teams success, you will find most of the success usually coincides with where a team had good players, In good form. Of course a coach can have some effect. A bad coach can cause a lot of damage. Probably more damage than he can do good.

    The mission creep role of the coach to one of football manager is a mistake in my view. The coach becomes too powerful, because he has to keep justifying his job. He keeps taking more and more power to himself, and trying to micro manage every eventuality. Players become dependent on a back room staff to do everything for them. Out in the middle you”re on your own and need to think for yourself. The better coaches encourage this type of thinking and take a back seat.

    I’m really not sure that you can fundamentally change a 22-25 year old test player by constant tinkering and endless so called coaching. If a player of this age can’t play spin bowling he is going to struggle to learn how to in an international set up. Equally if a bowler can’t bowl in a certain way by the time he is of the same age he is probably not going to be able to do it. In fact you can end up doing even more damage by constant tinkering that results in the player losing what things he could do. Look how many bowlers have been ruined by international coaches constant imput.

    As for the two coaches in this comparison, Fletcher wins by a country mile in my opinion. His judgement of a player was pretty good. He brought players in who did not have the best averages in county cricket. But he had a gut instinct about their ability to handle the International game. He also seemed to be able to deal with the difficult players. He seemed to know how to stay in the background, and let the players take centre stage. Flower and particularly Moores seem to want to be in total control. So they employ a weak captain they can keep on a piece of string.

    • Coaches are more likely to ruin a good situation than rescue a bad one. See the effect of Flower in injecting poison into the previously relatively harmonious English dressing room.
      Fletcher is streets ahead of Flower as a coach. Although saying that, most level 2 cricket coaches are streets ahead of Flower as coaches.

      • I agree. Which only goes to show that Flowers position at the ECB is not down to his coaching genius.

        My theory, for what it’s worth is his seargent major, square bashing method ( where individualism is not encouraged) is exactly the type of environment the Fedual lords who run English cricket now want. Obedient types, who know there place. Characterless,charmless players who won’t rock the boat or demand more than the lords want to pay. Company men over superstars.

    • Mark,
      There’s a lot of truth in what you say. I think the big thing that you overlook is how the modern international player has no games outside test matches to work on his game in the middle. There was probably less need for coaching as such, because a couple of tour games or county games would have ironed most things out. That doesn’t happen nowadays so you need someone more hands on on the technical side.
      I agree that Fletcher was a better technical coach and also probably a better judge of players. But I want no part of the trashing of Flower’s record that goes on on here. His time has come and gone and he should have been moved on, but that doesn’t negate his achievements.
      As for the whole “weak captain” argument – well Strauss wasn’t a weak captain. Cook is – but pick me a possible alternative who wouldn’t be, currently? That’s just the position we’re in currently. That’s hardly Moores’ fault.

      • No Strauss wasn’t a weak captain – in fact the longer this debacle goes on, the better his captaincy looks in hindsight.

        I think whilst Flower did the long-term off-field planning and organisation (aka interfering micromanagement), but Strauss did the real man management, motivation, and the flexible short-term session by session tactics. When he retired, those are the three things that collapsed. Neither Cook nor Flower had good enough cricket brains and diplomacy skills to adequately replace Strauss.

        Ironically Pietersen might have, but he had already burnt too many bridges to be allowed that level of authority.

        • That’s a great point about Strauss’ man management. But it’s also why Strauss and Flower were such a good combination. They had complementary skills. Same for Hussain and Fletcher, but maybe with the roles reversed and Hussain more in the Flower role. It was required at the time, just as it was when Flower took over.

          But – KP – diplomacy skills?? You can’t be serious :)

          • I meant more the short term tactical thinking.

            Unfortunately, if none of the players are mature enough to take on the leadership role and pull everyone together, that is where a competent coach steps in.

            However we did not have a competent coach, we had an overgrown child prone to sulking fits and conspiracy theories.

            A village cricket team with this level of infighting and disharmony would be an embarrassment. A national sports team led by a man being paid 6 figure sum to supposedly “manage” the team, its a national disgrace. He should hand his pay check back, he’s not fit to lead an U10s cricket team.

            • That’s way too harsh.
              England lost 5-0 and were a shambles. Exactly as happened under Fletcher, who wasn’t strong enough to insist on his preferred choice as captain – and watched while the man who was forced on him apparently spent the tour on the booze. This is the same Fletcher who is “streets ahead” of Flower? The same Fletcher whose India team just folded to an England team led by “the worst captain in test cricket”?
              Look, I think they’re both good coaches – but they both have demonstrable weaknesses. Flower is inflexible and rigid and struggles to think past Plan A. Fletcher – like Dhoni – seems to be a little passive and too hands off when the wheels come off.
              As Mark says, ultimately it comes down to players. A coach can add some of the one percenters that can make a difference – but that’s as much as they can do.

              • The two 5-0 defeats really could not have been more different.

                In 2007 we were simply outclassed by a fantastic and incredibly determined Aussie team blood thirsty for revenge. Yes, there were some players out of form, and the lack of a competent captain didn’t help – I said at the time that Strauss should have succeeded Vaughan – but there was no shame in losing to the best team in the world.

                This time round, Aussie were really nothing special, we were simply abysmal. Mitchell Johnson isn’t that quick and scary, we just made him look good.

              • Kev,

                Your point about Fletcher and his record with India is a valid one, but kinda makes my point about the limit these super coaches can have on players. All I would say about the two 5-0 series losses to Austrailia is this…. Fletchers Australian team opponents were far superior to Flowers. Interestingly in the 2010-11 test series that England won ( and is held up as a triumph for Flower) the one test match Mitchell Johnson got his act together (Perth) he blew England away in about 3 days. That test match was very much like the whole tour last year. Again, kind of repeating my point about it being players winning matches.

                Your point about lack of cricket opportunities for top players is also a very fair one. However, central contracts were meant to give the England coach flexibility to rest players in between home test matches. (Particularly bowlers who tended to be flogged to death) but coaches have virtually completely removed England players from county cricket. Personally I don’t think they play enough competitive cricket. I guess that is the fault of endless ODIs

                I’m afraid I’m not a big fan of Srauss. I think he and Flower played a very one dimensional type of cricket. Usually batting on and on. Sometimes way to long. It was a very conservative type of play. Man back on the square leg boundary both sides. Dry up the runs. It seemed the only tactic they had. I also think Strauss benefited hugely from having an in form Swann in the team. Swann won a whole load of matches for England. Even when he just took 3-4 wickets he tended to rip out the top order batsman. I wonder what Nasser or Vaughn would have done with an in form Swann.

    • “The mission creep role of the coach to one of football manager is a mistake in my view. The coach becomes too powerful, because he has to keep justifying his job. He keeps taking more and more power to himself, and trying to micro manage every eventuality”.

      Spot on. The danger with job which involves supervising something rather than actually doing it yourself is that you don’t have enough to do, so you invent tasks to make yourself look busy and important.

      This is all the more likely to happen in an environment toxically infected by an obsession with management theory. Like the ECB.

      Judging by Pietersen’s book, this was exactly what Peter Moores did, at least in his first stint – instigating reams of team meetings and fitness sessions which pissed off all the players and served no purpose other than justify his own salary.

  • Younus Khan just become first batsman since Herbert Sutcliffe to make three consecutive Test centuries off Australia.

    He also currently has the highest Test average of any Pakistan batsman ever.

    • Nice to see Mitchell Johnson ground down a bit. Keep him out in the field for a few days. The Aussie media are already moaning about the dead pitches. As Dmitri pointed out the other day they were quite happy to produce spin friendly pitches when they had Warne and McGill available to them.

      • Younis is also only the third player to average 50+ in all four innings of a test match. The others are the Don and Herbert Sutcliffe. Of course, Younis will have to retire now or play extremely well until the end of his career to stay in this exclusive club.

        Sutcliffe finished his career with an overall average of 60+. That puts him fourth on the all-time list behind Bradman (99.97), Pollock (60.97), and Headley (60.83). The latter two played only 23 and 22 tests respectively, so aren’t really comparable to Bradman who played 52 and Sutcliffe who played 54.

        If Wally Hammond, the “English Bradman” (who was about two-thirds as good as the Don) had retired after the war, he would have had a higher average than either Sutcliffe or Pollock (61.45) — from 77 tests. As it was he played another nine tests which saw his average drop to “only ” 58.45.

        You may have noticed before that I’m a bit of a Hammond obsessive!

        • I’ve recently been reading up in detail on Hammond for the first time. It’s strange how little consciousness of we have of him nowadays, compared with some of his contemporaries, given the scale of his feats. I suppose the same could be said of Sutcliffe.

          Clive, if you’d ever to care to write a full piece for us about Hammond, that would be excellent.

          • Hammond was like KP in some respects — little loved by his team-mates, despite all his brilliance. He was quite a tragic figure in fact, dying in lonely obscurity after a period of ill-health and financial problems.

            What drew me to him initially was simply the excellence of his stats. I wondered how a player who scored 22 centuries for England and finished his career averaging nearly 60 could have been so neglected after his death, and even while he was still alive.

            He has a good claim to be considered the second greatest batsman of all time, but so far was he behind the superhuman Bradman that everything he achieved was eclipsed by the Don. Maybe he should be regarded as the greatest merely human batsman. Bradman was a freak of nature. You could get a decent batsman just by allocating him the difference between the Don’s average and Hammond’s!

        • No one seems to have spotted my error, or everyone is too polite to mention it. Bradman’s average was of course 99.94.

  • Rather puts the lie to the ‘asian players lack discipline and focus’ canard. Also, mazel tov to Azhar Ali, bizarrely one of my favourite players in world cricket.

  • Flower wasn’t even as good a coach as Moores Mark I, in my opinion.

    Yes, the latter ran the team into the ground by his obsession with square bashing fitness routines at the expense of the practice of cricketing skills, but he did successfully bring in a number of players who subsequently proved their worth, managing to rebuild the team after it fell apart after the 2005 Ashes. That was the difficult part. Admittedly, Moores didn’t have a lot of success with these new players, but at least he spotted the talent. As well as the new guys, there was finally promoting Jimmy from drinks waiter to the leader of the attack and bringing Swann back from the wilderness. Before that, he also made good use of Monty for a couple of years.

    Flower took this team, which was stuffed with talented players identified by his two predecessors, and had success with it for a couple of years, but never managed to incorporate a single younger player in it long term (unless you count Trott, who debuted at 28, or Root, whom Flower mishandled).

    Also — what Arron said.

    • Flower’s failure to bring on new talent is a very fair criticism but let’s look at Darren Lehmann’s recent record in that regard. The last ten capped Australians (going back to Hastings in 2012) have not established themselves in the team and the most matches any one of them has played was George Bailey’s five in the Ashes. Is this because Lehmann has created a stifling dressing room environment – or because sometimes the new players aren’t good enough? Or the selectors get it wrong?

      I’m not great fan of Flower but these things are seldom mono-causal. Also – Lehmann out!

      • Lehmann’s still not much more than a year into the job and took over at a very low ebb for Australia. Flower took over when all the right players were already there, but they were in need of the proper direction — Flower gave them that, at least temporarily, though how much should be attributed to Strauss is a good question. In my opinion, a great deal.

        • I imagine they were a good team. Partnerships are so important and can be key. Nothing seems to have gone really right since Strauss left. We won in India but the rest of the time we muddled through. The writing has been on the wall since we were away to New Zealand.

  • Damn, I think you might be onto something here. He also ruined a number of players (or at least they suffered bad under his watch), Adil Rashid, Ajmal Shezad, Monty Paneser and Simon Kerrigan. Morgan had a shocker when he was in the team, technique all over the place. Bairstow has gone backwards. I remember his impressive debut. Ravi Bopara and Jonathon Trott both had to leave the team for personal reasons (of course Ravi’s issue could be nothing to do with Flower), and KP should have averaged over 50. I think he has been as badly treated as Ramps and Hick were. Fortunately, for KP, he at least had had real success under a supportive coach to fall back on.

  • Here are some interesting comments from my friend Andy, a TFT reader, who runs a village club which my own side plays every year. SAA and Gents refer to the names of our clubs.

    ***

    Had SAA played the Gents on a Sunday this year, our team would have been predominantly Asian. As it was, we fielded one South African, one Australian, two Anglo-Indians, one Pakistani and six English.

    We had 11 Asians playing in our final game, however, a few Anglo-Asians like Sanjay, but most born in India and working here and one who was two days off the Air India flight, looking for work in IT but before sorting that (he had his priorities right) looking for a game of cricket.

    One or two of the guys we have had over the years have been clearly good enough to play serious Saturday stuff at a higher level and I have had many a discussion about why they have chosen not to do so.

    It is partly due to laziness – not wanting to do nets Tuesdays and Thursdays, etc. – and partly due to what they felt was a poor welcome when they tried it – limited opportunity to bat or bowl, being made 12th. man and expected to pay a £15 match fee, etc. They also said they preferred being with friends from their own religion and culture.

    At a far higher level, I expect we would not see Moeen Ali at a Birmingham pop-up bar with a comedy beard. Another aspect may be the old transcultural one that has gone on since SF Barnes played league not county cricket of being a big fish in a small pond and not wanting to be found out at a higher level.

    There is a vibrant Asian league scene in London. A lot of our Indian guys play in a Saturday 20/20 league. It is a fulfilling experience watching these games with their big crowds, spirited atmosphere (sometimes too much so) and good food in abundance. Different – I don’t say better or worse – than the 120-over Saturday marathons seen at Ealing or Wimbledon where you may not get a finish before 8pm.

    I do not pretend that these are profound insights but your observations certainly set me thinking.

  • I’ve had some very intemperate discussions with a character on the Guardian boards (initials MD) about the issue of Asian cricketers in English cricket.

    Points I’ve frequently made:

    1) There are still pockets of racist attitudes in English cricket at all levels. 10 years ago it was worse – and 10 years ago has a big impact on the top level now. Progress is being made, but it takes time to filter through to the top level.

    2) There are big cultural issues which I don’t classify as racist but are an obstacle.

    a) At the kids level, there are still some areas where parents of Asian kids aren’t that trusting of clubs.

    b) There’s also a class issue which probably affects more than just Asians. A lot of the talk about “lazy Asians” who don’t want to come to nets and practice just ignores the fact that many of them have to work. There’s a lot of unrealism in cricket clubs about how much time working people have outside of the weekends. Or indeed, on the weekends.

    c) At older age levels, drinking culture can be a huge problem. Team bonding is built around alcohol and those who don’t partake can often be excluded.

    d) At every level, there’s a distrust of different technique which often counts against Asian players.

    e) There has been something not right at the top level. Before Moeen it was looking very ugly. ECB supporters now hide behind Moeen. However there have been plenty of ugly mentions about the culture in the dressing room and how players like Monty, Rashid and Shahzad were effectively isolated…

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