This is the end

This is the end …

Of our elaborate plans, the end

Of everything that stands, the end

No safety or surprise, the end …

Desperately in need,

Of some stranger’s hand

In a desperate land

 

I don’t like starting articles with poems or song lyrics. It’s all a bit clichéd. But this one fits too well to resist (and at least it’s not something from Kipling or Bob Dylan).

The lyrics are from The Doors’ iconic anthem “The End” – the song that created one of the most memorable opening sequences in film history. I’m talking, of course, about Apocalypse Now – a film that also seems quite apt in the circumstances.

As Jim Morrison chants these words, napalm explodes over a Vietnamese jungle. In this instance, you can imagine it falling on the England cricket team, incinerating any lingering hope. The Ashes of a disasterous campaign, that might well end in a 0-5 whitewash, are all that’s left.

This is indeed the end, my friend. It’s the end of England’s grasp on the Ashes; it’s the end of Andy Flower’s tenure as England’s head coach (and it should be the end of Gooch and Saker too).

It’s also the end of this particular England team’s cycle; and we’ve already witnessed the end of Geoff Miller’s stint as chairman of selectors, and Hugh Morris’ disastrous reign as managing director of English cricket. Full stop. Fin.

But before we move on, the autopsy must take place. It’s not quite enough to say “it was Australia’s turn to win, so let’s applaud them”. England haven’t just been poor; we’ve absolutely pathetic: hammered by a weaker side full of inconsistent cricketers, Michael Clarke excepted, who have average career records.

England’s performance has quite simply been lamentable. What’s more, with the exception of last year’s tour to India, England have played well below their best for two years now. This drubbing is just the natural culmination of our slow decline.

You sense that Darren Lehmann, with a brash uncouth demeanour that disguises his sharp cricketing brain, saw it coming. You can’t say the warning signs weren’t there.

England’s performances have gradually declined, and now spectacularly imploded (or should that be exploded, in fire) for two primary reasons. A. Andy Flower and his coaching team have been decisively out-thought and out-coached, and B. England’s players are exhausted and have nothing left in the tank; it’s not so much a physical exhaustion as a mental one.

Andy Flower has done a very good job, but all good things must come to and end.

He probably should have stepped down after our defeat to the Cricketboks in 2012. This was the point where it became obvious that Flower’s methods were no longer working: a conservative strategy that relied on building pressure doesn’t work against good teams. It only ever works against undisciplined opponents that lack patience – like recent West Indies sides, India teams which prioritises one-day cricket, and Ricky Ponting’s motley crew of 2010.

As we’ve said many, many times over the last two years, Flower’s methodology flies in the face of cricketing convention. England’s success, if you look at the history of test cricket, has been an aberration.

Genuine pace and mystery spin wins test matches, not medium pace accuracy. If I’m wrong, and Andy Flower is right, Derek Pringle, not Bob Willis, would’ve been England’s best bowler of the last thirty years.

Just look at the difference Mitchell Johnson has made in this series. He has single-handedly destroyed us. Australia’s selectors should take no credit for this as Jackson Bird (Australia’s answer to Derek Pringle?) would be playing ahead of Mitch if he was fit, but this happy accident has effectively won Australia the Ashes. What a difference 90mph bowlers make.

When England unearth bowlers with genuine pace, they soon turn into medium pacers. They get bowled into the ground, get injured, or get tangled up in technical problems.

This has everything to do with England’s rigid attritional game plans and a laissez faire bowling coach.

Steven Finn looked set to conquer the world two years ago. Since then he has regressed alarmingly. If only David Saker was as good as the coaches who have revived Mitchell Johnson, a bowler with a much harder action to fine-tune than Finn’s.

What’s more, Australia’s backroom team saw England coming a mile off. Every plan they’ve set for our batsmen has worked.

They’ve also negated Graeme Swann – a fine bowler to lefties but a rank average one to right-handers – by packing the middle-order with players like Smith, Bailey and Haddin. Lefthanders like Khawaja and Wade, who are no worse than Smith, have been rightly jettisoned.

England’s plans meanwhile, like the side itself, have been predictable and stale. I cannot agree more with this great article by The Cricket Blog’s Miles Reucroft, which condemns Flower’s rigidity and stubbornness.

I’d also like to put the boot into Graham Gooch again. It’s no secret that a batsman’s best years are between the ages of 27-33; therefore the likes of Cook, Trott, Pietersen and Prior should be in their prime.

Instead, their records have declined quite markedly in recent history. Most of England’s top order had career averages over fifty a couple of years ago. Now they’re averaging in the late forties. Why are our batsmen getting worse at a time when they should be enjoying their most productive years?

Cook’s technique, especially at home, still makes purists wince; Trott has gone backwards; Pietersen, relying as he does on his brilliant eye rather than a sound technique, is now only capable of occasional brilliance, whilst Prior’s game has totally disintegrated.

While Gooch has been helpless to reverse the decline of England’s much vaunted but under-performing batsmen, the Aussies are eking every run out of their collection of journeymen and flawed younger cricketers.

If you think I’m being harsh on the likes of Smith, Rogers. Warner and Bailey, just look at their career averages. The stats don’t lie. The bottom line is that England have been decisively out-coached.

Finally, we move on to fatigue. This is Flower, Gooch and Saker’s only excuse. If we think England’s coaches have done a bad job, just look at the stooges at ECB. They’re just as culpable for England’s dramatic demise.

I won’t get into the ECB’s banishment of hardened foreign players from the domestic scene – a naïve attempt to encourage young English players which has reduced the quality of county cricket – I want to focus on the amount of cricket played by England players.

Although I’ve said that fatigue is the issue, it’s more a problem of greed. The ECB, being a business, has wrongly but understandably put the pursuit of money at the top of its agenda. When it schedules a surfeit of ODIs at the end of exhausting test series, it is only thinking about revenue. Player welfare doesn’t come into it.

The fact remains that England’s cricketers play far too many matches – particularly test matches. We play far more tests than any other nation including, obviously, Australia. The Aussies are up for the fight this winter. England’s jaded cricketers have no fight left.

As my colleague Maxie said yesterday, if us fans don’t really have the appetite for back-to-back Ashes series, and we’re a little weary of the whole thing, how do our players feel? Think about all the training, the team meetings, and all the time away from home. An England cricketer spends over two hundred days a year sleeping in a hotel bed for heaven’s sake.

Although Maxie perhaps implied that England’s players weren’t trying as hard as they could, I disagree with this somewhat. England certainly aren’t playing at one hundred percent, but I don’t think it’s lack of effort as such. I simply see a team that’s got nothing left in the tank. They want to give more – they’re all top professionals who care passionately about their sport – but they’re mentally incapable of doing so.

England’s team is not particularly old, but you sense many of them are coming to the end of their careers. Perhaps it’s not so much a matter of age, but of miles on the clock.

I can’t escape the feeling that this group of cricketers has come to the end of the road – which is why, perhaps inevitably, they’ve ended up on the receiving end.

It’s that word again: ‘end’.

The End.

James Morgan