Tubby or not tubby, fat is the question for Samit Patel – and Andy Flower obviously thinks it’s the former. After being named in the preliminary squad for the World Cup, Patel had a real chance of making the final fifteen. However, Flower revealed yesterday that the Nottinghamshire all-rounder was discounted because his waistline has expanded to Mike Gatting proportions – despite the fact that the England management had specifically asked him to get fit.
It’s not the first time this has happened to Samit. He played eleven ODIs back in 2008 and did pretty well – he averaged 23 with the bat and 29 with the ball. That’s a lot better than Michael Yardy by the way, who currently averages 16 and 48 respectively. However, as England’s win column expanded, so did Samit’s trouser size. The management eventually told him to shape up or ship out.
Unfortunately, the lure of Nottingham’s kebab shops obviously proved too strong for Patel. He failed to lose the necessary weight and was promptly kicked out of the team. Samit might have thrived in previous England regimes, when he could’ve joined the likes of Gatt and Beefy on weeklong binges, but Flower was having none of it – and rightly so.
England have turned themselves into a crack fielding unit in recent times, and there’s no room for passengers – especially ones with bums that take up two seats.
Ultimately, Patel’s inability to fight the flab has cost him again. Andy Flower wants his World Cup squad to be determined and professional – and if players aren’t natural athletes, as in the case of James Tredwell, they must at least show a willingness to get on the treadmill.
Saving runs in the field is absolutely essential these days. It can be the difference between winning and losing close games. One wonders whether England would have persevered with Owais Shah if he could run as fast as he was dropped.
It’s all a bit of a shame really. Patel is a talented chap. He’s an excellent striker of the ball, scores plenty of runs for Notts, and his left arm spin would have been useful on the subcontinent. However, it’s hard to have sympathy with someone who has been warned about his fitness before.
When Andrew Flintoff was asked to lose weight he heeded the warning and turned himself into a consummate professional (the odd pedalo incident aside). He even sports a lean figure now that he isn’t playing. Unfortunately however, Patel doesn’t seem to have the same desire.
With all the Aussie pie throwers around, Patel would have been useful in the current VB series. He probably would have gorged himself on the feast of longhops provided by Mitchell Johnson and Xavier Doherty. Unfortunately however, he might have tucked into too many Four’N’Twenty meat pies too.
James Morgan
I suppose you could use the Jessie Ryder argument that if your good enough your fit enough but for me that just doesn’t hold water. We are asked to pay upwards of £50 a ticket to watch England play these days and for that money I want to see the strongest, fastest and fittest side we can put out. I expect players in today’s game to be athletes, for me there just isn’t a place for people who rely on natural ability to write their cheques for them. Collingwood illustrates the point very well I think. Currently having a dog of a year with the bat and ball but remains in the squad (I think) on the basis that he is extremely fit, a great motivator and a supreme fielder.
Sport is big business these days and the time when those with a heavy head or a bulging waist line could hide at long off are long gone. Personally I think it’s an awful waste of talent and that it’s likely Patel will never fulfill his potential. He actually seems much bigger now than when he was booted out of the squad initially a few years back. He is a very clean striker of the ball and would be a great second spinner/all rounder to have in your team in any format. He could already be batting at six for England if he didn’t appear to have eaten five and seven for lunch!! Shame.
He’s a professional sportsman and he couldn’t manage to get fit in four years. In fact, he seems a lot less fit than a lot of blokes who aren’t paid to be so. I feel queesy about talented players who don’t fit into a ‘regime’, (i wonder if, like the Beatles auditioning for Simon Cowell, Flower would have told Botham to get lost because he wasn’t their sort of player?) but I also wonder whether his inability to knuckle down and do what he needs to off the field reflect a similar lack of character when the pressure is on on the field?
This also goes back to the previous conversation about the counties – Fletcher used to complain about people arriving from the counties with a shocking lack of preparation for top flight cricket, and this seems more of the same. Why do counties allow players to carry on in their teams lacking either basic skills or basic fitness (or, with Tufnell, both)?
THA,
I think that Flower definately puts a high emphasis on personality and character. ie, if you don’t fit the profile, you’re not part of his regime. Thats why Shah, Harmison etc have gone.
That said, it would be interesting to know how he would have handled Botham.
But with Samit Fatel, I can’t get over how stupid he is, there was always going to be 3 spinners in this squad. What better chance could he have asked for? Tredwell is no world beater either, it’s not just Fatel’s loss, England would have been stronger if he could have gut (sorry) his act together.
A total idiot and I think he’s probably had his last supper under this regime.
Yes, on one hand I’m worried about the attitude that seems to have been prevalent with the likes of Peter Moores and Graham Gooch – that doing press-ups, jogging, and ice baths were more important than cricketing talent, leading to people who didn’t fit into a semi-military regime (David Gower?) being cast aside in favour of the likes of Darren Maddy.
On the other, when it comes to real character, rather than a willingness to go to the gym, I’ve always thought players with ‘the right stuff’ will always do better than players with bags of talent but a brittle temperament. Compare the likes of Allan Border and Paul Collingwood – not particularly talented, but backbones of iron – to Hick, Ramps, Afridi – all the talent in the world, but likely to crumble at any moment.
Ramps has more talent in his little finger than Colly has in his whole body, but it’s Colly who averages above forty, it’s Colly who has ten Test tons, it’s Colly who has saved Tests no one thought could be saved, it’s Colly who could claim to have won the 2009 Ashes by saving the Cardiff Test.
In that light, I think the current regime has been along the right lines. They’ve favoured players with the right character – nuggets like Trott and Prior – over the sort favoured in the bad old nineties – talented but flaky.
Couldn’t agree more.
A more recent example and one I’ve used on the Aussie blogs is Tim Bresnan. Compare him to Mitchell Johnson talentwise and there is only one winner. But like Andy Flower, I’d take Bresnan ahead of Johnson any day.
Temperament and character comes ahead of talent and what they are capable of ‘on the right day’ with Andy Flower and I agree with that policy.
Of course there are the odd exceptions to the rule like Shane Warne. Gower and Botham are in a past era, where a bloke the size of Mike Gutting was England captain. Patel would have done ok back in those days.
[…] This post was mentioned on Twitter by The Full Toss, The Full Toss. The Full Toss said: Weigh in again, Sam http://bit.ly/erQjgy our thoughts on Samit Patel & his latest fight against the flab #cricket #CBseries #cricketworldcup […]
One thing the article doesn’t consider is whether Patel actually wants to play for England. Maybe he doesn’t want the attention and the pressure – in which case his attitude makes more sense. Maybe he wants a relatively quiet career and the freedom to live how he wants! It would be a different approach, but he’s entitled to do what he wants I suppose. It’s quite possible that he thinks ‘to hell with it’, ‘my primary employers (Notts) seem happy with me’ and ‘I don’t particularly like Andy Flower anyway – besides I’ve already played for England so I’m happy with what I’ve already achieved’.
Not everyone wants to live the dream. For example, if I was anywhere near good enough to be a county cricketer (which of course I’m not!) I still wouldn’t choose it as a career. It seems too much like hard work. I hate fielding – so the idea of spending 100 days a year doing it makes me shudder. I’d rather sit in an office and write stuff to be honest! Maybe Patel can’t be bothered to tour etc and would rather hang out with his buddies in the winter. Perhaps his problem isn’t application, it’s desire – in which case it’s not really a problem at all from his point of view.
Well, the difference being that he’s doing exactly the same thing, just for far less money and a lot more work.
As Steve Waugh said when Mike Atherton declined to captain England one last time when Hussein was injured, if you offered an Aussie the chance to skipper his country he’d run his grandmother down to get to the ground. Effectively, if you have to think about whether you want to play for your country, you shouldn’t be on the pitch. So, if that’s the truth about about Patel, (which I doubt) then I’m glad he’s not fit enough to be selected.
I think he’s just fat.
Have just read an interview with Flower on the subject, in which he answers most of the points raised.
Relevant passage:
“Samit was chosen in the [provisional 30-man] squad because his type of player would be very useful in the subcontinent. He was chosen on the condition that he would improve his physical state to be in consideration for this squad of 15. All we were saying was ‘get into reasonable shape’. It didn’t have to be perfect. In fact, all we wanted to see was an improvement, but a significant improvement. He hasn’t done that.
“We don’t expect any of our guys to be perfect, physically, but we do expect them to work hard and it is an indication of your mindset and how much you want to play for England, how you are able to discipline yourself,” added Flower. “You have to make good decisions to get yourself into good physical shape. We want tough, determined cricketers playing for England and he is not indicating that he is capable of that.”
Those remarks sum it up really. Basically Patel couldn’t give a toss.