I read a lot of sports blogs. I’m a below the line addict. I’ve seen fans polarised before – most notably footballs fans arguing over the merits of certain managers – but I’ve never, ever, seen English cricket supporters at each others’ throats like this. It’s a war.
Over the last few days I’ve tried to stand back from the cacophony and understand events from a detached perspective. Obviously, one’s position on the Strauss / KP doos-gate depends entirely on whether you think KP is a ‘doos’ or not. But I want to talk about broader issues today.
The Pietersen problem is actually obscuring the bigger issue: why has the England team been so dependent on this brilliant (but equally frustrating) South African born batsman for so long?
If there was an exceptional talent waiting in the wings to replace KP, then people wouldn’t care so much about him. Instead the nearest thing we’ve got to a replacement is Gary Ballance – another player from Southern Africa.
Why aren’t we producing our own, home grown, entirely native, batting superstars? The truth is, England haven’t produced a truly world class batsman since Gooch and Gower. Graham Thorpe, who I was extremely tempted to put in this bracket, is the closest we’ve had in my opinion.
Many people, myself included, were not particularly bothered when Pietersen was dropped; because of the way he plays, lunging at the ball with little back-foot game to speak of, I don’t think he had long left at the top anyway. His form was always likely to dip when his eye declined marginally.
What angered us about the whole saga was the perceived arrogance of the ECB, it’s bungling of the affair, and its baffling decision to reappoint a coach who had already failed in the role.
However, Pietersen has taken up too many column inches. We’ve forgotten that, in the scheme of things, KP is actually fairly inconsequential.
In recent times the ECB has made far more important, far-reaching decisions, that effect not only English cricket but the whole international game. These are the things we should be concentrating on – not the KP soap opera (compelling though it might be).
The ECB’s decisions in these crucial areas – the coup at the ICC, the decision to drop the World Test Championship, the continued absence of live cricket of terrestrial TV – are just as baffling to fans as anything that occurred after the Ashes.
The England cricket team is facing some massive long-term issues that have little to with one particular player – problems created, in large part, by the way Giles Clarke and Co are running the English game.
I’m afraid I can’t comment on the ICC stuff with any particular insight – on Sky’s Cricket Writers On TV, Mike Selvey admitted he didn’t understand all the ins and outs, so ordinary fans with day jobs have got no chance – but I can offer an opinion on the English game.
As George Dobell eloquently wrote on cricinfo yesterday (confounding, by the way, the view that all mainstream journalists are always in the ECB’s back pocket) English cricket’s pursuit of financial gain is damaging the team’s prospects in both the long and short term.
We all know it comes down to money – it frequently does these days – but its now reaching the point where even the ECB must be aware of the damage they are doing but still refuse to change course.
It just seems so obvious. England are about to play five test matches against India in just seven weeks. It’s absolutely absurd. If I was Jimmy Anderson I’d retire now – but not before I’d given Giles Clarke a piece of my mind.
Surely the ECB must realise this schedule is unreasonable and totally counter-productive: our pace bowlers will be exhausted (and probably injured) mid-way through the Lord’s test.
Flogging our bowlers to death isn’t going to help us win the World Cup. And it won’t help us win the Ashes next year either. The ECB must know this, so why are they still treating our thoroughbred seam bowlers like carthorses. It’s bewildering.
When you take touring into account, an England cricketer now spends almost three hundred nights a year in hotel beds. How is that fair? How is it going to produce enthusiastic, driven cricketers capable of performing at their best?
Guys like Ben Stokes (who is a young father) can basically kiss raising children and retaining a semblance of a normal life goodbye.
The crazy schedules, made worse by a barrage of ODIs nobody cares about, are exacerbated by the new drainage systems at English test venues.
Spectators benefit on the one hand, because less time is lost to rain, but the cricket played is of poorer quality: dry pitches are invariably slow, lifeless and play into batsmen’s hands.
These dry pitches also surrender England’s home advantage. The archetypal green top is probably a thing of the past. India might be surprised when they realise than spin, rather than pace, determines the outcome of the upcoming tests.
As we’ve long argued on this blog, too many fixtures, and too many draws, is bad for cricket in the long run. It cheapens the brand. Falling attendances might have something to do with disenchantment with the ECB, ticket prices, and a losing team, but it surely also stems from cricket fatigue. The more matches you play, the less each one actually means.
Putting all the live action on Sky also cheats cricket to a significant extent. While Sky’s money is welcome, and they do a good job (in my opinion), I suspect the ever-increasing sums of money are probably being invested in an ever-decreasing pool of players (proportional to the total population).
Cricket needs exposure on free-to-air television to capture the imagination of as many kids as possible. Raw natural talent is a precious commodity and it cannot be bought – it can only be unearthed.
If more young people were into cricket, there would be a larger pool of physically skilled sportsmen to nurture. No matter how much money is spent on coaching, cricketers all have their ceiling. We need more players of higher potential – then the ECB coaches can do their stuff.
It’s obviously good that the ECB is investing in grass roots cricket, but it’s not as effective as making cricket as accessible to as many people as possible by showing it live on the BBC or Channel Five. I find TMS as enjoyable as ever, but we need cricket on terrestrial TV as well as radio. India produces good batsmen because the kids play it in the streets. It has little to do with centres of excellence.
Many cricket fans know all this already. The journalists certainly do. Indeed, anybody with a modicum of common sense realises that the hectic schedules, the drainage systems, and Sky’s monopoly of live test cricket, come down to money. However, the question I want to ask is this:
If everyone knows that the ECB’s obsession with maximising revenue is doing more harm than good – in other words it’s hindering the England team in the present and restricting the emergence of future stars – why isn’t more being done about it?
The fans know it; the journalists – who have some influence and access to cricket’s authorities – can also see the holes in the ECB’s approach. So how come we’re all incapable of getting the ECB oil tanker to change course.
What’s more, why are the ECB themselves pursuing these nonsensical strategies? They’re not stupid. They can’t be totally unaware of the potential consequences of the policies they’re implementing. They must recognise that whilst money is important, it’s not everything.
Perhaps the ECB are under financial pressures we don’t know about? Maybe they’re more concerned with their personal reputations and making immediate profit than the legacy they’ll leave behind – although I’d hate it if this were true as it would be a hideous shirking of their responsibilities. Surely nobody is that selfish? I imagine most people who work at the ECB care deeply about the English game.
So what exactly is going on? I’m not going to tell you because I simply do not know. I’m inviting you, the reader, to shed some light. When it comes to the big cricketing issues of the day, I’m flummoxed. Logic doesn’t seem to apply anymore.
James Morgan
With SA’s controversial political quota system in place, all sports in most countries, will benefit from the influx of SA sportsmen.
England’s role in world cricket has always been contentious & it’s certainly about cash.
So many great points in this piece, I could go on. Superb.
“As George Dobell eloquently wrote on cricinfo yesterday (confounding, by the way, the view that all mainstream journalists are always in the ECB’s back pocket) English cricket’s pursuit of financial gain is damaging the team’s prospects in both the long and short term.”
Ah, be fair. The accusation is that the vast majority of major print journalists are parroting the party line. Dobell works for Cricinfo and most of the print media distrust Cricinfo massively.
He and Andy Bull of the Guardian are the only two to really diverge from the party line in the last 12 months, though.
Scyld Berry in the telegraph has also been very critical of the ecb. He called the ICC coup “the worst day in the history of cricket”.
Maxie here – I agree re Cricinfo. They think and act differently from the inky press – maybe because they began as outsiders, distrusted by the old guard. I’m speculating here, but I imagine their foreign ownership and huge Indian readerbase also gives them bigger fish to fry than getting matey with the Lord’s bigwigs.
Significantly, neither Dobell not Hopps (both of whom have had the balls to ask tough questions, and whose analysis is very sharp) are ex-dressing room colleagues of the likes of Morris/Downton/Whitaker.
Nothing to say except I agree with every single word
Actually, I think KP had 2-3 good years left in him as a test batsman, and I think the debate over whether he is a **** to be entirely irrelevant. Its a professional organisation, not a social club. Cricket is not rugby. As long as you bat and field better than your replacement and aren’t actively disruptive behind the scenes, then you keep your place, end of story.
But I don’t really care about the KP saga anymore, I’m more annoyed about who’s still there rather than who isn’t.
When captains, coaches and administrators are shown to be grossly incompetent, it becomes impossible to support the team until they are removed.
One test per series on terrestrial would be a start. They handled Pietersen incompetently – he should have been vice captain the start of this season and brought right into the inner circle. They should also be doing everything possible to get Monty Panesar selectable and into the squad. Re-hiring Moores is a bland unimaginative choice and England won’t turn the corner properly until they get a different coach and a captain who actually has some authority and tactical awareness.
Good points. In a way, the carve-up of the ICC by India, aided and abetted by England and Australia, is much more far reaching for cricket than any of the England team’s current travails. If you were a real conspiracy theorist, you might even say that they’ve blown the whole KP issue up so the ensuing furore provided the perfect cover.
I don’t think they needed to, everyone who follows cricket knows about it, there is just nothing we can do.
I repeatedly demand Giles Clarke’s resignation, he doesn’t seem to listen.
The fact that the ECB has bought the arrogant Jonathan Agnew keeps TMS toeing the ECB line (except when Hussain, Holding and Botham are on air) and creates a keen ally from within a respected media outlet, which they need. It all points back to Giles Clarke – perhaps he should’ve jumped on that helicopter with Stanford………………………
The horse has probably long since bolted the stable on this one, but when I lived in the UK back in the seventies, one of the pleasures of county cricket — whether the long or short variety — was seeing international superstars like Botham playing for their counties. Cutting back on the insane international schedule would allow players to still do this on occasion, which may help county attendances. Just a thought, but like I said, we’ve probably gone too far down the road for that.
Have England been dependant on him? Five years ago maybe, but the last 5 years have seen just 7 test centuries from KP. Compare that with Cook’s 18 test tons and 14 from Bell.
A Pietersen special is magical and memorable, and maybe that masks the relative infrequency of them, but England’s recent woes with the bat are mainly down to Cook’s abject form and the unfortunate demise of Jonathan Trott. Bell saved them last year, but nobody stood up in Australia.
I’m not anti-KP by any means, and I think some of the ECB handling of Pietersen has been crass and heavy handed (KP’s been a bit of a prat in all this as well), but I just don’t think he is as big a loss as many on these pages put forward. When was the last time he truly dominated a series with the bat in the way that Bell did last summer or Cook did in India 2012.
As far as this lack of other English talent coming through, you mention South African Gary Ballance and omit Joe Root, Moeen Ali, Ben Stokes along with Alex Hales and Joss Butler. Isn’t that a little disingenuous?