Whither Pakistan? And Ramps is back…

misbah-ul-haq-was-at-his-belligerent-best-on-day-4

The dust continues to settle from Pakistan’s annihilation of Australia. James took a first look at it yesterday. But this result will continue to reverberate through the crickosphere for some time to come.

It poses questions about the received world order. The ‘big three’ cartel will be terminally exposed as a stitch-up unless those trio of nations justify their status on the field.

Yet in the 2014 summer England and India limped their way through an under-powered series marked by (in an English context) poor attendances, and often dog-eared performances by both sides. In the UAE over the last fortnight Australia have been horribly exposed. The 2015 Ashes may ultimately be decided by which of two mediocre teams have fewer players injured or out of form.

Pakistan served up a masterclass of test cricket, and remember, they weren’t in reality playing at home either. Misbah ul-Haq’s side were light years ahead of Australia in all departments, and as SimonH pointed out yesterday, they condemned the visitors to their worst bowling performance of all time.

But Pakistan will remain shackled by their B-list status as outcasts and also-rans. Just look at the fixture list. They haven’t played India in test cricket since 2007/08, although a series has been tentatively scheduled for next December. England visit the UAE to play Pakistan next October, and then host them the following summer – but that will be Pakistan’s first visit here for six years. Compare that with the fifteen Ashes tests staged between July 2013 and August 2015, or the twenty two England-India tests between July 2011 and September 2018.

Pakistan have not played at home since the Lahore terror attacks in March 2009. Even taking valid security concerns into account, isn’t it now time to make every effort to restore international cricket to Pakistan? Can we still justify starving Pakistanis of cricket and exiling their team to a foreign country 1200 miles away? Is the issue even on the Big Three’s radar?

The recent plight of the West Indies only highlights the fragility of cricket as a heterogeneous, broadly-based, global game.

That’s not to say we can’t also indulge a little, and view the Pakistan-Australia series through an Ashes lens. On his blog, Dmitri Old makes some excellent points.

10 months ago this same team was completing a 5-0 whitewash over an England team [which] had been reduced to a barely cohesive rabble, with just David Warner and Steve Smith to rely upon. [This is a] team is prone to collapses, and top-innings subsidence on a regular scale. [And] England lost 5-0 to this! To this! And the coach is untouchable, picking his own post, the captain remains in his post, and that we’ve had all other woolly excuses given for that disgrace. We should not be losing 5-0 to that.

What made last winter all the bitterer is the way we were pumped not by a team of legends, but a moderate side with serious batting weaknesses and a cast of Indian summer veterans and retreads who’d only just scraped through their collective MOT.

The more you think about it, the more the 2015 Ashes resembles next year’s general election: leaders flailing around to restore credibility; seditious outliers; the outcome impossible to predict.

A couple of weeks ago we asked two questions. Could you withhold your support from England next summer in the interests of regime change? And could England confound expectations and reclaim the urn?

In the Telegraph, Scyld Berry has a sagacious analysis.

On slow greenish pitches, England’s broad strategy has to be: blunt Mitchell Johnson, attack Nathan Lyon, and organise one-on-one master-classes by Graeme Swann to teach Moeen Ali how to pin batsmen leg-before with the non-turning offbreak.

Johnson was Australia’s only effective bowler in the UAE. Gone from their great attack of last winter – and it was one of the great Australian attacks – was their opening bowler Ryan Harris, now 35, whose unrelenting accuracy allowed Johnson to bowl as he felt like, and Shane Watson, who maintained the pressure as a fifth bowler.

Siddle and Lyon remained in the UAE, but Siddle could not make a decent fist of his promotion from first-change to new-ball bowler, and whereas we are used to seeing lions maul, in this series it was Lyon who was mauled.

t was a different game for Lyon last winter, when he would come on after Johnson and Harris had made major incursions, and he was guaranteed to be safe from attack as England’s remaining batsmen could not risk the loss of another wicket.

It has to be a different game next summer too. England need to emulate the skills of Misbah and Younis Khan in running down the wicket, lofting Lyon legside and never allowing him to settle, because then Johnson and Australia’s two other seamers have less time to rest.

I find it difficult to even remotely imagine that England have the nous or verve to play Lyon this way. Far more likely, they’ll go into their shells, or just try and do what Peter Moores’s Excel spreadsheet demands. But you sense Berry has a point.

Let’s turn now to Mark Ramprakash’s official appointment as England’s full-time batting coach. In a way, the discussion about his CV’s suitability for the role misses the point. Whatever someone’s playing career, you don’t know how they’ll fare as a coach until they actually do the job. Coaching is not the same as playing and requires additional and separate skills – chiefly, the ability to see things from the coachee’s perspective; to understand their mindset; empathy; the capacity to communicate and teach.

Ramprakash is a scholar of batting and a technical virtuoso who thought deeply about his game. Because he didn’t quite make it at the highest level, he must surely have learned something about what makes the specific difference between success and failure. You could argue this makes him better placed to coach than a natural champion who made their runs instinctively and can’t understand why others found it harder.

On the other hand, would England be better off with a born winner than a cricketer who could only translate his hard work and talent into two centuries in fifty two tests? There seems something uniquely English about warming to a nice man who ultimately failed. At the ECB’s National Performance Centre, the spin bowling and wicket-keeping coaches are of similar mien – Peter Such and Bruce French.

Among England’s senior coaching staff, Ramprakash has that rare asset – extensive experience as a test player himself. How much does this matter? Duncan Fletcher never played test cricket, and look what he achieved. But it must count for something, perhaps as an element in a balanced coaching mix. Which makes you wonder about the logic behind Downton’s other appointments.

First he retained David Saker, who never played test cricket, and then gave the Team Director job to Peter Moores,a a former county wicket-keeper who never played test cricket. Downton then judged that the ideal deputy to complement Moores’s skillset was…Paul Farbrace, a former county wicket-keeper who never played test cricket.

Why did Downton hire all these people who’d never played test cricket? To help England perform better in test cricket.

Ramprakash spent the majority of his county career at Middlesex. The Dark Lord himself was a wicket-keeper for Kent and Middlesex. Paul Farbrace was a wicket-keeper for Kent and er, Middlesex. After so many years in the grip of the Chelmsford Cosa Nostra (c. D. Old), is this now the era of the Middlesex Mafia?

The appointment of Ramprakash begs one further question. If he’s coaching the batsmen, and David Saker’s coaching the bowlers, what are Moores and Farbrace doing? When Duncan Fletcher was in post, he mainly did the batting coaching himself. The clear danger is that the fewer proper jobs Moores has to keep himself busy, the more he’ll create pointless ones which befuddle or destabilise the players – the kind described in Pietersen’s book.

Speaking as we were of the England managing director, this is now day thirty five of DowntonWatch. Will he ever emerge from his hideaway to face the music? Or do he and the ECB think we’re so stupid that we’ll just forget about everything?

I’m keen that Waitrose don’t forget about our letter. In case you didn’t catch it before, here’s the update from last week. If you feel so inclined, e-mail them, call them, or Tweet them. Make your voice heard.

64 comments

  • James here. I also think Ramprakash is a good choice. He always spoke intelligently as a pundit on Sky, and one can tell he has a good analytical cricket brain. He’s also got a bit of fire in his belly!

    I’m not concerned at all about his failures as a test batsman, although it would be nice if someone in the management team was a former test player of distinction. I’ve just read Moneyball and one of the most successful general managers in baseball history was a bloke called Billy Beane, a failed top draft pick who never lived up to the huge hype he received as a player. As someone who had been there, half done it, and never quite got the T-shirt, he was in a great position to identify the attributes actually needed to succeed at the top level – attributes he knew he didn’t quite have himself in his playing days. Ramps might end up the same.

    • I love Moneyball. One massive inconvenient truth was missing from it, though. It rather underplayed the fact that he had three top ranking pitchers in his midst – Zito, Mulder and Hudson, with Joe Blanton (who was no mug) as his 4th in the rotation. They were a major reason for the 100 win seasons, and yet it’s all about the batting sabremetrics! Ironically, Beane went all-in this season with some daring moves for a pitcher who he could expect to have for just two months (Jon Lester) and they went out of the play-offs at the first hurdle, having coughed up a lead in their division to the Angels. I think the aura of Billy Beane exists to shame the Mets, the Cubs and to some extent the Dodgers – all massive teams that haven’t been to a World Series in ages (Mets in 2000).

      As for Ramps, as a massive fan of his, I wish him well. If it works out for both him and Thorpe, then all the better. I was there the day Ramps got his only triple century, and enjoyed so many of his wonderful knocks for Surrey. It’s hard for me not to pull for him.

  • Yes, it will be interesting to see any quantitive effect of the devaluation of the Ashes as we have been overloaded with the recycling of them. It was a contest looked forward to every four years or so, and now, even the “puristas” who seem to see the Ashes as the only point of cricket, must be getting overbloated with this cash generating scam.
    The “big three” are becoming less of an attractive proposition as a cricketing spectacle. I for one, am longing to see Pakistan, Bangladesh, S.Africa and the Windies, in fact anybody but bloody India and Australia!
    With regard to Ramps, wholeheartedly agree with your analysis Maxie. I understand his speciality is in teaching and understanding of the processes of batting??? My heart sank…the whole rotten edifice is run on “Systems and processes” so he should fit in with the culture rather well! I,m already beginning to fear for the batting skills of Hales, Buttler, Morgan et al…these guys can bat…it’s the bloody culture that kills them!
    Finally, all the evidence suggests that if you do the exact opposite to an “England Plan” then you will win!!

  • I have to take issue with Mr Berry on this one…

    Johnson was Australia’s only effective bowler in the UAE. Gone from their great attack of last winter – and it was one of the great Australian attacks – was their opening bowler Ryan Harris, now 35, whose unrelenting accuracy allowed Johnson to bowl as he felt like, and Shane Watson, who maintained the pressure as a fifth bowler.

    I mean, yes, they bowled well. Very well. But I’d want to face that attack over McGrath, Gillespie, Lee and Warne (around 2001) any day of the week, and any other derivations thereof with three of those four for about ten years. Is it really that great compared to that? It was a top notch pace attack for two series. A bit like England’s of the mid-2000s….

    I know. I’m a curmudgeon.

  • On the subject of coaching set-ups, try having a read of this:

    http://www.telegraph.co.uk/sport/rugbyunion/international/england/11196506/Revealed-How-Stuart-Lancaster-transformed-England-from-national-laughing-stock-into-World-Cup-hopefuls.html

    Quite indicative for me of a lot of what has been wrong with England cricket coaching, even though it’s about England rugby. Apart from the gratuitous reference to KP, and the none too subtle comparisons to cricket, it’s an insight in to the regime we’re so often told England cricket should emulate (despite the almost polar opposite nature of the sports).

    • I fail to see how trying to turn a sports team into some kind of deranged hybrid of religious cult and management theory experiment will provide a better standard of rugby/cricket/anything.

      This utterly depressing philosophy brings me back once again to Pink Floyd…

      • My incisive technical analysis of that particular management philosophy is…it’s pure bullshit! I have seen it happen in many manufacturing organisations where similar cultures have been implemented. The talented, self motivators inevitably got fed up and left. The compliant and complicit were elevated to positions above their limited capabilities, solely focussing on means to demonstrate how much they had “bought in” to the ethic. They forgot that the purpose of their existence was to produce things in an efficient and innovative way, eyes were off the ball, and the whole thing eventually crumbled in a heap!
        Dour Flower will undoubtedly be heaping this philosophy on the Lions as we speak, and, for me, it is indeed a worry!!

      • Leaving aside the elevation of team to cult for a moment (although, embedding the Victoria Cross on the shirts, playing military videos, making it compulsory for all the players to give up their secrets to the others to be accepted?), it seems staggering to ignore the enormous difference in the sports and the role of team in them.

        Something that echoes through the article about Lancaster and England Rugby is something I’ve always suspected of Flower and Moores – the fear of that which is fundamentally unpredictable and uncontrollable (flair, talent), and the belief that winning can be brought down to a formula, something which can be controlled and regulated: put these ingredients in in these quantities and cook for this long to produce X. Pasteurized, homogenized, uniform, factory produced.

        This manifests itself in theories that talent can be overcome with fitness. Inspiration is useless when we have processes. Ingenuity out of date when we have Big Data, computer programmes, analysis.

        Rugby is the ultimate team game. Individualism is almost impossible. The very nature of the game requires you to work less as a team and more as parts of a single body. Only the halves even regularly touch the ball. Every move requires cooperation and coordination from the rest of the team.

        Another thing, which whilst not unique to rugby is extraordinarily magnified by it, is that the physically dominant team – the fitter, stronger team – will always beat a team of similar ability but physically weaker. Fitness and strength really can be more important than ability, because ability is irrelevant if you don’t have the physicality to display it. Clive Woodwards strategy was based on a famous game with the All Blacks. England went toe to toe with them for forty minutes and gave it everything they had, and came in at half time narrowly ahead. They had shown they could beat the best. But there was another 40 minutes to go and they were buggered. NZ walked all over them in the last twenty and stormed home. Woodward decided he would turn England in to the fittest and most disciplined team in the world, and he achieved it. Fitness training is a mechanical operation. It doesn’t require inspiration or talent, just hardwork. It’s a process, a factory operation.

        Cricket is not a team game. It’s a game of individuals who play in a team. Very little is done together. When you are batting it is you against eleven. When you’re bowling you require others to field but it’s really you against the batsman. It’s a sport of individual performance in a team context. Talent deficits cannot be overcome by fitness. Daryl Cullinan could not hit Warne’s flipper by doing more shuttle runs than him. Low body fat can never make up for poor tactics. It’s a sport which actually encourages selfishness. In rugby ‘going it alone’ and failing when a selfless pass would have guaranteed a try is the worst crime. In cricket, if a batsman gets a start, giving it away is the worst crime. You want him to hog the batting. You want him to stay there all day and leave you sitting in the dressing room while he bats. You want him to face every bloody ball and score every bloody run. And when he’s out, you want the next guy to do the same. You want him to be greedy for runs. As Viv Richards once said, any part of the innings in which I’m not batting is a waste of my time. Great players are all greedy and we love them for it. Don Bradman is not a legend for generously giving his wicket away so that someone else could have a bat.

        At its root this school of coaching is about fear. Fear of the uncontrollable, fear of the unknown, fear of relying on the unpredictable when your personality demands control. Those with OCD use repetitive processes to assert control over the fear of chaos.

        Fear and control.

        • Well said.

          Sport is as much art as science. It’s creative. It revolves around performance. So why do sports managers constantly look to business and management models? Why do they think that processes and systems translate into match-winning feats?

          Imagine a rock band trying to write an album, or a comedian writing jokes, or actors rehearsing a play, and going about it like Stuart Lancaster or Flower/Moores?

          Not only has Lancaster not actually won anything as coach, his methods seem bizarre and more than slightly unhinged. For one thing, constantly going on about the fact you’re representing England, and what that means, simply won’t make you play any better.

          The culture he’s created sounds like David Brent meets pop pyschologist meets pub bore. What a worry it is that Downton is hell bent on England cricket aping his methods.

    • Good lord, Steve James is a miserable sod. Is he a re-incarnated Puritan ?

      Even a team game like rugby needs its mavericks, if a team is to be truly great. The Lancaster approach might get England to the final, but I doubt it will win.
      (Would Lancaster have picked Jason Robinson ?)

      In any event, applying such a philosophy to cricket is simply incoherent.

  • Really looking forward to the P v NZ series. NZ are a likeable and improving team whose middle order batting and seam bowling are in good health. Outside of the Big Three (and WI) there is lots good going on at the moment.

    Two more points about the Australian debacle in UAE: 1) they also lost the warm-up game 2) not to excuse Nathan Lyon who had a shocker but the Pakistan batting line-up doesn’t contain a single left-hander which must reduce the effectiveness of any off-spinner.

  • “On the other hand, would England be better off with a born winner than a cricketer who could only translate his hard work and talent into two centuries in fifty two tests?”

    Part of the problem is a lack of alternatives. Look at the England side from the 90s, the era you’d expect to be in their coaching prime.

    Atherton and Hussain are at Sky, Butcher does media work, Stewart is managing Surrey (and has been doing media work), Gough is doing media work, Tuffers is doing media work, Fraser is in charge at Middlesex, Thorpe is coaching (but doesn’t want to tour too much). That’s off the top of my head – not sure what the likes of Hick, Caddick, Cork etc are doing.

    When the bulk of our most successful players are going into the commentary box, it does rather restrict the options.

    For what it’s worth, I’d like to see Ramps given a go for precisely the reasons given in the article. He can offer batting expertise coupled with the empathy of knowing some of the pressure the batsmen are under and the tricks that can play on them.

    • Good point. The big names are out of reach for the ECB. Is that because they (a) aren’t interested, (b) the ECB can’t compete with Sky for salaries or (c) who would want to work for the ECB if they could help it? It might be a combination of the three.

      Commentary may not offer quite the same thrill and satisfaction as being part of an England team set-up, but it must be a far easier life.

  • Collingwood is doing a bit of coaching – for Scotland! I’d so love to see Scotland improve rapidly and square up to England. “What was that you said Jimmy? Have a Glasgow Kiss”.

  • I wish Ramps all the best. I have seen him in action quite a bit over the past three seasons. In my opinion there is nobody better for the job. He is committed to English cricket, experienced at the highest level, intelligent, knowledgeable, honest, sensible, likeable, enthusiastic, patient, determined, gets his message across, and most importantly has a very strong work ethic. All in all he is a feet on the ground player’s coach and I am sure that they will trust him, work hard, and improve their performances.

  • The fanfare that accompanies Ramps appointment as batting coach fills me with dread. Nothing against him personally, but rather his job. Surely if you are selected to play for England as a batsman you already know how to bat? If not, why are you being selected?

    I know this is an unpopular opinion in the way modern cricket is played, but if a batsman can’t master basic technique of playing spin or pace why is he being selected? Coaches are vital and important at a younger age. Good habits are taught and hopefully bad habits are eliminated.

    The previous batting coach was Gooch ( a fine player in his day) but he could do nothing in the winter to ‘coach’ his players how to play in Australia. Johnson was bowling in short 3 over spells. How about trying to see him out for 18 balls.

    The plethora of so called coaches, (batting, bowling, fielding, arse wiping) is a symptom of the way England is run. Trust in young players to play is non existent. They must all be square bashed into shape and made to conform. Big Kev on here did offer up a reasonable defence of England’s coaching methods. His theory was that England’s players don’t play enough county cricket once selected to play international cricket. So they have endless net sessions with coaches constantly tinkering and twitching and video replays to watch. What a joyless enterprise. All natural enthusiasm is coached away. England have become the Mr Gradgrind school of coaching. Facts, facts facts.

    • Interesting thought Mark. Just thinking how Bradman, Hutton, Sobers, Laker, Trueman might have been able to fulfill their potential, if only they’d had access to a coach. I wonder if Tendulkar, Lara, Malinga, Gale, McGrath, Warne in more recent times ever felt the need to consult anyone to tell them how to correct their game ….

      • Yes, one wonders how all those great players of the past managed without the endless number of coaches. I think Boycott had his own special coach who dealt with any technical problems he had. But he was not employed by England.

        A bit like modern golfers. Very individual, and someone the player trusted. I still don’t think test matches are the place to be tinkering with players techniques.

        As Ian Chappell said the other day, if you are a 23-25 year old batsman and you can’t play spin bowling, you aren’t going to learn how from an international batting coach during a test match.

        • I don’t think Boycott did use specialist coaches, actually – although correct me if I’m wrong. He may have asked people to take a look at him in the nets, but generally he tried to sort out his problems himself – spending evenings on tour in front of the mirror, working out how to play a certain spinner.

          I doubt Boycott would have survived in modern-day Team England.

          • Maxie you may be right, but I’m sure I heard Boycott say that he has someone he trusted who he went to with any batting problems. I think he was someone who he knew from early on, maybe even when he was a kid.

            I may be wrong on this, but I’m sure he had some help. What is certain is he would not have appreciated a national coach interfering with his method, and technique.

            • Points taken, Peter and Mark, although I stand by the impression I get that once he was an established test player, he took responsibility for sorting out his own problems. If that meant getting a trusted friend/colleague to look at him in the nets and make suggestions, the overall point still stands.

              It’s about the player taking responsibility, instead of infantilising yourself by having the England management make every decision about what’s best for you.

    • I agree with almost all of this, Mark, and as we know we have similar views on the broader topic. It’s ultimately about the triumph of management culture – as Tristan discusses above – the idea that anything involving people and what they do can be turned into a process and a formula. The end result is that people get appointed to pointless jobs to manage these processes. They don’t have enough to do, so they invent stupid tasks to make themselves look important and indispensable. And what do you get from all that? Peter Moores.

      Obviously there is a role for coaches, but it’s to support and advise, not run the whole show. One of the best examples of coaching working well was when Mickey Stewart brought in Geoffrey Boycott for a short period to help the England batsmen before the 1989/90 WI tour (and just after the disastrous 1989 Ashes).

      Boycott acted as a consultant and advisor – to give the players feedback and tips as they wished. It was a relaxed and non invasive approach – and it worked.

      • Maxie,

        So – who should be running the show, if it’s not coaches – or specifically a Head Coach/Manager type figure? Should it be the captain – on top of all his other burdens? Or does it just magically “happen” if you leave people alone to run the show themselves?

        It’s all very well saying players in other eras didn’t have coaches – but you’re not comparing apples with apples. If a player lost form in bygone eras he could disappear back to county cricket to quietly work himself back into form. There might be a line or two in a newspaper but that would be about it – none of the 24/7 scrutiny that a modern player has to put up with. If he lost form towards the end of the summer, there might not even be another test series for months – plenty of time to go and sort things out.
        Modern players don’t have that luxury. They have to find their form in international games, against the best in the world, with the media screaming at them to “do something” to fix their slump. The merry go round doesn’t stop for too long either – if they don’t get back into form quickly there’s another series next week, and if they get dropped they’ll miss out on a lot of money.
        Modern sport is a multi-million pound enterprise and with that comes almost unbearable pressure, scrutiny and expectation. And that, in short, is why there are more coaches. Show me a modern international sports team that doesn’t have a similar entourage and I’ll show you a sport with no money that no one cares about.

        As for things like “team culture” and “team ethics” – it’s easy to sneer at those things. It’s also wrong.
        In modern cricket, you can’t watch “Fire in Babylon” and tell me the West Indies didn’t have an identity based on the history of West Indies cricket and their place in it. Their capacity to be a unifying force for their people – a sense of something greater than the collective. Steve Waugh built the era of Australian dominance around the resurgence of the baggy green. I’ve seen many interviews with All Blacks who talk about the culture of that side – how the traditions of NZ rugby are venerated, how the All Blacks are seen as ambassadors for New Zealand and so on, and how those things are passed down to every new All Black.
        Of course it’s about players first and foremost. But when you need that little extra motivation, when a game is on the line, or when the grind is getting you down, most successful teams call on an identity, a sense of collective will or shared focus – and that docent just happen. It usually has to be imagined, then articulated and then acted on.

        • Central contracts don’t mean that players should be disempowered. They should still take ultimate responsibility for their training, their fitness, their preparedness, and their diet. The management shouldn’t be bossing them around and making every decision for them.

          As they play very little county cricket, the coaching team can help facilitate alternatives and remedies, and provide guidance, which at times could be very firm guidance. But it seems counterproductive to treat the players like children, and like automatons.

          In terms of team spirit – no one is sneering at genuine sporting patriotism or real pride in your team and a shared national sporting heritage. Of course they play a role in a team’s potency. But none of those things can be taught or imbued, or generated by cheesy jargon and Powerpoint presentations.

          Think about how we’ve all cared about the England cricket team in the past. Did anyone tell us or teach us to feel that way? And we didn’t even have anything personally at stake.

      • I agree Maxie but there were problems with that Boycott appointment. I heard an interview with Alan Lamb about it. Lamb was suspicious of Boycotts media work, and he found it difficult to trust him.

        Boycott was very close to all the batsman. He was watching them and then analysing them at close quarters. Then he was writing newspapers articles saying who should and should not be selected in the team. Lamb found this to be a massive conflict of interest. I think Boycott even wrote that Lamb should not be selected.

    • There were positive vibes about Ramps’ appointment in many papers … except Pringle in the Telegraph of course! His article was full of pro-Gooch nudges and winks and a few back handed compliments towards Ramps imho. I wonder why ;-)

      • Some of it makes sense but Mark’s, and yours are utter nonsense. I suppose you too believe that international cricketers, exclusively as a breed, do not need to be coached and that their “natural abilities” are good enough? That is twaddle, provable irrefutable twaddle.

        • Well you would know all about twaddle Peter.

          Like your ludicrous claim that you are a better and more accurate an umpire than the modern technology that is available. History has proved you completely wrong. Funny that you never made it onto the international panel of umpires. Can’t think why? The ICC would love an umpire who never made a mistake.

          As for coaches , I think coaches are very important for young kids and young players. It’s important at an early age to get the basics,and get into good habits, and eliminate bad practice. But if you are a test player and you can’t play spin bowling by 23-25 chances are you are going to struggle to ever play it. And if you are going to learn you need to do it at a lower level (county cricket) where you can get time in the middle without the publics gaze. Most test players that are found our by short pitch bowling rarely recover. They hang around for a bit before being sacked.

          What I am particularly against is this top down, group think coaching that is being imposed on players by a mushrooming management that has to justify their jobs. Their attempt to ‘coach’ bowlers and mess about with their actions over the years has produced mixed results to say the least.

          The coaching of the England bowlers on the first day at Lords against India on a green top was abysmal. Any half decent seam bowler from years ago would have known exactly what length to bowl that day. Yet England’s bowlers ran in and bowled short over after over. They were clueless! If England think that Ramps or any other technical coach for that matter is going to be their saviour they are even more deluded than I thought they were. Gooch didn’t manage it.

          • Personal attack is no substitute for reasoned argument Mark. Just because someone disagrees with you, you seem to have a compulsion to become nasty. It tells the reader far more about you than me Twinkle.

            • Calling my opinions twaddle is not a reasoned argument Peter. And complaining about personal attacks while calling me twinkle seems rather hypocritical.

              Let’s agree to disagree and you can go back to your deluded belief that your eye sight is better than Hawkeyes. Well, in your own living room at least.

            • Peter, your opening comment on this thread was “So much twaddle in so few words Mark.”

              If you genuinely can’t think of a more polite way of disagreeing, you should probably get off the high ‘reasoned argument’ horse.

            • An individual coach appointed by yourself is completely different to a top down appointed coach by a team management. Especially as that coach is a one size fits all.

              And what is the point of the main coach (Moores) if he has an army of other coaches? Do those coaches need more coaches to coach them?

              As for Bill Gates he admits to a coach for his Bridge game, of which he is a novice. Not for his business skills.

              • As usual you have completely missed the point Mark. Have another look and LISTEN to the video and you might … just … learn something. It is NOT about Bill Gates learning to play bridge.

              • No I have not missed the point Peter.

                It is Bill Gates giving a tedious lecture of management speak about how everyone needs a coach. And for some bizarre reason that only you can understand you seem to think this proves your point.

                As I say, appointing your own coach is very different from having a one size fits all coach forced upon you.

  • Anderson pulling out of SL leaves a bowling attack of Finn, Jordan, Gurney, Woakes and Stokes. Frankly, we could be captained by the love child of Mike Brearley and Nasser Hussain and we aren’t going to win the WC (or come any where close) with that bowling line-up.

    The cupboard behind Anderson and Broad really does look bare. The back-up bowlers all look at best third seamers rather than opening bowlers. As for the Lions’ squad, it contains only one seamer who will be under thirty when England next play a Test.

    • Agreed Simon. Four years ago we seemed to have loads of good up and coming bowlers. These days it’s a different story. I fear the cupboard is bare. There are a few decent prospects between the ages of 19-23 though (Topley and Dunn) spring to mind, so hopefully all is not lost long-term. But we’ll be really struggling if something happens to Jimmy/Broad in the short term.

    • If there is a question mark about Anderson’s fitness , apparently a pre-existing knee injury, why having been not required to go to Sri Lanka is he required to go to South Africa a few days later for a bowling performance session???? Don’t the ECB know he can bowl?? Don’t they care about his fitness?? What’s all this about????????

  • “There are a few decent prospects between the ages of 19-23 though (Topley and Dunn) spring to mind”.

    Indeed – so why weren’t they selected for the Lions? The seam bowling selections in that party just don’t make any sense to me.

    • Topley had a back injury, I believe, which forced him out of action for a chunk of the season. I presume he is being given the winter to get to full fitness.

    • Last test 2002 Jeremy. He came close to selection in 2009 but Trott was selected in his stead. This is what he says about coaching: ” … at this level you hope the techniques of the players are pretty good already. It’s more a question of what’s going on between the ears. It’s helping players to feel confident, reinforcing their beliefs, evolving their game, provoking thought.’ He has already been working with England players including Joe Root.

      • Ramprakash… ”at this level you hope the techniques of the players are pretty good already.”

        Which rather makes my point.

        Ramprakash continues. .” It’s more a question of what’s going on between the ears. It’s helping players to feel confident, reinforcing their beliefs, evolving their game, provoking thought.”

        In other words not a batting coach but a mental coach.

        • It’s helping players to feel confident, reinforcing their beliefs, evolving their game, provoking thought…

          In short, pretty well everything Flower didn’t do.

          • Yeah. He can’t have been doing any of that when he helped turn us around from 51 all out, to triple Ashes winners, winners home and away v India to number 1 in the world.
            Look, I agree that he should have been moved on after the Ashes, and that his methods have passed their use-by date – but is it really necessary to completely ignore everything that he did prior to that? Are we really that cynical?

    • So what your are admitting to is that you don’t need a batting coach after all, but a phycologist.

      Thanks for making my point for me.

  • “I can hit a bowler 6 sixes for 6 balls, but if situation allows me” a Statement by Misbah ul Haq about Misbah batting which threw a writer Osman in a jewel. Most of readers were not impressed by the publishing of this statement by Misbah ul Haq. Read more

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