BAD
England's cricket team is even worse than in 1921
IT REQUIRES a long memory or a full set of Wisden to find a parallel to this sum- mer's rout of England's cricketers. There are superficial resemblances to the 1921 season, seen at the time as the nadir of English cricket. Having lost all five Tests in Australia in the preceding winter, we were then overwhelmed by Warwick Arm- strong's powerful side at Nottingham, Lord's and Leeds. We despairingly called up 30 players in those five Tests — only one or two more than Ted Dexter has called on this time.
At Manchester and the Oval in 1921, however, we had the better of both drawn games, curtailed by the weather. The Australians showed signs of being bored by them. On the last day at the Oval, Arm- strong read a newspaper in the deep field and let his bowlers decide when they wanted a go with the ball. Allan Border, a better captain than Armstrong, has kept up remorseless pressure through all six Tests. Border and Simpson, a former captain turned manager, together have proved a Most formidable combination.
Border has developed what Field Mar- shal Wavell once described as the most important attribute in generals — mental robustness. He was not born with it. He has cultivated it. I was in Australia the year that Border led a tour to New Zealand which began disastrously. Murdoch owns newspapers there as well as here. Border was savaged in print to a point which nearly brought him down. But he pulled himself and his team together with gritted teeth, and that is the product we have been up against this summer.
Gower has not developed this robust- ness. He finds the sort of press conference to which the English captain is expected to submit nowadays irrelevant and wounding which some intend it to be. There has been imported to cricket by some sections of the press the culture of the football terraces: if you can't win, you're a useless bastard and better dead. It calls to mind Colin Cowdrey's humorous remark: 'Soon- er or later an England captain will appear at the Old Bailey, charged with doing less than his best.' Gower may well feel that has now become too true to be funny. But, reverting to the sad summer itself, there is no parallel to it to be found in the game's annals. We have certainly never before reached the point as we did, on the eve of the Oval, when of the 26 players chosen for the first five Tests, 15 were unavailable, Six had been injured and nine had signed up for the South African tour. Some pundits dwell on the lack of English bowlers in the class of Hughes and Alderman. I have been analysing our batting performance. We failed in every innings to reach the 100 with less than three wickets down. In three innings we lost five or more wickets before the century went up. In other words our opening batsmen failed to lay a foundation to the innings. That makes it very hard to win a five-day Test match. grounds and better pitches. More is de- manded of their bowlers. In the great inquest which will now take place into the state of English cricket, this matter of pitches should be high on the agenda.
Look back on the names of the great spinners, English and Australian: Verity, Laker, Lock, Malley, Grimmett, O'Reilly and a score more. They bowled, successful- ly, on plum wickets against batsmen who in those days could score a century before lunch, 1,000 runs in May or 3,000 runs in the season. It is nonsense to say that such spinners would have no place in our limited-over games.
When we have dealt with wickets, we should turn to the shape of the first-class game in this country. How fortunate for the MCC and the TCCB that Mrs Thatcher takes very little interest in cricket. It looks to me ripe for one of her radical, necessary. — and deeply unpopular — strokes. Give or take a county or two, the game is much the same shape that it was between the wars.
The difference is that whereas the coun- ty grounds were then usually well- attended, and in the holiday seasons, crowded, they are today often sadly empty — except for the limited-over matches on Sunday. And this in a society which enjoys more leisure than it did and which the motor car has made more mobile. Test matches, played on a remorseless treadmill here and abroad, and the Sunday League largely finance the rest of the game, which few want to watch. Though by nature conservative and a traditionalist, I think there is a need of a fresh look here. We shall not develop first-class players from men who are called upon for relatively modest fees to go through the motions in front of a handful of spectators.
Because Test matches here and overseas are so lucrative, it seems fruitless to call for less international cricket, but I am sure we should spread our net wider in selecting sides for winter tours. It is true that big names attract big crowds, and so are always in demand. For the time being we have run short of big names. It is a moment to open a short list at Lord's, not of 25 but 50 potential Test players. In that way we might build up experience in a way the county game seems no longer able to do. There will now be a short period during which, in sackcloth and ashes, we shall make good resolutions. Then I suspect inertia will take over again. I do hope not. One way or another, we have been taught no end of a lesson this summer. It is symbolised for me in a single, poignant sentence which appeared in the Evening Standard on the second day of the last Test at the Oval. 'England's four seamers', wrote John Thicknesse, 'shared seven wickets as Australia slipped from last night's 325 for three to 468 all out.' Slipped — to 468!
Previous page
