England’s record since the 2005 Ashes is as mediocre now as before Duncan Fletcher. The Wisden Cricketer compares, contrasts and looks for the positives
Tim de Lisle23-Jan-2008
Are we watching a sequel here?: The Mediocrity Returns? © Getty Images
It was a time when pop fans wereflocking to see Take That and theSpice Girls, when house priceswere alarmingly high, when agovernment that had been in powerfor a long time seemed intent onbringing itself down with a mixture ofincompetence and sleaze. It was the tail endof 2007 but it felt like 1996. And then therewas the cricket.The Nineties were supposed to be part ofEnglish cricket’s bad old days. The nationalteam lurched from one disappointment tothe next, with the odd stirring victory toshow that they were capable of more.They were especially bad at World Cups and in1999, when as hosts they might have beenexpected to do all right, they crashed out atthe group stage. A couple of months later,as Duncan Fletcher waited to take over,England hit rock bottom. They lost a homeTest series to New Zealand and slumpedto ninth out of nine in the Wisden WorldChampionship, the precursor of the ICC TestChampionship. Things could only get better.And, under Duncan Fletcher, they did- slowly at first, then spectacularly in the2005 Ashes. We all know what happenednext. They stuttered and stumbled, theAshes-winning XI never took the field again,results went back to being hit and miss andFletcher left, nursing a set of grudges thathe turned into a dismally successful book.What may not have been realised isjust how far the results have slipped in thewrong direction. England have now played eight Test series since the 2005 Ashes andwon only two – which is how they did in thelast eight series before Fletcher took over,back in 1996-99:
Broken down into Tests won and lost the pattern is similar:
So are we watching a sequel here: The Mediocrity Returns?That was then
The team were inconsistent and only Gough played in over half the games © Cricinfo Ltd
To compare the two eras we need first todo some time travel, to go and gawp atthe pre-Fletcher period. Where were youin 1996? I was in Guildford, and not evencentral Guildford. Some way out of the towncentre, in Merrow, was the office, on the ground floor of a semi,underneath a flat occupied by an old lady whowas so deaf one could hear all the questionswhen she was watching . I had justarrived as editor and we used to glue eachissue together with cowgum. Page proofsarrived every day from the printers – by car.The England set-up was only marginallymore modern. The players were not oncentral contracts, there was hardly anyspecialist coaching, there were no properplans in place for playing Shane Warne.The coach, David Lloyd, was affable andpassionate but his team were chronicallyinconsistent. They were often rather good- for half a season (see table page 26).The team were inconsistent partlybecause the selectors were. In the eight Testseries that we are talking about here, fromNovember 1996 to September 1999, Englandused 38 players. Half of them appeared sixtimes or less; seven were picked just once.Only one bowler, Darren Gough, played inmore than half the matches. The surprise isnot that this team often did badly but thatthey ever did well.They had plenty of gifted batsmen – MikeAtherton, Alec Stewart and Nasser Hussain,Graham Thorpe, Graeme Hick and MarkRamprakash (happy under Stewart and Lloyd,and averaging 40 in this period) – yet theiraverage team total was 266. These were low-scoringtimes but not that low-scoring: theiropponents’ average was 313. And the batsmenwere not good at dominating. They potteredalong at 2.59 runs an over as other teams, onthe same pitches, managed 2.96.The bowlers were almost as talented -Gough, Andy Caddick, Dominic Cork, DeanHeadley, Angus Fraser, Phil Tufnell – butthey were missing someone: our old friendAzhar Unit. The chopping and changingwas even worse at this end of the order. Thefirst-choice new-ball pair was Gough andCaddick one minute, then Gough and DevonMalcolm, then Gough and Headley. Stewartdid not trust Caddick enough to take him toAustralia for the 1998-99 Ashes. If he had, hemight have won them.The tail was useless: the average score forsomeone batting in the last four in the orderwas 10, the worst of any Test team. Balancingthe side was an eternal conundrum. Fiveallrounders were tried, including two veryyoung men, Ben Hollioake and AndrewFlintoff, for two Tests each. Many were calledbut few were given a real chance.This is nowSay what you like about today’s selectors,they are at least more consistent. Englandhave played 28 Tests in their last eightseries and fielded 26 players. Only four haveappeared twice or less – Stuart Broad, IanBlackwell, Owais Shah and poor old JonLewis, who is a mirror image of poor old Mike Smith from the nineties. Eight menhave played in at least 20 of the 28 Tests(see table below). Flintoff (14) and MichaelVaughan (11) would be among them if theyhad been consistently fit.
Only four of the ’96-99ers managed anequivalent consistency – Stewart (everpresent),Hussain (30), Atherton (28) andThorpe (25). So England now have a moresettled team. But do they have a better one?The results have not been quite as bad thistime. The series-win column may be the samebut the draws are more numerous and morehonourable. Then there was only Zimbabweaway, a draw that felt like a defeat; now,there is Sri Lanka home, of which the samecan be said, but also India away, which wasmore of a moral victory – for the unlikelyforces of Flintoff, Fletcher, Matthew Hoggard,Shah, Shaun Udal and Johnny Cash.There was no moment like that in 1996-99. But that may be because we are talkingabout different opponents. There is anelement of apples and oranges here. Only two series, home to Sri Lanka and away toAustralia, appear in each set of eight. But ifyou look at the opponents more broadly, interms of standing, they even out.England’s standing has changed. For mostof the first period they were ranked low.From 2005 until the other day they weresecond. So seven of the past eight series havebeen against teams ranked below them. Andthey have won only two of those, which isnot good enough.
A moral victory for the unlikely forces of Flintoff, Fletcher and Johnny Cash © Getty Images
It is too close to call. Results were slightlyworse in 1996-99 but the 2005-07 figuresinclude an unearned victory against Pakistanin the forfeited Oval Test. Of the other sevenwins three were at home against West Indies,who were a soft touch. Which leaves onlyfour genuine, hard-earned Test wins: againstIndia away, Sri Lanka home and Pakistanhome. None of them, curiously, was securedunder Vaughan.There is another dog that did not barkhere. The series victories and defeats haveall been to love: the defeats have been 0-2,0-5, 0-1 and 0-1 and the wins both 3-0.There has been no coming back or blowinga lead, as Hussain did at home to NewZealand. (Equally there has been no winningdead Tests with the series already lost.) It isnot just English excellence that has joinedthe list of Test cricket’s endangered species:ebb and flow has too. Most series are socompressed and perfunctory that reversalsof fortune have gone out of fashion. Therehas been nothing lately to match the dramaof England v South Africa in 1998.Comparatively the runs per wicket arerevealing. In the late nineties England’saverage completed innings was 266 and theiropponents’ 313. Since November 2005 thebatsmen have done far better, averaging 344,but the bowlers worse: England’s opponentshave averaged 372. Still, those are worldwidetrends and the difference between England’sscore and their opponents’ has narrowed,from 49 to 28. And England’s scoring-rate hasleapt to 3.27, only fractionally behind theiroppponents’ (3.35). Our batsmen walk tallerthese days. Just about all of them average 40and Kevin Pietersen hovers above 50, whilealso scoring at a domineering rate.The problem is that, over the sameperiod, other teams have had playersaveraging 70: Ricky Ponting (71), MikeHussey (85), Kumar Sangakkara (78),Mohammad Yousuf (78). Mahela Jayawardeneand Jacques Kallis are over 60. Pietersen istop of the list by aggregate, with 2,551 runsto Yousuf’s 2,498, but he is only 14th inthe averages among those who have playedat least five Tests. The bowling is muchthe same: Panesar is seventh and Hoggardeighth among the wicket-takers but they arewell down the averages.The bowling figures tell a stark story.This England simply do not take enoughwickets. Since the 2005 Ashes, whenVaughan could make a breakthrough just bywaving his arms at Simon Jones, the bowlershave a joint average of 36.82. They arebehind Australia (26), Sri Lanka (29), NewZealand (30), South Africa (32) and India(32). So, when it comes to bowling, they arenot fifth in the world, as their new TestChampionship placing might suggest, butsixth. In the two years to autumn 2005 theywere the world’s second-best bowling unit,with an average of 30. What has changed?Hoggard has not, except to become moreinjury prone. Giles has given way to Panesar,which (outside Sri Lanka and disregardingthe batting) has been an improvement. Thedifference has been Flintoff, Harmison andJones: one faltering, one flaky, and one, alltoo possibly, finished. England’s variouscaptains have been deprived of one, twoor three spearheads. Having a couple ofYorkshire terriers, however admirable, doesnot make up for that.Injuries are a perfectly reasonable excusebut only if the best possible replacementsare picked. England played Ravi Bopara,aged 22, in all three Tests in Sri Lanka whenthey could have played Shah. And they lostthe series not to the wiles of Murali butto the rectitude, patience and hunger ofSangakkara and Jayawardene. It was battingof the kind only one Englishman purveysthese days and he had been deemed too old.Besides going for youth, backing characterover career records was another Fletcherinstinct. One of the characters he backed,Vaughan, is still applying that policy. The trouble is that there is a fine line betweenbacking character and picking people youlike. Vaughan is said to warm to Boparawhile finding Shah more tricky. Englandpaid a high price for that preference.It is still hard to separate the team oftoday from that of ’96-99. Man for manhere are the typical teams from each era(with the batting order jiggled to make thematches more like for like) and the player Iwould choose.
Five places are a tie, there are three winsfor today’s team and three for the Nineties.It is a dead heat.Today’s team have some hefty advantages:central contracts, specialist coaching, videohomework. But they have big disadvantagestoo – more Tests, shorter series, more tours.For several players Sri Lanka was the year’sfifth overseas assignment. There are moreinjuries now and they last longer – Vaughanhas missed 17 Tests out of 28, Flintoff 14,Marcus Trescothick 18, Simon Jones all28. The batsmen are more attacking andcloser to level terms with the rest of theworld: England’s top six average 40 sinceNovember 2005 while their opposite numbers average 41. The series-losing runs Englandare conceding come lower down the orderand they are often made by canny oldcompetitors – an Anil Kumble or ChamindaVaas – who seem to know better than anyEnglishman when the moment is there tobe seized.The close catching is worse now thanit was then. The outfielding is much thesame; it does not help that the captain isham-handed. But England’s captaincy hasimproved. Vaughan is more imaginative andcommunicative than Atherton or Stewartand calmer than Hussain. Wicketkeeping isstill a muddle. Balancing the side happensonly when Flintoff is fit and firing. Thefeeling persists that in a bat-friendly erathe batsmen are not playing enough match-winninginnings. They did not in theNineties either but the same players- Atherton and Thorpe especially- found the knack later.Overall, things are abit better now.England are more united, better at batting and, if theyare worse at bowling, it is partly becausethey are injury-prone. They are worsetravellers (won 1, lost 9 in Tests overseas) butstronger at home (7-2). But in one area theboys of the nineties have provedoutstanding. Three of the regulars went onreality-TV shows and won – Tufnell on and Gough andRamprakash on . Montylooks a good bet already but how manyothers will follow in their footsteps?