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The three-year itch

08 Friday Jan 2016

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Unsurprisingly, there’s chat about Alex Hales and whether he should get another chance opening the batting. This debate is as premature as it is predictable. The man has played two tests, averages 25, scored a good 60 in one of his four innings, and with a strike rate of 37 he is clearly reigning in his attacking instincts in order to make a good fist of the test opening job. He averaged 50 in the Championship last year. It’s worth noting, too, that in each of his four partnerships with Cook, it has been the skipper’s dismissal that has come first.

With all the talk of Cook’s run of unsuccessful opening partners, my mind turned to Graham Gooch’s rather slow start to his test career. He managed 0 and 0 in his first test and soon disappeared back to county cricket, only to return with considerably more success three years later.

Saeed Anwar had the same experience, coming back from a pair on debut to score 169 three years later. And as any cricket aficionado of a certain age will tell you, Marvan Atapattu is the poster boy for ropey beginnings followed by sturdy careers. He made 0 and 0, 0 and 1, 0 and 0 in his first three tests (admittedly rather unhelpfully each about two years apart). This is a less than solid performance for a test match opening batsman. Hales’ average of 25 looks pretty good compared to Atapattu’s 0.16 (and even his one run was rumoured to have come off his pads not his bat). Atapattu was then dropped for three years before coming back to have a distinguished 90 test career that included 16 tons of which six were doubles.

It was only as I began to research this article, which was ostensibly to be about Alex Hales (with a side helping of self-congratulation on my previous post calling for Mo to be kept at 8, Compton to be recalled and Bell to be dropped), that it dawned on me that all the players mentioned above were dropped for around three years before they made their successful comebacks. I wonder what the significance of those three years is? Is this the amount of time it takes to refine your game or work out whether you’ve got the hunger to play for your country?

It worked for James Taylor too. Much as I believe he deserved his recall sooner, the fact is that he had a three-year hiatus from the team and has returned a transformed player. He says himself that not being picked drove him on. Are the selectors on to something here? Do they possess a psychological insight that we hadn’t credited them with?

Nick Compton’s absence was approaching three years too. Undoubtedly a better player now.

There must be something in this three years thing (I think I’ll call it the Campion Rejuvenation Formula©) because Boycott even dropped himself for precisely that length of time before his glorious return with a ton against the Aussies in 1977.

Then there’s Adil Rashid, who spent six years in the international wilderness and judging by his form in the Big Bash, he’s now twice as good as he used to be.

(If I’ve missed anyone you can think of in the three-year club, do shout up.)

It’s impossible to know whether being dropped was the right decision, of course, because we can never know how players’ test careers might have turned out had they been retained. Other teams, with scarcer resources, might be forced to find out whether a player could learn on the job. Certainly when England’s own options have been limited, they’ve had to be patient. Look at Gatt – it took him seven years and 54 test innings to make his first hundred. Hales has had four knocks in his test career. I reckon he should be allowed a few more.

Don’t mess with Mo

13 Tuesday Oct 2015

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I’ve had misgivings about the way England have gone about dealing with the troublesome opening spot for some time. Today they picked Mo to do the job. It would appear that he got the job not because the coach and selectors thought he was the best man for the job but because they couldn’t come up with anyone else. ‘It’s not ideal’ is the ringing endorsement from the coach, who in one short sentence manages to undermine Mo and annihilate Hales’ confidence completely.

It would seem that Mo is expected to fail. If he does not fail here, he is still expected to fail against South Africa. So we haven’t solved a problem by picking him to open, we’ve postponed it – and created a new one.

Coming in at no.8 last summer was an odd spot for Mo but he rather made the most of this niche position during The Ashes. He played with delicious freedom and treated us to strokes of such grace that the ball didn’t so much hit the bat, as genuflect before it prior to racing away in reverential haste to the extra cover boundary.

Now, however, we’re in danger of doing a Joe Root on him. Taking him from a position where he’s comfortable and performing well and asking him to perform another role in the team that he’s not ready for simply because the powers-that-be are a bit stuck. It would be a crying shame if Mo’s confidence, currently clearly growing, was shattered by a difficult test series. And I do fear for him. From seeing the way he batted in the summer, he didn’t look like a candidate to open in a test match, and to see him wafting outside off stump in the warm-up matches like a cross between David Gower and d’Artagnan confirmed my fears.

What’s sad about the situation is that not only is this decision potentially messing with Mo (and Hales) but it’s also monumentally unfair on other opening batsmen who could be fulfilling the role. If they wanted someone to wave at balls as they passed outside off stump, they could have stuck with Adam Lyth. At least he opens for a living.

But really, I still have a bit of a bee in my bonnet about Compton and Carberry. Two proper openers who did a decent job and should have had a chance to do more. Both had steady, if unspectacular, county seasons and both would have been raring to go. Before you ask, no I don’t think they’re too old. Apart from Younis, Misbah and Shoaib Malik proving the old guard have a bit to offer today, I think Compton (32) and Carberry (just turned 35) are in that stage of their careers where the proximity of retirement is such that it really concentrates the mind. Perhaps you’d call it the Chris Rogers effect™.

When Chris Rogers retired from international cricket this year, I was so glad he didn’t rescind his decision after a successful series. I think he was so successful largely because it was his last series. Essentially he gave it his absolute all for two glorious years and by the end of those two years, he was spent. The fact that his light blazed brightly was inextricably linked to the fact that it blazed so briefly.

It would be the same with Compton or Carberry. Indeed, I think we got a glimpse of it when they first played. Remember how Carberry stood there in Australia and took on Johnson and co, where others were in full retreat? He tried his heart out in that series and his stats stacked up with the best of a bad bunch. One of these two (and realistically it probably would have been Compton) should have been inked in for the whole winter – Pakistan and SA. One of these two would have got their head down and fought with every last bone in their body. It might have been the start of a Rogersesque couple of years. And Mo would still have been down the order, persuading the ball to the fence and changing the shape of games.

Bell’s clangers

And a word on Ian Bell and his selection. My previous post explains my reservations about Bell. He shouldn’t have been picked for this tour, and shouldn’t have been picked for this game. I just don’t know what James Taylor has to do to get the nod. And now Bell has spilled two sitters at slip. When he was pondering retiring at the end of the summer, I think a part of him did. The rest of him should follow.

The Duke lives on

28 Friday Aug 2015

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So this morning the Duke of Bellington, aka Ian Bell, announced – http://metro.co.uk/2015/08/28/ian-bell-exclusive-im-in-no-way-ready-to-finish-i-still-have-plenty-i-want-to-achieve-in-test-cricket-5364510/ –  he’d like to continue playing test cricket (and also announced, rather redundantly, that he has retired from ODIs). I have to say, I’m surprised. I thought he was heading for the very opposite announcement.

What I’m more surprised about though, is that it appears to have been the coaches and captain who have persuaded him to stay. In fact, despite going off to ‘take stock’ just a few days ago, he now has plans to go to Australia in two years’ time to retain the Ashes. Hmm.

I think we can all agree that an Ian Bell cover drive is a thing of beauty and his late cut to third man is the deftest of touches but there’s a sense now that when he plays them we ought to enjoy them while they last because they don’t happen as often and they won’t happen for much longer. Bell now gets plaudits for getting pretty 50s and taking decent catches – the sorts of things that were routine before and barely discussed. When you’re getting rapturous applause for doing something twice in a series that you used to do day-in, day-out, the game is up.

There’s no doubt he’s been a fine player for England who has played some fine innings. But not many recently.

In the last three years, he averages 35.20 in test cricket; in the last two years, 29.24; in the last year, just 24.29. That’s a downward trend if ever I saw one. His career average is down to 43, whereas for a time in 2011 is was around 50.

These stats would suggest he is being picked on reputation. ‘Belly is looking great in the nets’, ‘He’s done it so many times in an England shirt’, ‘Form is temporary, class is permanent’…these phrases and many others like it have been trotted out by selectors, team-mates and supporters but it just doesn’t wash any more.

He’s been a fine England player but it’s time to look around. If Bell can have 22 matches over two years when averaging 29.24 with only two tons, then surely we can afford to give a young batsman a chance to match or beat that?

Assuming Bairstow is retained (with a championship average of 108.89 this year, how could he be dropped? Although they managed to drop him for the ODIs somehow…), then we’re looking at one of Hildreth, Hales or Taylor aren’t we? Although if Root stays at four, a resurgent Ballance could be tried again at five. More from leftfield are other players who have been performing to a high standard year in, year out – Mitchell, Madsen and Vince; or someone in red-hot form like Steve Davies. I still can’t work out what James Taylor has done wrong for England and I’d give him a run.

Just because he wants to keep playing doesn’t mean Ian Bell has to be selected or can’t be dropped. So in the last few weeks of the county season, there’s all to play for and we’ll see who senses a very real opportunity.