How to solve a problem like English test cricket?

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How to solve a problem like English test cricket?

Postby sussexpob » Wed Sep 15, 2021 3:51 pm

The scoreline in the recent India series might be decided in the board room, but if we are to take what occurred on the pitch over the last month and a half as a given, England have had their worst summer since 1999 in winning only one test match, arguably at the lowest point in their modern history, and the only time since 1986 that they have lost both home series hosted in the same summer. While the bowling has generally been up to standard, these failures are built around a batting line up that is just absolutely not up to standard.

While one might be inclined to defend or play down England's problems as a blip, the fact is England's current run of batting form is starting to wrack up a whole host of unwanted records and achievements - the most sub 100 scores in a calendar year,, the most ducks in a calendar year, their lowest batting wicket average for the specialist slots since the 19th century, which they managed to replicate in the last two full test match years. When Wisden concluded at the end of 2019 that this was probably statistically the worst batting line up England had ever fielded over a completed year when taking into account the era par scores and what oppositions were managing, little would they have ever expected for England to actually get slightly worse by 2021. 6 of England's historical sub 100 scores came in the the last test championship cycle. Never have England had a slump as deep, nor as long, in their test batting than currently.

The point of this exercise is not to dwell on the team selection or personnel. The fact is, there are two issues that are haunting English cricket; the former, the composition of the team, has been done to death. Its the second I wish to discuss here - the administration of the game in England. While England havent played well, the ECB have made many changes in recent decades that has effected the county game and the grassroots that feed into it. I have no doubt that these have setup England to fail somewhat, and prevent the team from reaching its potential.

So without further-ado lets have a look at some of the issues facing county cricket

Central contracts

The move to central contracts in the late 90s felt like a needed step for the professionalization of the game. It was said at the time that Australia, who had adopted the system in 1994, were busy developing a great side because they were playing far less; 100 days on average to England's 150. The benefits would be multiple; English players would be able to prepare for matches properly, both mentally and physically, by having better spacing of games. And with England being the central point for the core International group, teams could spend time bonding and planning together as a unit for matches, supplemented by a coaching staff at an elite level which would have time to work with players. This in turn would breed a sort of consistency at national level with players given time through that monetary/effort investment.

But as one skeptical ECB whistleblower stated when the system was announced, was it really about that, or about England basically separating the national team from the county game in order to exploit the talent more for its own use? Because no sooner were England implementing the central contract system, were they also announcing a permanent change in their international calendar - increasing the minimum tests played per summer from 4 to 7, and the minimum ODIs from 5 to 10. It doesn't need much calculations to work out that such a minimum amount of matches would swallow the majority of time available, and that players would not be doing much other than driving between international matches and playing.

There are obvious positives - consistency is definitely one of them. In the decade either side of central contracts, the average changes for each test halved. The national team do indeed invest more time per player now they are bound to them. But, its hard to see how anything else is achieved with so much cricket played. International players in all formats who play are constantly on tour or in series, and its hardly like the calendar allows for much work on technical skills, nor gives times for coaches to really work with players. The separation of "Team England" has also had a negative cultural impact; a sort of us v them mentality, with the national setup seeing as being the only one fit for purpose, and counties increasingly being marginalized in the pathway of players. The national team with all its facilities and coaches feels so superior, a lack of trust has developed between the two.

Its got to the point where, as a county fan, you hope in certain ways that your county does not produce elite level players - you take the risk on a young prospect, you patiently wait for them to excel, and then as soon as they do they disappear for whatever portion of their career they play at their highest level. If they do return, they are probably a spent force or have had their confidence destroyed. Its no wonder why counties teams are so full of older, competent and average players. Its better to have an average player stick around than an excellent one you never see.

Central contracts would work if schedules actually allowed them to benefit; sadly, they just seem to exploit how much the ECB can get out of their talent. I get the impression that players are dying under workload than refreshed and well prepared to play.

Schedules

We mentioned above the problem, but it is deeper than that. Not only is there way too much cricket being played, but the time when it is played is also problematic. With the county season now squashed to the periphery of the summer, when the skies are more overcast, its colder and damper, there is more rain, you only really get one sort of pitch - one that is perfect for seamers, but nothing else. How we expect batsman coming out of a long winter to stand out when they are instantly confronted with death-trap wickets is beyond me.

I watched for instance the Northants game at Hove in May. It was a dark, grey day, humid day with rain threatening all day. A 40 year old Gareth Berg, bowling military medium trundlers, was transformed into Michael Holding at his peak - Travis Head, who averages 40 in 20 tests and is no slouch with the bat, couldnt get near any of it - Berg took 5/15 off about 15 overs. If such an average bowler way past pension age can reduce a test class bat to wafting at balls seaming like spinners, then how can anyone stand out? How can younger players be expected to excel.

The English summer should present a perfect progression of different conditions for players - April and May should be seamer friendly, pitches start to dry and flatten in June, July and August and increasing favour spinners and batters. The return of the autumn should once again help seamers. But the ECB instead changed the toss rules; a rule change they later quietly retracted having zero effect. How can spinners be expected to develop playing on early season-late season wickets? Put simply, they cant. As soon as pitches are conductive to spin the county championship lulls for two months.

And then there are national team players. The one or two games they can play per year is in bowler friendly conditions. If they fail, they are then into the international season where there are absolutely no longer format games to play in. And if they cant get back their form, they then have a tiny window of a game in September to suddenly change their form before being thrown into a winter test. Part of the preparation for test match cricket should be playing cricket to get into nick - schedules should allow for players to play for their counties inbetween each test series, including any scheduled for early winter by playing in a couple in September. Sadly, all our players end up going into games cold.

Divisional structure

When England separated into two divisions in 2000, the idea behind it was to boost attendances through the addition of promotion and relegation. While I was not immune to the idea 20 years ago, it is surprising that it has taken a further 21 years for the ECB to realise such a system was not working. Attendances have consistently reduced, so as a base level of success on the plan, it is sufficient to say it hasnt worked.

But this is not the reason why the split of the Divisional system is bad for the game. English cricketing "equality" for want of a better term has always been noticeably good since the adoption of a unified structure of fixtures. Studies into average points scored by teams between 1965 (When each team started to play the same number of games) and 1999 (when the two division structure acme in) show that county cricket was one of the most equitable sports in existence - the separation between sides based on long term points scoring was remarkably equal, and far trumped sports like football where certain dynasties dominate.

This also extends to "mobility".... ie how dynamic a teams fortunes can change year in, year out. When the ECB decided to change the county format in 1999, it posted its highest mobility rating - each team had an average 7 place difference in the table from the previous year. In such a system, teams rise and fall fast, so separating them made no sense. As a sort of great example of this, the teams relegated in 1999 had accounted for every single county championship win since Kent had won in 1978. The plan therefore pretty much relegated all the most successful teams over the last two plus decades, purely on the basis of a natural fluctuations at a given point. Glamorgan won the championship in 1998 and were relegated in 1999 when the divisions split.

The average mobility of 7 places per year dropped starkly - In some years it reduced to 1, the highest it has been is 3 since. Equality in points has also reduced - splitting the divisions into has the effect of pretty much artificially creating dynasty success in a selected few, while other smaller counties condemned to the lower reaches of the system have struggled to rise above it.

Such a thing is to be expected. The national selectors look to Division 1 as a higher quality format of the game, and are biased towards selecting players from it. As an indication of that, England's last 50 new caps includes only 6 players that had not made their case for selection in Division 1. Several of those players had played in Division 2, but were selected after short bursts of replicated form in Division 1. Out of those 6 players, pretty much all of them were picked for limited overs teams first and were given chances on that - only really Moeen Ali stands out as an example of a player who didnt - he won the county MVP by miles with a staggering all round display when he was picked to the test setup. Essentially, this shows you only being miles the best player statistically, and an allrounder making a case on both fronts, makes you selectable from Division 2.

All this means is players from certain counties jump ship. As soon as a player at certain counties looks good, he knows he needs to bugger off ASAP. This creates a cyclic effect where less desirable counties have no hope of ever maintaining success, and bigger well funded counties hoard players nearer the top. This has created a wasteland at the bottom of counties that have pretty much zero chance of competing, where some of them before this system came in had competed and won trophies (Gloucestershire's One Dominance, Leicestershire's late 90s dominance, Glamorgan winning in the late 90s, all examples of counties that did it before and drift around generally being uncompetitive).

The new system in place year held promise, but it still eventually separates into a divisional system, which makes no sense. Research into crowds suggest that such systems in cricket have zero effect on attendance, so why bother? And what is the point of a final to decide a trophy, when the top of Group 1 wins the CC anyway? It seems the sort of idiotic nonsense that only the ECB could dream up.

Maybe it will be a start though. At the very least, the fact the majority of matches will no longer relegate half the counties in the system to inferior status, and the fact that every team can in theory win, will be a much needed boost to the format. Its not perfect, but its better.

Kolpaks, Foreigners and Overseas players

It seems to sum up the bizarre attitude of the British public that, in the same summer a half-Chinese, half-Romanian girl born in Canada has become its new sporting hero, half of its football team were racially abuse widespread after the best tournament in nearly 60 years. At the very least we can categorize the British attitude towards its adopted sons and daughters representing Britain on a global scale as "problematic" and inconsistent. There is no greater indication of this than the ECB's attitude towards Kolpak's in the late 2000s; while England flourished to its best level in decades, driven by a core of excellent foreign born talent, the ECB was busy "winning the battle", as their press release had said, against the very right of these players to be part of the game.

I am left in no uncertain terms that such a policy was xenophobic - there is no alternative analysis that makes sense when the administrator of the game decides they dont want players in the game who, at the time, made up England's most reliable international players. The ECB prioritised English by birth over having a successful team at a time such a move made the least sense. And it ignored also a pretty simple fact that England had historically benefitted from such selections - when Robin Smith retired in the mid 90s, were there any better batsman in England's test team? The peak Kolpak moment - Leicestershire v Northants in 2008 - became the banner of the anti-Kolpak crowd. No one at any point seemed to be interested that, for a game between two teams that won a total of 6 out of 32 matches played between them in that year, so much talent was on display at the depths of the second division.

In fact, that Leicestershire gave a debut to James Taylor that year. Paul Nixon and Stuart Broad were capped in the winter of 07/08. Gurney would eventually win a cap a few years later - no one coming into the side after that year from the county has been capped since, and I cant remember anyone who has made even a remote case. The ECB changed the rules in 2009, it seems no co-incidence. Its almost like joining a team with some excellent, experienced pros, some with international experience, was a great jumping off point for the younger players in that Leicestershire side. Having to fight into the teams with talent around them made them better. I contrast that to more recent Leicestershire, a team that went a record amount of games with no CC win. A team with a batting line up with 4 players averaging in the 20s.... I wonder which of those Boeta Dippenaar and Ackerman were keeping out the side. Certainly not Allenby, an English qualified allrounder who averaged high 30s with the bat and 25 odd with the ball and never got picked to a single squad. So the English selectors probably werent watching anyway.

Kolpak's added quality, experience and depth to the county game. I never buy this idea that international cricketers dont get a chance with more foreigners in a domestic setup - if you cant beat 11 men to get in a county side, what exactly makes you think you can excel in the top level of the sport? The players who came into the national team when Kolpak was at its peak were of the best standard in a long stretch of English cricket history - its no coincidence. You could even take a more historical example - the change in overseas players rules in 1980s. England won 20 tests out of a 100 in the 80s. They followed it up with the acknowledged worst decade of their history in the 90s. Things didnt improve till the 2000s. The changes came after 1982...

And think back to those 2000s when England became a good side again - those performances in Asia against top class spinners. Is it any co-incidence that in the year England had their arguably greatest and most unlikely winter in modern history by beating Pakistan and Sri Lanka away on dustbowls, Saqlain Musthaq, Mushie, Warne, Murali and Anil Kumble were all playing in the county game? England outplayed India in 01-02 away too, and could have won both rain affected tests where they were well up in. Its almost like there is a link between quality foreign players playing in the domestic game, and the quality of output at the other end.

Of course, its unlikely players like this will ever come again, but obvious short-falls in quality being made up for the sake of it by English youngsters well below par has not worked. For all reasons, attendance, interest, quality of cricket it would make much more sense to allow as many quality overseas players that counties can afford or attract. Id much rather see South Africa's next 20 year old test prodigy lining up for a county side than a 23 year old who has played 45 games and averages 23 with the bat, which is the case with teams like Leicestershire.

The development system

As stated about central contracts, one of the main changes that brought in was to centralize player development to the national team. But this seemingly has created a two tier system where the national team attempt to create players in laboratory conditions, while the national team dont really focus on what is actually taking place. This creates a huge negative - when not being part of that system, and when successive coaches and selectors bring down the county game and its importance, the net effect is to send a message to your main talent pool saying whatever they do, if they are not deemed good enough based on whatever criteria the talent ID spotter decides, not much you can do will change that. Form isnt everything. I wonder what it must be like for the average 21 year old county player who didnt go through the pathway knowing you have very little chance of making the national gaze without supreme and consistent form banging on the door. Its demotivating and increases pressure on players, and I guess at an early stage many just settle for being average enough to stay on the wage bill for a few more years.

It would all make sense if England's recent restructuring in this regard had bore fruit - but it hasnt. Andy Flower was arguably a very good coach, but he took a team someone else picked and ran with it. He never really identified a single player who had not been identified previously and selected in other squads. And yet, somewhere along the line, his vision of identifying players has become the standardized norm. It is a bit like asking Nick Leeson to be your stock trading advisor - you build a castle on the sand, it sinks.

The system sounds just terrifyingly complex and scientific. Academic achievements, building leadership, testing a persons mental pressure points, testing personalities, building more rounded individuals -what the flaming f*** does being a rounded individual have to do with your ability to throw a piece of leather 22 yards? I have no doubt some of the best people in sporting history might have been the most unhinged, crazy people in history.

I could imagine Flower being confronted with the genius of Maradona and concluding he didn't have the maturity to cope with international cricket. Bit of a child from the wrong side of the tracks, no decorum, not a leader, bit of a thicko, argumentative and abrasive, too much of a wild cannon - fails on all metrics of the Flower test. Cant really remember anyone mentioning Maradona's GCSE results when he took it round half a team to score in a WC match on the way to winning the trophy.

Cricket is about talent. It is about how well you wield a bat or ball. But we have got lost in a rabbit hole of invisible pseudo-scientific nonsense. How many catches did you see Warne, Mark Waugh or Mark Taylor drop behind the wicket? Neither would have passed Flower's 5 factor fielding test - apparently catching the ball is about explosive power in the lower legs. Which is why England's superman dropped about 15 catches last test, while the barrel bellied Aussie probably put that many down as a combined total in their career.

I have studied these types of scouting reports too. They are available in the NFL to read about draft or trade prospects, and are the same sort of data approach nonsense that the ECB scouting team love to brag about. They make no sense.

"Player x slightly leans forward when throwing the ball" ..... said player's grade is then downgraded. Somewhere at the end the writer will mention nonchalantly that despite this he scored 100% throw accuracy with abnormal power behind the ball.

"Player z... perfect posture".... higher grade than X. Scores 23% on accuracy

You get the picture. These scouting systems are actually counter-intuitive. And when the ECB brag that they have done scouting work with the Cincinnati Bengals, a team who finished last and have a terrible record identifying talent, you also need to know that many people argue they are scientifically wrong. And thats the point. Its the en vogue system that is academically debunked widely.

The idea county cricket is permanently broken

England are ODI champions and made the last T20I WC final. The players that did that came from county cricket - proving that it is capable of producing great players.

England's recent white ball success is actually the biggest example in sport I could give about how doctrinal choices at the highest levels of the system can produce bad or good outcomes - Flower decided that for years the England ODI team should tactically setup in a way that was already 10-15 years out of date, and for which England never had a response to teams if their bowling had an under par day - England could not score 300 in an innings. The players he picked, how he drilled them to play, and the skills he wanted to identify for his team all had an impact on England's performance..... The fact was, England always had a better team in county cricket, the national side's focus was just on the wrong TYPE of skill and wrong type of player. Eventually England got the right man who seen the right approach, and the results were instantaneous.

One would be inclined to say that the focus of the national game has changed towards ODIs, but India have an excellent all format side and the BCCIs clear focus is the IPL; I cant see the link between favouring one format, and being utter trash in the other. I guess the important thing with this in mind is the IPL does not seemingly interfere with the test schedule as much in England, being put in the spring. T20s and ODI's are also more instinctive. A player without much of a warm up can go out and smash a few boundaries against a white ball that doesnt move, with the red ball the level of technique, patience and preparation is heightened. Maybe this is the reason England do better in the current schedules and work load in the less long formats.

I guess as a sort of conclusion, I dont believe that county cricket is broken permanently; but it is at the point it needs some TLC or the potential for it to get to that stage is definitely there. The longer England are a train-wreck waiting to , the more the public will turn away from the longer formats. And with the ECBs focus being on promoting the 100, do they care? the hundred could be a failure, and the ECB will throw everything into keeping its sinking ship alive, if its a success then they will also want to jump on that success.

Its hard to see the priorities of the ECB being placed in the right areas. I guess until the point form transforms into noticeably lower bank balances, they simply dont care about repairing the game at a domestic 4 day level.

After all, they care about the counties so much their landmark turd tournament decided to create new teams.
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Re: How to solve a problem like English test cricket?

Postby Durhamfootman » Wed Sep 15, 2021 8:53 pm

Its hard to see the priorities of the ECB being placed in the right areas. I guess until the point form transforms into noticeably lower bank balances, they simply dont care about repairing the game at a domestic 4 day level.

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Re: How to solve a problem like English test cricket?

Postby Durhamfootman » Wed Sep 15, 2021 9:00 pm

I confess to being conflicted over kolpaks. There were some great Kolpaks who were worth having for all the reasons you suggest about experience, guidance, development and so on, but there were a lot that were just there because they could paper over the gaps in a team without the expense of creating some sort of youth development system

I suppose we discovered which kolpaks were which this year when counties were forced to decide on how to use up overseas player allocations.
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Re: How to solve a problem like English test cricket?

Postby Arthur Crabtree » Thu Sep 16, 2021 1:18 am

sussexpob wrote:their lowest batting wicket average for the specialist slots since the 19th century, which they managed to replicate in the last two full test match years.


Quite a startling thought. I usually exclude the 19th century when looking at stats as they are such outriders.

Interesting points. Perhaps the excuse for the present system is that most strategies are put in place because previous strategies failed. Flower's regime was installed because of the disastrous Ashes tour of 06-07. And you exploit that failure to suit your agenda. Though it's less obvious why Moores/Flower's own failed ODI policies proved so hard to shift.

I get the impression that the wrong people get the credit for what works, or the blame for what doesn't, based on the prejudices of those in charge.
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Re: How to solve a problem like English test cricket?

Postby sussexpob » Thu Sep 16, 2021 10:21 am

Durhamfootman wrote:I confess to being conflicted over kolpaks. There were some great Kolpaks who were worth having for all the reasons you suggest about experience, guidance, development and so on, but there were a lot that were just there because they could paper over the gaps in a team without the expense of creating some sort of youth development system


I guess it comes down to personal interpretation, but my own take has always been that if English players in any sport cannot get past a foreign player of more dubious qualities, that is more reflective of a development system that is failing, rather than the fault of teams relying on cheap labour imports. There is obviously nuance to that provided by economics, as teams might save money knowingly by investing in short term aims rather than expensive academies - but the ECB controls the purse strings in county cricket, it has the power to mandate that the money it gives to counties is invested in certain amounts to academies and what not. One system does not have to mean the other suffers.

A good example of this is seen in football. For years people have bemoaned England not producing International talent because English players cant get games with so many foreign players in the league. This noise really peaked around the 2014 WC when Germany won, and people demanded restrictions on foreign players - with people pointing out the Bundasliga and La Liga, as Spain had been the dominant force in world football for years before that WC, had vastly more domestic players in them.

What was hardly mentioned was how many grassroots elite coaches each country had - I think England had only a 1,000 coaches given formal training, with reports suggesting 70,000 coaches operated in grassroots having undrgone zero coaching qualifications. Spain and Germany by memory had 15,000 to 10,000 respectively. It was clear that the FA was lagging miles behind in youth football. To put that number into context, Iceland were said to have had about 1,000 elite coaches when they dumped us out of the Euros in 2016 - a country of 300,000 people with as many qualified grassroots coaches as England.

The FA have started to sort this out and are now training 1,000s of coaches, and out of nowhere English talent is raining down in the PL. The amount of foreign players increased slightly in the last 5 years, but with a little investment in the last 7 years, those 13-14 year olds that were developed by proper coaches from 2014 are now hitting the team and are making the grade.

The reason why Germany and Spain has less foreign players is, their domestic players were developed in better systems and made the grade. I think its as simple as that. And now England are doing the same, they will see the same effect.

And the same is true of cricket. If the ECB were doing the right thing with academies and bringing players up correctly, the fact a Saffer is in the team averaging low 30s with the bat per season should be no barrier to a quality youth prospect.

But atm its more a case that the low 30s Saffer has been replaced by playres incapable of living up to that.
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