India tour of Eng, June 20 - Aug 4

[meninblue]

Yes, I expected England to bring a couple of pace bowlers in for Old Trafford. I guess they gambled on winning the series there.

Does ECB has sucession plan to replace Jimmy, Staurt Broad and Graeme Swann. Swann actually stopped playing long long time back but still England are not having a good specialist spinner. Add Flintoff to the bowling attack. But, Ben Stokes is highest wicket taker in this series on flat wickets and has also taken wickets in other series, and has replaced Flintoff quite well. Is it right to say that? What is the succession plan startegy w.r.t Jimmy, Broad and Graeme Swann or are they too as clueless as some other boards.

[Arthur Crabtree]

England haven't replaced Swann and getting a spinner that good isn't predictable in a country that offers them very little opportunity. Which even closes down fc cricket in the usual dry months. Moeen was ok for a while but started to bowl too fast. Leach has been inconsistent but had some good days and was popular. It's good that they have tried some specialist spinners, because the post-Swann position was to just not bother looking.

England's first choice pace attack is probably Atkinson, Archer and Wood, but they are injured so often the tag is meaningless. I think they have never actually played at the same time. And the latter two are no longer young. It's the opposite of the Aussie attack which has been astonishingly durable. Ollie Robinson has a superb record but isn't liked by the selectors and is getting on now too. Olly Stone has looked interesting but is always injured.

Some bowlers' careers seem to pass in a constant state of injury.

[meninblue]

England haven't replaced Swann and getting a spinner that good isn't predictable in a country that offers them very little opportunity. Which even closes down fc cricket in the usual dry months. Moeen was ok for a while but started to bowl too fast. Leach has been inconsistent but had some good days and was popular. It's good that they have tried some specialist spinners, because the post-Swann position was to just not bother looking.

England's first choice pace attack is probably Atkinson, Archer and Wood, but they are injured so often the tag is meaningless. I think they have never actually played at the same time. And the latter two are no longer young. It's the opposite of the Aussie attack which has been astonishingly durable. Ollie Robinson has a superb record but isn't liked by the selectors and is getting on now too. Olly Stone has looked interesting but is always injured.

Some bowlers' careers seem to pass in a constant state of injury.

Thanks for the information, Arthur

Surprised to know that ECB think tank did not bother to took for specialist post Swann. That is so many years and so many tests given that England are actually one of the teams which play most tests (in top 3 test matches played by teams per year is my guess if not the top most). Add the factor that with Ben Stokes and Joe Root giving decent overs every innings for so many years, England really could have looked at specialist bowlers across all the bowling spots in the 11. Now England also have the luxury of a more than decent wicket-keeper batsman (Jamie Smith) to try a optimal team combination. Moeen never really looked like a specialist bowler as he did not have the many variations a specialist bowler has apart from the usual off-spin. No doosra, no carrom ball, no floater as well, no dip and not using flight much like good spinners do. Well, tough for all-rounder to have these skills but Moeen can only do so much as a non-specialist spinner which is understandable. So it seems that the strategy itself was not there.

From the names you mentioned, Jofra Archer, Mark Wood, Gus Atkinson seem to have got debut at 25 and late in case of Olly Stone and Ollie Robinson. Personal opinion is that it is tough for pace bowlers to debut so late, because by the time they settle they are already nearing 30 in most cases. Almost all pacers get injured, they also lose an year or so. So would it not be better that pace bowlers are given debut at 18 - 20 years of age which to a certain extent covers the time away from game during peak youth and also allows the pacer to comeback or bowl a lot of years when they are settled. Would like to know your opinion about debut age of England pacers as you have more information about England cricket, their injuries in context of history, option pool. But I think for India as a country which produces so less pacers, the debut age has to be 20 to try, develop, get most if one is a good find.

Indeed Australia has a nice supply of pacers - factory like situation. And I don't think it is about luck. It has to be about many important things being done right by the concerned people.

[Arthur Crabtree]

Mo got a surprising amount of loop and drift at first. Then the coaches became convinced he had to bowl much quicker and he lost it. He was actually surprisingly good for a while for a batter-who-bowls that seemed to be there as a token spinner.

[meninblue]

Mo got a surprising amount of loop and drift at first. Then the coaches became convinced he had to bowl much quicker and he lost it. He was actually surprisingly good for a while for a batter-who-bowls that seemed to be there as a token spinner.

Have to appreciate if an all-rounder spinner has the ability to get drift. That's a bonus !

[sussexpob]

England haven't replaced Swann and getting a spinner that good isn't predictable in a country that offers them very little opportunity. Which even closes down fc cricket in the usual dry months

The problem runs deeper than that, because any county that produces a pitch that remotely helps spin bowling just ends with players doing well on that surface being told they can only do well in helpful conditions. Back when Sussex had Mushie, judging on the media you'd have thought Hove pitches resembled day 5 Galle pitches in the Murali heyday, when in reality they were just let to be a little drier. Taunton has generally been the most spin friendly pitch in the UK, and look how Jack Leach was treated when it was clear he was a standout prospect - told he was a chucker, told he had a bad attitude - Flower dreamed up all kind of nonsense to not pick him, because deep down Flower assumed the Taunton pitch was responsible for his success.

The same is true of Swann. In the late 1990s/early 2000s the pitch at Wantage Road took some spin, and Northants had 3 spinners who were doing well - Michael Davies, John Brown and Swann. Davies record particularly was brilliant, and Brown had a year around 2000 where he was one of the standout county performers in the country - Davies retired by 24, Brown faded away, Swann also faded away and was a left field pick. I think he had one ODI on the 1999/2000 tour to SA at Kimberley where he bowled something like 4 or 5 overs on a road, and never played again. Davies and Brown both went on A tours, Brown I think went to Sri Lanka in 2001 and didn't play - but then they faded. Davies ended up at Essex, got about 2 games in April to prove himself, and then they dropped him never to return. Davies I think averaged around 25 in FC. Amazing when you think England were picking GIles and Gareth Batty you had someone like that who could not even get a county game. But yes.... those wickets were Wantage Rd wickets, so it didn't matter. 1 game in Chelmsford in April, dont look like Warne instantly? Binned.

In the absence of any good spinners, England traditionally used to pick the spinner who was the best sort of bloke. All of the Giles, Dawson, Salisbury's, Batty's, Borthwick's all became Head Coaches and Captain's, were all the "right sort of stuff". Funny how in the absence of quality, England always go for that sort of player.

[Arthur Crabtree]

The delay in selecting Swann is one of the major goofs in England selection. It's easy to get the impression that England just weren't interested in the spin option, preferring an all rounder who could field. I get the impression England are trying harder now, but even so, Dawson looks like a throwback.

[sussexpob]

From the names you mentioned, Jofra Archer, Mark Wood, Gus Atkinson seem to have got debut at 25 and late in case of Olly Stone and Ollie Robinson. Personal opinion is that it is tough for pace bowlers to debut so late, because by the time they settle they are already nearing 30 in most cases

Andy Flower believed that he could create cricketers from people with academic capacity, and the pathway he created was more concerned with test young players capacity to absorb what they were taught, rather than any skills they actually possessed. By testing young players personalities, intangibles and academic success as a barometer for cricketing capacity, the net effect is a huge class division in the game where people from private schools dominate the lower ranks - because they have access to better education, and were deemed better people than working class kids who might have social issues that were deemed problematic. England after Flower took over the academy have had record outputs of private school players, and even fielded a whole 11 players from private schools at various stages - which, lets face it, was what Flower wanted. Elite people = elite performance. The pathway defines the opportunities you get. The big separation is around 13 when counties start to pick you up, and cricket festival XIs pit you against the best of your age group, after which testing picks out those who are deemed good enough to move on. This then continues to the youth lions at 19, and the full Lions team after county cricket performance. So no player really under 22 should, in theory, have completed the pathway.

For those that don't make the list early in their career, you have more to overcome. No academy coaching or contract means you probably start in club cricket, then minor counties, then counties, then Lions - each say 1-2 years to prove your worth at each level, so if you start at 18 you can see... it takes long.

You end up with state school educated players like Olly Stone and Mark Wood who played minor counties and had to work their way up.... and then Josh Hull, who got debuted having barely taken a professional wicket because he went to the same school as several landed aristocrats. Zak Crawley was one of the first big prospects born out of this pathway system, and England are so desperate for him to be an example of its success, he has been picked 60 times with deserving anyone at all - after all, the whole point is given enough time, he has the capacity to learn.

[sussexpob]

Worth noting that the pathway system Flower put in place is actively hostile to CC performance, because players who perform irrespective of the decisions made earlier in their career tends to highlight the errors of the pathway itself. You end with bowlers taking bags of wickets, and an English Cricket Director finding ways to downplay or explain it, while promoting others that counter act that reasoning.

Just take Ollie Robinson, a player who in his teen years had some issues with professionalism. He came into the side, had the best average recorded for an England bowler in 70 years, and has been dropped because he's not fit enough - being replaced by a player who at 26 had missed 4 entire CC seasons with injury, and has been overlooked for a player who has missed 4 years injured without playing a game, and will be overlooked for others like Wood who have missed 90% of the games in their career. Of course, this is total tosh. Robinson's face doesnt fit.

In the end, we get players like Josh Hull who went to school with 9 hereditary peers who gets a test cap after taking 5 FC at an astronomically high average, and Cook who has took 300 wickets at 17 in the last few years getting one test after years of being brilliant and then dumped after one test. Jamie Porter, born in the working class poor East End, was playing club cricket at 21/22 years old.... he never got capped despite being consistently the best bowler in England.

Rob Key will tell you he's not fit enough, quick enough, swing and seam dont matter or translate into test cricket - as if Jimmy Anderson was bowling 95mph and was rubbish. And then when Josh Hull comes into the side and bowls 77mph, its all about how tall he is, or he's got an outstanding prospect despite not being able to take wickets vs Glocestershires second XI on a green top.

[sussexpob]

Laughably, Rob Key tasked himself and Claire Conner to produce a new pathway action plan in the wake of the Yorkshire racism scandal, pledging to create new ways of getting working class and ethnic minority representation into the English game, and creating the blueprint to do so.

I guess we can gauge the honesty in trying to tackle these class/race issues by the sole fact that the pathway action plan itself acknowledged that evidence shows the biggest killer to working class and minority players is the 8-13 year old age group. This age group is solely about coaching talent, after which at 13-14 players are then segregated on quality and are elevated through the pathway. Working class/minority kids dont have the funding or coaching at that level, and those that do have comparable levels progress better/as much as their private educated counterparts. It was recommended to boost funding in this group to almost entirely solve the problem. Instead, the ECB removed all coaching and funding at under 13 level, and entirely closed the pathway to age groups below this level.

An action so obvious in its intention, it needs no explanation. Well I say that, but it's the fat controller..... we can't write off the possibility anything past the reading level of "Spot the Dog has a picnic" is within his level of intellectual comprehension.

[sussexpob]

The delay in selecting Swann is one of the major goofs in England selection. It's easy to get the impression that England just weren't interested in the spin option, preferring an all rounder who could field. I get the impression England are trying harder now, but even so, Dawson looks like a throwback.

The irony is, Fletcher was successful because his knowledge of county cricket was excellent, he knew from first hand knowledge of watching the game which players were technically good and had ideas how to turn these players into test quality cricketers. Overtime, a natural distance built where Fletcher no longer knew the county game, and his selections became more and more random. This was accelerated by the new era of the ECB centralising responsibility for the national team players wages/contracts/workloads and development. Team England felt like they existed in a parallel dimension to the county game by the end of the Fletcher era. If I wanted to be harsh, I would say that Fletcher then got drunk on his own successes also - he started to believe particularly with faster pacemen that he could pick quick bowlers and turn them into gems like he had with a lot of batters - and then we ended with guys like Saj Mahmood being utterly rubbish. If I wanted to be generous, it might be Fletcher having less exposure to games making similar judgements on less information than he had in the past.

The tonic to that was picking another guy who knew the county game well, Moores. Flower never identified a single talented player, all his selections were basically Moores or left over Fletcher picks. It was Moores who went straight away to select Swann.... Once Flower burnt through the players Moores gifted him, the team imploded. Then riding on Moores success, became a talent development guru who never seemingly identified any talent..... Unsurprisingly we were rubbish until Flower decided to bugger off, and got instantly better once his toxicity left the building at the ECB.

Its depressing that we are once more entering a period where national administrators are turning their back on the county game. History has proven the first step to success is embracing it... and failure comes to those who do not.

[Arthur Crabtree]

Stokes is out and Bethell replaces him. Pope captains. Big changes in the pace attack.

Zak Crawley, Ben Duckett, Ollie Pope (captain), Joe Root, Harry Brook, Jacob Bethell, Jamie Smith (wicketkeeper), Chris Woakes, Gus Atkinson, Jamie Overton, Josh Tongue.

[sussexpob]

Nothing says test match form like bowling 14 overs of your sides 200 sent down in their last game, and producing a run a ball 0/81.

Does Overton have a dossier of the fat controller's favourite dogging spots? If England lose a tight match and Overton has a bad match, these are decisions that should cost jobs.

[Arthur Crabtree]

Bats a bit!

[sussexpob]

I mean, at this point I dont get it. Picking Josh Hull with no FC record makes more sense if you believe he has potential, but a 31 year old who has for all intense and purposes retired from First Class cricket, has a meh career in the format despite playing mostly during a team of vastly declining scores, is not fit enough to seemingly bowl hardly any overs, has zero form at all, and was so utterly rubbish in his first test he was dropped for three years.

Under what conceivable reason has he been picked?