Saturday 14 March 2009

Defeated England out of ideas

Not many people would have expected England's habitually fragile batting line-up to reel off three totals easily in excess of 500; nor the West Indies, having dramatically snatched an early lead, to hold out for another three Test matches and secure a long-awaited series victory. But however surprising the result, a series which featured the odd moment of high drama among much turgid cricket confirmed rather than altered most well-held opinions. West Indies are still a mediocre side, although the excessively flat pitches played to their core batting strength, and capitalised on England's glaring deficiencies.

England possess not one seam bowler who can stride back to his mark all day with the captain's full confidence. The old guard - Flintoff, Harmison, even Sidebottom - all look finished in one sense or another. James Anderson and Stuart Broad both remain on the cusp of genuine utility as Test bowlers, although together they are a serviceable new ball pair, sorely lacking the support of an enforcer, which only Flintoff at full cry - an increasingly distant prospect - is capable of being amongst the present field. In desperation, England gave a debut to Amjad Khan, who brought no-balls aplenty, and more fire in words than deeds. As England cry out for a bowler who can bring express pace or steepling bounce, old Duncan Fletcher nostrums ring loud in the distance. Those who scoffed at his inflexibility in bowling selections, his insistence on ability and potential over domestic performance, may choke now. Look no further than Ryan Sidebottom, the darling of the Peter Moores regime, the anti-Fletcher. England had one good year from him, and in return have carried all winter a battered wreck of a bowler.

And as they finally look to have given up on long-lost causes, Steve Harmison prominent among them, England look around to find no-one ready to graduate to the highest level; somehow the prospects who should have taken flight in the two years since the last Ashes remain rooted to the ground. Where now Tremlett, Plunkett, Mahmood, Onions? Injured, discarded or ignored. Anything but cultivated. And now England are scrabbling on their knees, desperately trying to salvage the scraps of a generation they let slip through their fingers.

England now head into the limited overs segment of the tour with a captain who will don the blue kit by sole dint of the pips on his shoulder, and an acting coach who may or may not soon be permanently appointed to the post. Andy Flower is a demonstrably capable man of cricket, but his links with past regimes and the evidence of the current tour should be enough for the ECB to rule out his candidacy. A new voice is badly needed, a forced re-evaluation of common approach and attitude. The sort of cosy axis Strauss and Flower have apparently formed is ideal in prosperous times, but England in their current state require something more like shock treatment. No matter that there is little time before this summer's Ashes for a new man to make his mark; the resurgence of Ricky Ponting's Australia (that was quick) suggests that ship is well and truly sailing.