20th May 2015
Silence, so they say, is golden and after an abysmal 18 months running English cricket, the England and Wales Cricket Board (ECB) probably knows this maxim better than most. Rewind to the summer of 2013 and England had just completed a third-straight Ashes win and life was good. Fast forward a few months and the wheels fell off in spectacular fashion.
A 5-0 whitewash at the hands of the Aussies was followed by a dismal home series defeat to Sri Lanka. After a morale boosting victory over India, focus was switched from test- to limited overs cricket in preparation for the Cricket World Cup with even more disastrous consequences: a home series loss to India before a 5-2 defeat to Sri Lanka.
England then sacked ODI captain Alastair Cook in the build up to the event in Australia and New Zealand and what followed was an abysmal series of performances in which new skipper Eoin Morgan’s side played outdated cricket.
This culminated with the team being eliminated at the hands of Bangladesh and finishing the group stage with only two wins, those coming against the mighty Scotland and Afghanistan; poor even by England’s standards.
A return to test cricket against the West Indies provided a brief respite as England won the second test match in Grenada to lead the series 1-0 but any green shoots of recovery were brutally trampled upon when yet another spectacular batting collapse resulted in a series tying loss.
It was only four years ago that England were crowned the number one team in test cricket. Now, on the eve of a tricky series against Brendan McCullum’s New Zealand, Cook’s men can slump as low as seventh – simply unacceptable for a country with England’s resources.
As bad as the team has performed out in the middle over the past 18months, however, the ECB’s efforts off the field have put those to shame in terms of their ineptitude.
The downward spiral began with Paul Downton’s decision to “sack” Kevin Pietersen in the wake of the most recent Ashes humiliation.
If there was ever an example of how not to conduct a dismissal this was it, a master class in incompetence. Pietersen, who was England’s highest run scorer during the Australia debacle, was very publically discarded from the England setup without explanation and the fall out has been nuclear ever since.
If the ECB had said the time had come to freshen up the England team, and after a 5-0 thrashing they would have been well within their rights to given Pietersen’s age and dodgy knees, then it is likely that there would have been few ramifications after the decision.
But their decision to seemingly pin all the ills of that tour – and the subsequent gagging of information that followed – turned the whole affair into a huge media circus.
Pietersen is one of those cricketers who divides opinion – an absolute genius with the willow in his hands but whose ability is matched only by the size of his ego. As a result many were happy to see him go but just as many wanted to know why it was just Pietersen who was being made to take the rap for England’s shambolic Ashes defence.
The course of action taken by the ECB that day has hung over them ever since and has recently reared its ugly head once again. This resulted in Downton being hoisted by his own petard and losing his job as Managing Director of the England cricket team last month.
In between Pietersen’s sacking and Downton’s subsequent firing, the ECB made a complete hash of the captaincy of the England ODI squad.
With the possible exception of the man himself, everyone knows Alastair Cook isn’t a limited overs cricketer anymore and there’s nothing wrong with that. Maybe he once was but the game has changed and power hitters are driving the game forward and that’s simply not his game.
Cook’s inability to get runs was affecting his captaincy and vice versa and it was clear as day for all to see that he wasn’t the man to lead England at the World Cup. Although it must be said that he didn’t help the cause by stubbornly refusing to resign, the smart move would have been to remove him from the squad after the India series defeat and to spare him all the media glare that inevitably followed when both he and his team struggled in Sri Lanka.
This would also have allowed Eoin Morgan more time to bed in as captain of the squad and shape them to his thinking but no, the ECB continued to back Cook to hilt… right up until the sacked him on the eve of the World Cup.
After an unprecedented spell of playing limited overs cricket ahead of a World Cup England’s plans were once again in disarray and the rest as they say is history: a thoroughly humiliating experience for players and fans alike.
Most coaches would have paid for such a disaster with their job but Peter Moores, in his second stint as head coach following his earlier poor showing which resulted in his sacking (only England would rehire a person who failed first time around), was allowed to keep his job ahead of a huge summer for English cricket.
Desperate to put their hideous limited overs cricket form behind them, England headed for the Caribbean to take on the West Indies.
They did so with the latest ECB faux pas ringing in their ears. This one came from Colin Graves, the incoming ECB chairman who said he expected England to beat the ‘mediocre’ Windies; not quite on a par with the late Tony Greig declaring he was going to ‘make them grovel’ but they were words to inspire the hosts nonetheless.
Regardless of your private preconceptions of a team, you should always show your opponents the proper respect. Graves failed to do so and England came away from the Caribbean with a draw when they should have easily won.
Graves, the former Yorkshire County Cricket Club Chairman, was supposed to be the man who came in and rescue the ECB but in reality his first few acts have turned it into an even bigger joke especially when he was criticised by Cook, his obvious subordinate.
Following his comments on the West Indies, Graves appeared to hold out an olive branch to Pietersen over a possible return to the England set up if he found himself a county and started scoring runs again.
Pietersen, who has never been shy in stating his desire to play for England again, did all that was asked of him, culminating in that magical 355not out against Leicestershire only to be told by Andrew Strauss, the new Director of Cricket, and new ECB Chief Executive Tom Harrison that he would not be welcomed back into the squad on the basis of a lack of trust – more on that later.
Pietersen was rightly furious by this, especially after being told by Harrison that he wasn’t being called into the meeting to be told he wasn’t going to be selected. KP insists that he was offered a ‘clean slate’ by Graves, which the new chairman has subsequently denied – the inmates are clearly running the asylum.
So far Graves has managed to drop both the catches that came his way; impressively both nicks to first slip came before he’d even officially started the job – even by the ECB standards this is impressive buffoonery. Even Sepp Blatter, the chief of all things wrong in sport, would feel that FIFA is doing a great job if he passed a sideways glance at the ECB… Undoubtedly he feels that way anyway but that’s a story for another day.
Fortunately for Graves, his clownish beginnings have been overshadowed by the ECB’s ability to leak all and sundry to the media, something English cricket’s brass seems particularly adept at.
It started with the initial sacking of Pietersen when his ‘rap sheet’ was leaked to press and it continued this year when the media was made aware that Moores was being relieved of his duties before the man himself had been informed.
Whatever you think of his coaching abilities, and personally he never seemed up to the job, Moores seems to be a genuinely likable man - just listen to how highly any of the current England players speak of him – and was thoroughly undeserving of the manner of his dismissal.
Quite what any one at the ECB was thinking when the decision to leak his sacking was made is anyone’s guess and the organization has been rightly savaged as a result; you might expect children of a certain age to act in this manner but certainly not the heads of a multi-million pound operation.
Then came another leak about Pietersen following his meeting with Strauss and Harrison when various media outlets were alerted to the fact that he wasn’t going to be offered a way back into the England setup moments after the meeting concluded. You couldn’t even make this stuff up.
To leak information once is bad, twice is disgraceful and three times is just downright scandalous. Maybe I’m being naïve and this is how things are conducted but right now the ECB needs the fans and the media on its side while the team is struggling and this is definitely not the way to go about matters or winning us over again.
Finally we come to Strauss himself. This is the man who is supposed to restore England to the top of the cricketing pile and, while there’s every chance he might succeed (although I think Michael Vaughan would have been a better man), he’s not made the most auspicious of starts.
Apparently, the ECB doesn’t ‘trust’ Kevin Pietersen… The last time I looked, trust never won cricket matches; incredible skill with the bat yes, trust no. Plus the majority of the people that matter at the ECB are newcomers and have had no prior dealings with KP before. The only ones who have are Strauss and Cook who have previous with England’s highest run scorer in all formats.
Now, Andrew, as far as I can see your remit is to make England the best team in the world. For me this job doesn’t allow you to allow your personal issues and grievances dictate policy. You can insist that the ECB doesn’t trust Pietersen but quite frankly no one believes you and your stance on this has turned English cricket into an even bigger laughing stock. Not a great first couple of days in the job.
The Aussies in particular are over the moon at England’s insistence on hindering its own team. It’s been well documented that members of the Australian team don’t get on with Michael Clarke but it doesn’t stop them from playing together as a team. If certain members of the ECB are incapable of dealing with KP then they arguably shouldn’t be in the job in the first place.
What then made the whole situation even more farcical was Strauss’ revelation that he’d asked Pietersen to take an advisory role to help develop limited overs cricket in England.
Now hang on, Andrew… if the ECB can’t trust him to play cricket for England how could it possibly trust him to shape the future of English limited overs cricket? A farce of the highest order, it’s little wonder #StraussLogic was trending on Twitter.
Strauss might as well have flow a huge “Neither Cook or I want Pietersen back in the team” banner over Lords and have been done with it – at least they would have been honest and ironically, trustworthy. Trying to pull the wool over the eyes of the fans and media isn’t a great way to start a new role.
If, for example, they’d told Pietersen that the England middle order is well set, in form and there’s no place in the side for you right now – as is arguably the case – this problem might have simply gone away.
What’s more astonishing is after this whole sorry saga, there are rumblings that the door might not be closed for Pietersen long-term and this sordid affair threatens to drag the ECB and English cricket further into the mire.
We now face four incredibly tough test series in the coming months: New Zealand and Australia at home, Pakistan in the UAE and South Africa in South Africa. It’s conceivable that England could lose every one of those and begin the first one without a full time coach.
This is the ECB’s next priority and they must get it right. Jason Gillespie seems the obvious candidate and let’s hope that Strauss is able to convince him to take the job for he seems to be the man who can get England enjoying their cricket once again.
If this does happen, there is a core of good cricketers there just waiting to be moulded into an excellent team and this is where the focus must now lie.
Slightly concerning is that Gillespie says there has been no contact from the ECB yet Justin Langer, Strauss’ former Middlesex team-mate has spoken to the new Director of Cricket. Strauss admitted that Gillespie was in the frame, so why no contact? Why allow Langer the opportunity to embarrass you further by admitting an approach was made?
I guess the simple answer is that he needed to check on Langer’s availability before interviewing him for the role but now he has rejected it, the way forward seems clear. Let’s just hope that the new coach is given enough freedom to be able to do his job as he sees fit.
Pietersen aside, I believe Strauss, Graves and Harrison have English cricket’s best interests at heart and I believe they will prove a success but for now they all simply need to keep their heads down and hopefully the England team can let their cricket do the talking for them.