The English have never much liked referendums even though they appear to be back in favour. Andrew Strauss, in his first outing as cricket director, outlined one of the problems encountered by Peter Moores. “He very quickly got to the stage where every game was a referendum on whether the coach should stay or go,” he said, explaining the decision to sack Moores. The implication was that this burden would somehow disappear along with the departure of the England coach.
Strauss, the ultimate pragmatist, had himself disappeared into a rare flight of fancy – just as he must have done when he came up with the brainwave of inviting Kevin Pietersen to be a one-day cricket adviser even though he was not trustworthy enough to have in the team.
There will still be plenty of referendums this summer, starting with the first Test against New Zealand at Lord’s on Thursday, but this time it will be Strauss under the spotlight. Lose to the Kiwis, fall behind in the Ashes and there will be no respite; the unprecedented polarisation that has beset English cricket will not magically disappear. Nor will the peculiar pressure on the players to justify the decisions of their employers vanish into thin air just because Moores has gone.
Timing is everything in cricket and for 15 months or more the ECB has been horrendously out of kilter: in the sacking of Pietersen rather than being so conventional as to just drop him; in participating in those ridiculous confidentiality agreements; in the sacking of Alastair Cook as one-day captain (a sound idea in August, a desperate one in December): in the remarks of Colin Graves, who has finally taken over as ECB chairman, that intentionally or not revived Pietersen’s hopes of a comeback before leaving him “devastated” and suddenly looking like a victim of the abuse of trust rather than a perpetrator; in the sacking of Moores, who learned of his fate via the media; and finally – and I suppose least culpably since batsmen don’t score 355 not out that often – in the timing of Strauss’s meeting with Pietersen to inform him that it was all over with England unless he fancied coming on board in some sort of advisory capacity, which was as likely as Nigel Farage agreeing to lend a hand to Nicola Sturgeon.
“Trust” has been the buzzword of the week. And we soon learned that it had broken down between Pietersen and the amorphous body that is the ECB. Petrol had been poured into a diesel engine and there was no breakdown service in sight. Now, trust is a fine thing to have in a cricket team or, indeed, in any walk of life but I found myself nodding at a Peter Trego tweet – I never thought it would come to this – which read: “Has trust ever won a game of cricket? I thought it was runs and wickets.” Trust was not that rewarding throughout the World Cup. It is quite handy to have the best players in the team if at all possible.
Outside England, they think we are all mad. Even Kumar Sangakkara, the sagest of cricketing sages, thinks we are mad. They cannot understand how it comes to pass that those in charge have chosen to ostracise one of their best players and that they do not, at least, allow him to be available for selection. Just about every Test nation, often with more slender resources than England, finds a way, however flaky the esprit de corps might become. This has some relevance since at the top of Strauss’s agenda is the pursuit of a new coach, and most of the likelier candidates are from overseas.
Four of the first five names at the top of the bookies’ lists are Australian (the exception is the stand-in coach, Paul Farbrace, who is there alongside Jason Gillespie, Justin Langer, Tom Moody and Trevor Bayliss). Yet there is no guarantee that overseas coaches will wish to operate in a system where it has already been established that Pietersen is unpickable and where the identity of the captains in all forms of the game has been decided for the 2015 season. Strauss clearly has the power to make all those decisions, which makes Michael Vaughan’s observations that there were too many restrictions in the post of cricket director hard to understand (unless the return of Pietersen was a sticking point).
This is something for Gillespie, the strong favourite for the job, to consider seriously. Moody already has. Moody was sounded out by Paul Downton before Moores was appointed 15 months ago and he withdrew his interest partly because he was uneasy about being told whom he could or could not pick (he also sensed that there was a determination to appoint an Englishman back then). The notion that prominent overseas coaches will be falling over themselves to take the England job may be mistaken, especially if the candidates study how the ECB has been operating over the past year or so. This also means that the post may have to be a remarkably lucrative one to entice the best candidates.
For the moment Farbrace has his chance to oversee affairs alongside Strauss and Cook, and their first challenge is far from straightforward. The Kiwis are arguably stronger than they have ever been. But they will have to be remarkably adaptable as well since four of their key men – captain Brendon McCullum, Kane Williamson, Tim Southee and Trent Boult – are still in India.
At their best Boult and Southee are dangerous opening bowlers, especially if the Duke ball is inclined to swing in St John’s Wood on Thursday. This pair will test not only Cook but also Test cap No666, Adam Lyth, who will be making his debut. He will hope to survive as Cook’s opening partner longer than Nick Compton, Michael Carberry, Sam Robson and Jonathan Trott and he will do well to achieve that. It does not look an easy summer to be a Test opener. Leaving aside the excellence of the Kiwis, the Mitchells (Starc and Johnson) are around the corner with Ryan Harris and Peter Siddle lending a hand.
Beyond the advent of Lyth and the never-ending hullabaloo about Pietersen are concerns over Stuart Broad’s position in the team. He has undergone a metamorphosis, a rare and unhappy one, over the past 18 months. He was once a fast bowler who could bat; years ago there were hopes that he would be a genuine all-rounder. Now he is a fast bowler full stop. He is competing – not very effectively – with Jimmy Anderson for the No11 slot. Broad has acknowledged that his trust in his ability to bat has been utterly eroded and the recent figures back that up. In the Caribbean there were three ducks and a 10.
He is a diminished cricketer and this must be hard to live with. It requires a special kind of bravery once the batting equivalent of the yips has taken root and it must be incredibly tough for him just to walk out there with his pads on as well as being a sight that is disheartening for his team-mates to behold. Broad knows that he will be constantly peppered by every fast bowler he encounters and that he no longer has any sort of response.
In the Caribbean his bowling held up reasonably well, though it is an increasing strain for him to bowl quickly. And now he has to be judged purely as a bowler. However, the expectation is that he will play at Lord’s, provided he has recovered from what we were told was an untimely illness, leading him to miss a scheduled press conference in London last week. In another era Broad would be the main talking point before England’s Test summer, but other diversions remain and unless the team performs very well they will not go away in what promises to be another divisive time for English cricket.
