ENGLAND’S ‘BEST CHANCE’?
“Without a doubt, this is our best chance.” At first glance, Alastair Cook’s assessment of England’s chances at next year’s World Cup looks at best optimistic, at worst bordering on the delusional. England have been in greater states of flux than they are now prior to tournaments but bookies by and large have them as 10-1 sixth-favourites – have they really never been better bets than that? The Spin took a look at the 10 previous tournaments to see whether or not Cook actually had a point.
1975: Of the 15 ODIs England had played before the inaugural tournament they had lost just four so they weren’t exactly no-hopers. But West Indies had a formidable side (Clive Lloyd, Viv Richards, Gordon Greenidge … the whole team basically) as did Australia (Dennis Lillee, Jeff Thomson, the Chappells). No one had quite worked out how to approach the one-day game (particularly India) and on home soil, England could probably be considered third favourites at the outset. Cook and co won’t be that come February.
Did England have a better chance of winning the 1975 World Cup than they do in 2015? Yes, probably.
1979: Kerry Packer problems meant Australia picked an unfamiliar side, while England had a few young (ish) bucks to offer some pep – the 22-year-olds David Gower and Mike Gatting and a 25-year-old Ian Botham. The problem was that by now they had to contend with a legendary West Indian side who were streets ahead of the rest. England had lost all three home ODIs against the Windies in 1976 but had gone unbeaten in ODIs at home in 1978, so would have been justifiably confident of going deep into the competition – and it’s worth remembering that back then you did not have to go too deep: three wins were enough to reach the final.
Did England have a better chance of winning the 1979 World Cup than they do in 2015? Yes, probably.
1983: Bob Willis’s side could not have been called unprepared: they played 13 ODIs in six weeks or so in Australia and New Zealand in January and February. But they had won only four and finished the tour with a quartet of batterings – seven wickets, six wickets, 103 runs and 84 runs – at the hands of the Kiwis. With New Zealand waiting in the group stages, for the first time progression wasn’t the sure thing it had seemed in 1975 and 1979. Still, in an eight-team tournament on home soil they were better than sixth-favourites.
Did England have a better chance of winning the 1983 World Cup than they do in 2015? Yes, probably.
1987: England faced a few challenges: no Gower (the leading runscorer in 1983), no Botham, the tournament on the subcontinent for the first time, the first 50-over tournament with field restrictions (playing against England’s hitherto reasonably successful steady-progess-with-wickets-in-hand strategy), in the same group as Pakistan and West Indies … but they had beaten both of those teams regularly in their warm-ups earlier in the year and the ICC rankings, had they been around at the time, would have seen England enter the tournament as the world’s No1 side.
Did England have a better chance of winning the 1987 World Cup than they do in 2015? Yes, probably.
1992: Perhaps the last time England were ahead of the curve in ODI cricket, with the team packed with all-rounders and Botham giving it one last big heave (literally) at the top of the order. They came into the tournament on the back of six successive ODI wins and although Australia, as hosts and holders, were probably pre-tournament favourites, England were not too far behind.
Did England have a better chance of winning the 1992 World Cup than they do in 2015? Yes, probably.
1996: Pinch-hitting was all the rage. Cue pre-World Cup experiments with Phil DeFreitas and Craig White at the top of the order and England entering the tournament without really knowing their best team or batting line-up (a familiar story). In they end they began the tournament without a specialist hitter at the top or the order, while other sides had at least one and Sri Lanka two. It was starkly clear that they had fallen behind the pace of evolution in ODI cricket. On the bright side, the format more or less guaranteed progression from group stage.
Did England have a better chance of winning the 1996 World Cup than they do in 2015? No, probably not.
1999: There had been brief improvement after 1996 but it soon faded and England came in to the 1999 tournament having lost 20 of their previous 28 ODIs. The hosts didn’t have a bad side, but it was again a muddle of doughty triers, and elsewhere so many teams were so strong, with Australia and South Africa in particularly fearsome iterations. Home conditions should have made a difference but the group-stage exit wasn’t a huge surprise.
Did England have a better chance of winning the 1999 World Cup than they do in 2015? A tough one. But no, probably not.
2003: Nasser Hussain went into the tournament considering his future as captain, while the political wrangling over Zimbabwe was a huge distraction. The Observer asked its writers to name a winner and an alternative: Vic Marks, Kevin Mitchell, Mike Gatting and Tom Moody all plumped for Australia, with West Indies picking up three back-up votes and Pakistan one. Sri Lanka, India and South Africa had pretty decent sides too. So hopes for England were low (“At the very least this campaign … provokes more hope than their last two World Cup efforts,” straw-clutched an Observer leader at the time) and they didn’t disappoint.
Did England have a better chance of winning the 2003 World Cup than they do in 2015? No, probably not.
2007: England went into this one ranked seventh in the world, and only had to beat Canada and Kenya to reach the Super 8 stage (similarly next year Cook’s side will likely have to beat Bangladesh, Afghanistan and Scotland to reach the quarter-finals). But again they had the wrong strategy and an overly-conservative approach. Captain Michael Vaughan reckoned they were “close to being a pretty good one-day side”. In the Guardian Mike Selvey reckoned that idea “would seem to come from the advertising school of hyperbole which projects the smallest box of soap powder as ‘giant’”.
Did England have a better chance of winning the 2007 World Cup than they do in 2015? No, probably not.
2011: England’s hopes for this one were done before the tournament even started – they came into the World Cup on the back of an exhausting winter schedule. Again they entered the tournament with a line-up of gambles and best-guesses, and without the injured Eoin Morgan. They may have been World Twenty20 champions but failed to take inspiration from that side.
Did England have a better chance of winning the 2011 World Cup than they do in 2015? Another tough one. No, probably not.
The abiding sense after this trip down memory lane is one of impending deja vu (if such a thing is possible) – England perennially seem to turn up at tournaments playing catch-up or, when confident that they’ve learned the lessons of last time, finding that everyone else has moved on leaving them four years out of date. The innovations have always come from elsewhere: Abdul Qadir’s aggressive spin, the pinch-hitting of Sanath Jayasuriya, the way Australia innovated by not innovating and instead simply having the best team in the world by a distance.
Obviously, this is all entirely coloured by how you view England’s chances in Australia and New Zealand next year. But it does seem that Cook’s assertion isn’t quite as daft as it appeared on first viewing. The best chance ever? Perhaps not. The best chance since 1992? Maybe. Much of a chance? No. But that has been the case for quite a while.
• This is an extract taken from the Spin, the Guardian’s weekly cricket email. To subscribe just visit this page, find the Spin and then follow the instructions.
