The England Cricket Board is appointing a new national selector: the window for applications closes today. If they get a good man in position quickly, it\u2019ll make all the difference: a team\u2019s performance is determined, obviously, by the 11 players on the field so it\u2019s essential to get the right ones out there.<\/p>\n
Crass errors in selection led to an embarrassingly poor England side being comprehensively outplayed, yet again, in last winter\u2019s Ashes series. Against an Australian side lacking several of its best players, we were 3-0 down \u2013 the five-match series already a dead rubber \u2013 after barely 11 days of cricket. \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n
As a new cycle of international cricket begins, the new selector should make immediate, wholesale changes<\/p>\n
Of the 15 players who took the field for England at various points during that five-match series, the two \u2013 Jacob Bethell and Josh Tongue \u2013 who emerged with their reputations enhanced were only selected when it was already too late. Most of our bowlers were either injured, inaccurate or ineffective. Our batsmen were even worse, signalling their surrender in the very first Test. In a trademark display of immature, gung-ho, big-ego shot selection, Ollie Pope, Joe Root and Harry Brook all flashed outside off stump so that at a critically important point we lost three key wickets for no runs. It\u2019s true that Root later scored two centuries \u2013 his first Test centuries in Australia coming in his fourth tour \u2018down under\u2019 \u2013 but more significantly he failed in seven of his ten innings.\u00a0<\/p>\n
As a new cycle of international cricket begins, the new selector should make immediate, wholesale changes. All the players found wanting in Australia should be replaced and new players given a chance to show what they can do. This summer\u2019s two relatively low-key home series \u2013 first we play New Zealand, then Pakistan \u2013 provide an excellent opportunity to blood some youngsters in preparation for bigger challenges against India and Australia.<\/p>\n
The sweeping changes in personnel that are needed have been put off for far too long. Zak Crawley has now played 64 Tests and averages 31.18; apparently<\/a> the lowest average for any Test opener with such extensive experience. His partner at the top of the order, Ben Duckett, averaged only 20.20 in his ten innings against the Australians with a top score of just 42. Players knowing that they were unlikely to be dropped, however poorly they performed on the field (or conducted themselves off it), bred the complacency that led to the team\u2019s debacle in Australia. \u00a0<\/p>\n The demoralised players who failed in the winter shouldn\u2019t be cast into the outer darkness never to play for England again but they will benefit from time out of the limelight to reflect on what went wrong in Australia and address the technical shortcomings that the Aussies exposed. Above all, they need to see that their poor performances have consequences. If they\u2019re made of the right stuff, they will come back stronger.<\/p>\n Meanwhile the newcomers to the team shouldn\u2019t be indulged in the way their predecessors were. Instead, each youngster should be told that he has just two games in which to suggest that he\u2019s worth a longer run in the team. That sounds drastic but after years during which the England team has been a \u2018closed shop\u2019 \u2013 hard to get in or out of \u2013 there is a backlog of promising players all of whom need to be stress-tested. Over the summer\u2019s six Test matches some much-needed new talent is sure to emerge; the healthy competition for places will give English cricket a shot in the arm.<\/p>\n If there are half a dozen new faces in the team for the first Test starting on 4 June, we\u2019ll know that we finally have a selector with intellectual autonomy striving to give the coach and captain the players the team needs, rather than just the ones they like.<\/p>\n The danger is that the appointment is delayed so that selection for the first Test match on 4 June falls to managing director Rob Key, coach Brendon McCullum and captain Ben Stokes \u2013 the trio who oversaw last winter\u2019s humiliating Ashes debacle. If that happens, expect a litany of well-rehearsed excuses<\/a> to justify there being only a couple of cosmetic changes from the team that lost the last match in Australia. The worst thing that can happen is that in home conditions a largely unchanged team wins against New Zealand and Pakistan and last winter\u2019s debacle is then dismissed as just a blip. If so, the next time we visit Australia we\u2019ll be comprehensively outplayed. Again. \u00a0\u00a0 \u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The England Cricket Board is appointing a new national selector: the window for applications closes today. If they…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":535779,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[34],"tags":[1721,101,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-535778","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-cricket","tag-cricket","tag-sports","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/535778","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=535778"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/535778\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/535779"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=535778"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=535778"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=535778"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}