Username
Password
Space Monkey Week Four

Space Monkey - Week Four

The smell of cut grass, traffic cones for stumps, six-and-out on next-door’s garden…  enduring image.

England were defeated by a poor New Zealand side in humiliating circumstances in Auckland. Not just a poor side, but a poor side ravaged by injuries. The only possible reason I could see England slipping up was Chris Cairns – and he spent most of the series watching from the sidelines.

But, to be fair, New Zealand are a vastly improved test side from what they used to be, and England should take some positives from the series - blah, blah, blah.

I think the fact of the matter is that the England team have played too much cricket this winter – and it’s difficult to see how they’ll benefit from it. Sure, they’ve played some good cricket at times; they’ve thought about what they’ve been doing for once and have, at times, played to a clear and obvious game-plan.

No doubt, these are positives for the future, but we are still making the same mistakes we’ve always made, and while it’s easy to sit back and say “we’re improving” or “we’re learning” but the fact of the matter is for every good turn – for every new trick – there is an equal and opposite, maybe more destructive, cock-up about to happen, with all the subtlety of a Lee Evans sketch.

Sure, everyone makes mistakes – it’s human nature, but I don’t think it’s unreasonable to excuse a mistake as long as we learn from it. Where would we be if we didn’t make mistakes? We’d never learn anything – and we’d never get any better. But this England side seems to be making the same old mistakes over and over again.

I had to smile this week reading the comments of Kiwi Mark Richardson: “Who or what won the last Test? On paper, New Zealand did, but in reality could it have been the pitch or perhaps the umpiring.
“All I know is that somehow through the iffy weather, iffy pitch, iffy umpiring, iffy seeing conditions in the field and an iffy decision to bat first we come out victorious. You bloody beauty!
“For me personally it was the most challenging cricket I have ever played. I have never been so tested by a bowling attack.
“It is true that conditions were generally not in favour of the top three batsmen on either side, but the consistency in line and length of this English attack was second to none (and that includes the Aussies).”

Even the Kiwis themselves don’t know how the hell they scraped a draw!

But that’s all in the past now, and we can only hope that England learn from their tortuous winter schedule and the experiences they’ve been through. Let’s hope that when the series’ come round this summer, we’ll see a marked improvement. Christ, if your seamers can bowl well in India, they can bowl well anywhere – and they should be rubbing their hands together at the prospect of some nice soft, green English wickets.

So what positives and/or negatives have appeared after this winter? Let me take you through the major contributors and talking points as I see them.

Captain Nas started the series well with a battling 106 out of 228 in the first innings in Christchurch. I’d still say this was probably the most important innings of the series as a whole, because without it we would have seen the all-too-familiar England collapse, which would have gifted the Kiwis the early initiative. This was the rock onto which the foundations of victory were set in that first test. 66 in Wellington and 82 in Auckland completed a good series for the skipper, who appears, at last, to be dealing well with the burden of captaining the side and scoring runs at the top of the order. The Nas was England’s top run scorer in the series with 280 at an average of 56. At the moment he is looking a very dependable top order batsman, and is leading the side with intelligence and guile.

Probably England’s one proven world-class batsman is Graham Thorpe. His off-the-field problems have obviously been well documented, but in New Zealand he got the chance to return to doing what he does best. Deservedly man of the match in Christchurch thanks to his fantastic career-best 200 not out, we can only imagine how many he’d have gone on to get that day if his heroics weren’t merely forcing an early declaration so England could skittle out New Zealand for a poultry 451. Thorpe was relatively quiet for the rest of the series – his 42 in Auckland was the nearest he came to another big score, but he was top of the series averages with 274 runs at 68.5.

A pleasant statistic from the series is that the batsman third in the batting averages was James Foster. I doubt few would argue that he is, unlike Alec Stewart, first and foremost a wicket keeper not necessarily a batsman, but he has shown tremendous determination throughout the trials and tribulations of the winter, and appears to possess the priceless skill that many England players that have come and gone before him never had: he doesn’t give his wicket away cheaply. His 105 runs came at an average of 52.5. A sound start to, hopefully, an international career that will last for a few years yet. His only problem now is the imminent return of Alec Stewart, but all Foster can do is keep improving, and his chance will almost certainly come again.

Average performances from Messrs Butcher, Vaughan and Trescothick in New Zealand – nothing special in particular, but signs of beginning to show some stability at the top of the order. There’s no question that they are all capable of big things, but we’ll put their sub-par performances down to a combination of fatigue, niggling injuries and sheer bad luck - i.e. bad umpiring.

Flintoff scored 243 runs at 40.50, mainly due to two “one day” type innings’ – a slogging 137 in the first test, and an equally cultured 75 at Wellington. Aside from these two, and a 29 in Auckland, Freddy scored only two more runs in the other three innings’ he had. The phrase ‘one swallow doesn’t make a summer’ springs to mind, only a more accurate adaptation might be ‘a slogged century and an even more brutal 75 do not make a genuine test all-rounder’. He is useful in one kind of situation, and if England are in the kind of situation where we were trying to either build an innings or block out for a draw, you might as well stick Flintoff at number 11, because he will be of no use. Actually, he will be a detriment. But his bowling is improving, and he is now capable of bowling consistently well, and is a very dependable asset to be able to call upon. However, he should never ever be allowed in at number six in a normal test match situation.

I hope Mark Ramprakash has had a nice time in New Zealand. Hopefully he’s got a few photos of himself with “the lads” and maybe got a signed shirt or something to go with the memories of his England career, which will be all he has left this summer while he is participating in the endless tedium that is the county circuit.

Andy Caddick was awesome as per usual. 19 wickets at a shade under twenty, in what must have been a truly bizarre series to bowl in. Caddick remains a world-class bowler, and a serious threat to most batting line-ups, especially with the new cherry.

Hoggard also showed signs of becoming a very useful bowler, taking 17 wickets at under 24. Surely if England can get to the stage where they have Gough, Caddick and Hoggard at their disposal – we could be looking at a decent test side.

As for Giles, I can’t see the need for a spinner at the best of times, and unless you have a really world-class spinner, as Sri Lanka, India, Australia etc all do, it’s a waste of a player – especially in England. I can see why a spinner makes it in the side abroad, but I really cannot see the point myself – especially a spinner as ordinary as Giles. We have no attacking spinners anywhere in England, so Giles is probably the next best option, but I’d say it was safe for Ash to book his summer holidays, with next to no chance of being picked for the tests this summer.

That’s about all I have to say this week, apart from that Nathan Astle is a disgrace to the game of test cricket. He is an embarrassment to the game, his team, himself and his country. He annoys the hell out of me, too.

There’s been a bit of sun this last week or so, and it wont be long ‘til we’re all out playing again. Good luck to those of you who have pre-season friendlies coming up – don’t forget, whoever you are, a couple of half-decent performances this summer and you could find yourself in the England squad. Or if you have some kind of New Zealand passport…  that’d be much, much easier…

Take care,

Space

View a Printer Friendly version of this Story.

Bookmark or share this story with: