Forgotten Man?

By Gary Watton
May 7 2015

The treatment of Yorkshire trio Adam Lyth, Liam Plunkett, and Adil Rashid in the West Indies tour was little short of disgusting. The prospect of a test call-up was dangled repeatedly in front of these England hopefuls [and there were repeated calls for such amongst the broadcasting media], but ultimately England's timid twosome of Cook and Moores demonstrated their tiresome cautious instincts. As a consequence, Lyth and Rashid were cruelly denied the first cap that each craves. What renders the situation far worse is that the decision to omit these Yorkshire players was far from vindicated, very far in fact.

Take the obvious own goal of displaying faith in Trott. The Warwickshire man was a revelation when he came into the England team, hitting the ground running with a test century on his debut in a crucial Ashes contest in August 2009. Thereafter JT went from strength to strength, a paragon of consistency and an irritation to opposing bowlers. However, the number three batsman then imploded on that last catastrophic tour of Australia, and the attempt to revive his test career with a ludicrous upgrade to the opening batsman slot in the Caribbean was ill-fated. This ploy was basically a case of an insecure Cook wanting the company of an experienced and proven test batsman as his opening accomplice, instead of nursing the rookie Lyth through his first tests while Cook himself was preoccupied with his own form. However, now that Cook has discovered some semblance of form [albeit against the "mediocre" West Indian attack on flat pitches], he should be more favourably disposed towards batting alongside a fresh face in test cricket.

Furthermore, Trott has fallen on his sword, sparing England's weak selectors from taking the bold move and ousting him. God knows they have now journeyed to the opposite extreme from their 1990s colleagues. Back in them days, a cricketer was introduced to the England test team and quickly handed his P45 when the expectations were not realised. Now, the selectors have taken an altogether different and equally less sensible route of keeping faith for far too long with the same failing individuals. Granting someone longer in the team is merely handing him extra opportunities to fail. If a plumber or an electrician did a poor job at your house, would you hire them again, in the naive belief that they will redeem themselves, or will you take the view that a repeat appearance will lead to repeat results? It's as if the England selectors are hell-bent on emulating Einstein's concept of madness by repeating the same mistakes over and over and foolishly expecting a different outcome each time.

To make matters worse for the opening-batsman-in-waiting is that Adam Lyth has now played virtually no cricket since Yorkshire's brief tour of the UAE in March. Consequently Adam is being thrust into the County Championship outing against Hampshire, with the selectors desperately hoping that he scores some runs, or else they could find themselves appointing someone for the Lords test on the 21st of May with no sizeable recent score behind him. The alternative of course is to choose Alex Hales [as Shane Warne is urging], but it would be an almighty kick in the teeth if Lyth is now overlooked in favour of the in-form Hales. After all, the only reason that Hales has outshone Lyth in the early weeks of the season is that while the former has been amassing lots of runs, the latter has been a glorified suitcase-carrier in the West Indies and has missed out on any cricket auditions, except apparently batting against Trott in the nets! Heaven help us.

Meanwhile, Cook and Moores, true to character, lost their nerve and refused to pick Rashid when the circumstances were crying out for a specialist spinner. Moeen Ali is actually a batsman who can spin. He's not a long-term solution as a spinner. Moeen is actually symptomatic of the England selection policy at present. It seems that Cook and Moores are so terrified of England's batting line-up [without justification] that they have packed the team with all-rounders. Not only is Buttler a wicketkeeper who can bat, but Jordan and Stokes are both stupidly included because they can not only bowl but also bat, and in the case of Jordan take stunning catches too. However, the facts speak for themselves. Jordan and Stokes never look like they're ever going to run through a batting line-up. If Jimmy Anderson underperforms, England will be relying on the hot-and-cold Broad to deliver, because the two all-rounder seamers are just not demon bowlers, in spite of the histrionics of Stokes.

Again the awful King Canute duo of Cook and Moores resisted the tidal wave of constructive expert opinion and missed a trick when they refused to take a look at Mark Wood in a test match or more particularly when they declined to look at the obvious pace of Liam Plunkett, himself no slouch with the bat.

England really ought to examine a few fresh faces in the two tests against New Zealand. The current XI are not the finished article, and it is imperative that we consider all the alternatives before the Ashes examination. Andrew Flintoff has stupidly spoken of England being on the cusp of greatness, but his silly analysis is just further proof that some of the best cricketers don't necessarily make the most insightful of pundits, while some of the most astute pundits were failed cricketers [including Jon Agnew, a great county performer, but a disappointment at test level]. For the Cook and Moores dud duopoly to act out Carry On In Denial with the same nine or ten players is an exercise in madness. What happens if England, perhaps realistically, find themselves two tests behind in mid-summer against the Aussies? Do they then pitch three or four individuals [in a repeat of 1989, 1993, 1997, and 2001], like Rashid or Wood, into the deep end to retrieve an Ashes series, with no test experience behind them? It's all a recipe for disaster, and the roots of the turmoil are found in the stiff-necked attitude of the cautious selection policy in the Caribbean.