by David Lloyd
His biggest mistake, I would argue, was not his long-term focus but his extreme loyalty in the short term. In international cricket, a captain and a coach come as a pair and he stood by Alastair Cook too long. Perhaps he had been influenced by the breakdown of his relationship with Kevin Pietersen in 2008-09 and was fearful of rocking the boat. But showing faith in Cook into the winter of the World Cup created a monster. The decision for change was made too late. At that level, there is no time for pussy-footing around. If the captain is not good enough, you get rid, no dramas. It was the same when the vice-captaincy switched from Ian Bell to Joe Root. Strong management is about choosing the best men for any given job.
For the record, following the drawn Test series in the Caribbean – a thoroughly underwhelming result – I would have been in favour of retaining Moores as coach but removing Cook as captain. Moores spent several months defending Cook in the aftermath of the 2013-14 Ashes whitewash. Yet when the tables were turned and Moores was dispensed with, I was shocked at Cook’s silence as the last man standing.
Of the management team that went to Australia that winter, only he was left. This unseemly period had seen England hit rock bottom and yet the England captain apparently had nothing to say about it. Previously, whenever his own leadership was challenged, he vowed to carry on, which was his prerogative, but his determination to lead, admirable on face value, detracted from his primary role in the side – to score runs.
With a coach’s hat on, if you watched Cook bat during a hundred-less two years between 2013 and 2015, you would have recognised a hesitancy and indecision to his game. Previously, he always appeared to be crystal clear in what he was trying to do. So many players will talk about batting with a dominant top hand, but I think his bottom hand became too dominant, so his bat was skewed when it came down. His strokes, never what you would consider things of beauty, had nevertheless regressed and any fluency had given way to clunkiness. He did score a run or two in the 2014 series win over India, but he was forced to dig very deep into his levels of resolve to produce them and did not look natural.
When asked on air for my World Cup squad at the end of that international season, I did not have him in my starting XI. My feeling was that if he continued to play in this static way, he would hold us up. Ironically, of course, immediately after breaking his three-figure drought in the Caribbean, his dismissal triggered a domino effect. England lost that Test in Barbados, against opponents the outspoken incoming ECB chairman Colin Graves branded ‘mediocre’; then Strauss came in, immediately poured scorn on a Kevin Pietersen comeback and left Cook to dwell in the background as the public looked for answers as to why.
To me, it was this issue that the new England director needed to address more than any other. Strauss is a strong appointment – I would have been equally happy with Michael Vaughan or Nasser Hussain being persuaded to take it on – but repairing the image of the national team is paramount and not a job to be carried out overnight.
Quite simply, the England regime needs to open up. It has been looking like a real closed shop for far too long. Arguably, the downside of central contracts is that the players have become too powerful, and have forgotten what it means to walk onto a field to represent your country. Because when you pull on an England shirt, you’re not just playing for yourself, you’re playing for the paying public sat in the stands and the ones who are sat on the sofa with a cup of tea at home.
We have entered into a period in which there has been a recurring disconnect between the players and the people they represent. The public seemed to have been turned off by the grubby in-fighting, a perceived treatment of Team England as a cosy club, of which only a privileged few are members. It is not. If it’s a club, it has no exclusivity. It’s our team. If it belongs to anyone, it belongs to us all, the thousands of people who want it to perform to the best of its ability. The privileged few get to do our bidding.
Some of the behaviour we have seen over recent times suggests that there have been those who make up its number who do not think like that, or at least they have not been encouraged to think like that. It’s almost as if they have lost their soul. At times, they appear downtrodden, think the world is against them and believe they are down on their luck. When they went behind to a focused India in the Test series of 2014, they developed a real siege mentality. It was a real ‘us and them’. You were ‘us’ if you had a peg, in the dressing room – actually no dressing room on earth can have enough pegs, given the bloated nature of the backroom staff, but you know what I mean – and ‘them’ if you didn’t. They became a rather faceless, loveless, uniform entity.
I firmly believe every team needs its characters, not least to sell the sport to the next generation. At a time when England were deciding against reintegrating the flamboyance of Kevin Pietersen, they should have been promoting cricketers with a similar on-field modus operandi more fervently than ever. I would argue that Team England can become too insular, too English. Post-Pietersen, those in the PR department, of which there are many, should have been getting the message across that we have some exciting new kids on the block. This was the time to turn Jos Buttler and Ben Stokes into A-list stars, not after we had been humiliated at the World Cup.
Instead, conservatism prevailed to the extent that when in a one-day international in May 2014, Buttler hit a thrilling 74-ball 121 off a Sri Lanka attack fresh from World Twenty20 glory, Cook, as captain, claimed he was not yet ready for Test cricket. Buttler himself, when asked about filling in for the injured Matt Prior, claimed he was not certain he was ready. There were question marks over Rod Marsh and Adam Gilchrist when Australia first picked them, but they were not concerned about their rough edges, only that they had the potential to be very special performers.
Similarly, Alex Hales blasted a hundred at that World Twenty20, against the damned winners no less, and was not considered ready for a crack at the ODI team. What an absolute nonsense. Decisions like this, and the choice to bring in Jonathan Trott for the Tests in the Caribbean, heart-warming comeback story as it was, led me to conclude that the selectors have been dreadful. Trott, not as accustomed as Adam Lyth to opening, also lacks the dynamism of the Yorkshireman’s batting. All our decisions were backward rather than forward-thinking.
My advice would be to give these players their head and let their personalities out. They need to be able to express themselves without those above watching their every move or to be discouraged by fears of their limitations. Folk love a tainted hero, and I would not want them to inhibit the career of someone like Stokes. He will trip up, do something daft – as he did when he punched that locker in the Caribbean – but they should not stifle that. Ask those who witnessed his truly outstanding all-round display at Lord’s against New Zealand in 2015 how they felt about him. If you had stifled Ian Botham, you would have denied cricket one of its great protagonists and some of its richest history. Somehow, you have to allow free spirits the room to breathe.
The Yorkshire pair of Gary Ballance and Joe Root certainly seized the moment when it came to international cricket, and sports fanatics don’t want their heroes to be square. Neither, however, do they want to see them topless on a night out, a treat the Nottingham public got after a draw with India at Trent Bridge in 2014. Thankfully, it was for innings like his hundreds either side of that strip that Ballance was named the ICC’s emerging player of the year. Despite the mid-2015 loss of form that followed, the way he coped in his first few months at the top level suggested he possesses the attributes to have a successful career. Get your shirt on him being an England regular for years.
One thing I would tell any of the up-and-coming players in this squad is to relax and remember their job is supposed to make them happy. They are being paid to have fun, and when they are being interviewed it is 100 per cent good news. Every single time a player is asked to be interviewed by either TV, radio or by the written media, it’s because he has done well. He has a positive story to tell. At worst, it’s because he is the
best performer within the team at that particular time. As I discovered first hand, if you’re interviewed as a coach it falls upon you to explain away a defeat more often than not, and that’s the way it should be. When I was a coach I saw protecting my players from criticism, particularly when they were already disappointed at failure, as a prerequisite of the job.
At times, I have heard contemporary players dictate that they are not talking to X, Y or Z in an interview because they do not happen to like the X, Y or Z in question. Forget personality clashes, though, because in thinking like that you’re missing the point. When you’re being interviewed, you’re really not talking to the interviewer at all but the public who are watching, listening or reading. This is a chance for players to project themselves; the bloke in front of them is only asking the question.
Find me a professional sportsman who would rather be centre of attention in an empty stadium than in front of a full house. By that token, let the people you want to entertain know something about yourself. Let’s not be hearing about the nation getting the wrong impression. Come and front up. In TV situations, I would be telling these young men to learn the technique of talking to the interviewer while giving a glance at the camera.
There is an art to creating your own image. Not for one minute do I think that Michael Clarke is well liked within the Australian cricket fraternity, but he’s very good whenever you get him on screen. He might struggle to win a popularity contest, but when he does an interview he sells himself by being himself. The skill he has is to talk as normally as possible. Unfortunately, that is one of the areas where Peter Moores fell down. Pete had the chance to talk in normal terms, to get his messages across on what the team was trying to do on multiple occasions, but all too often failed to deliver in clear and simple terms and ended up tripping himself up with reflections on data. Personally, I never saw a problem in admitting that the opposition was superior.
Worryingly, England seemed to be woefully out of touch with the rest of the top nations at the 2015 World Cup. Their cricket was just so outdated. They were out-hit, out-fielded, out-paced, out-thought. When it came down to group qualification, it meant they were plain old out.
England stumbled out of the traps against Australia and New Zealand, and to be honest they were pitiful to watch in those opening two matches. Yes, they were up against the best two sides, but there were no redeeming features to be found in their style or tactical approach whatsoever. Poor old Moores appeared to be ageing by the day. His team looked powerless and shell-shocked. No one could deny that England worked their proverbials off at practice, and that appears to have been their mantra for success, but it all seemed to be in hope rather than expectation. How different it all was just three months later when a team liberated and focusing on skills struck a record 408 runs off the New Zealanders at Edgbaston, and then chased down a target of 350 with four overs to spare. It was simply scintillating, and a far cry from the spring.
It was pretty clear from a long way out that reaching the World Cup semi-final would be a good effort. But the frustration was that they were trying to win games with old-school tactics against opponents playing a very different style. The warning signs were there for all to see when they were playing to make scores of 250. You need a lot to go your way, and a lot to go wrong for your opponents, to be successful in modern-day tournaments with that kind of approach.
It was no coincidence that the best two teams, Australia and New Zealand, the ones that embraced breaking down the ceiling when it came to constructing scores, reached the final. Those two teams completely got what was required in a one-day international era that uses two new balls. That change, between the 2011 event and the one in 2015, was perhaps more significant than any previous tinkerings with the regulations, because it made hard hitting and wicket taking more important than ever. Only when they were playing against each other did either of the two co-hosts fail to post a score of 330-plus batting first.
New Zealand were all over England like a cheap suit in that record-equalling loss in Auckland that highlighted Brendon McCullum as the undisputed best captain in world cricket. He doesn’t do funky fields. He just knows where to put the fielders for every batsman, and allows his bowlers to reap the rewards. And when Tim Southee started taking wickets, he just got more and more aggressive. Ten years ago, you simply could not have imagined seeing so many slips in a World Cup match between two major nations. There was not a single thought of holding back once they were on top; New Zealand were simply spurred on to greater acts by their success-driven captain. After he orchestrated that demolition, he then went after England’s bowling as if he had a train to catch. To lose after facing just 12.2 overs must have been devastating for a team already low on confidence.
One-day international cricket has moved on massively and it just left England producing echoes of a different era. A decade and a half earlier, a score of 250 was steady. But changes to the regulations through extra powerplays before the 2011 World Cup in India – there were three lots during that period, if you recall – raised the bar of an average score to 300. By 2015, you needed 340-350 to be firm favourites, such was the quality of the pitches. It demands picking a team devoid of fear – undaunted at scoring above a run a ball at any stage of a game and not easily distracted in their bid to dismiss batsmen who are trying to monster them out of the park. Holding bowlers, so effective in my coaching days, now get panned, and you have to have the potential to dismiss batsmen and disrupt the innings.
Of course, the super-sized scores attracted some negativity from critics who suggested the balance of power had shifted too far towards bat over ball. But I have no quibble with the amount of wood being used by the manufacturers, who became targets for the anti-big-bats brigade. To me, the six-hitting only adds to the ‘we’ll get one more than you’ attitude of the elite nations. Great bowlers of their time will still claim wickets, as we witnessed with the standout left-armers Mitchell Starc and Trent Boult.
In contrast, England didn’t get out of third gear. You have to promote power players at the top of the order and yet not only did we ignore that until it was too late, we committed one big no-no: the number of times we left the ball was galling. If there was a bit of width, we were letting it pass unchallenged on its way through to the wicketkeeper. See what happens when you give a bit of width to David Warner – he would rupture himself trying to hit it as hard as he could. Glenn Maxwell gets the billing of the Big Show. He’s a quiet lad and isn’t fond of his nickname because of the attention it draws, but you can see where it has come from. Boy, does he go big when he puts on a show.
But the modern way is for competitors in all sports to be bigger, fitter, faster, stronger. You only have to walk across Regent’s Park to Primrose Hill, as I do to get to the pub during a Test match at Lord’s, to recognise that. You will see mixed softball, and touch rugby teams powering over the grass, and there are some big’uns turning out . . . and the lads aren’t small either. Big Jilly, the hooker, made my old mum look tame. What a unit she was. If it was time to scrum down and she said it was Tuesday, it would be Tuesday.
The one common denominator for those that were clearing the ropes for fun and those that were not was bat speed. That displayed by the likes of Warner, Maxwell, McCullum and AB de Villiers was in a different league to anything our players were able to produce. From what we were witnessing there, it didn’t appear that we had it in our thinking to get the levers through the ball at such velocity. By mid-2015, when England appeared to have ten McCullums of their own, this theory was already ripe for the unpicking.
These blokes clearly worked out that to generate the kind of phenomenal power they do, it is primarily the speed and not the weight of the bat that is essential. The old English way is to barely pick the bat up and defend, defend, defend as default. In contrast, blokes from overseas have a real flow of the arms, possessing golf-like swings. The first thought when they have the bats up at shoulder level behind them is to hit the ball for six. If
they can’t get it all the way over the rope, then they downgrade and look for a four, a three or a two and so on. This is clearly the mentality of players like Buttler and Stokes, and I hope we now have ten years of unbridled fun watching them win international matches. To hit 43 sixes in a five-match series represented a phenomenal start to a new era.
Things might not have been going well on the field from an England perspective, but you cannot be miserable on tour in New Zealand and Australia. Although there was some sobriety offered on a walk around Christchurch, now an eerie experience four years on from the earthquake. I attended the memorial service for the victims of that particular natural disaster and it was very moving to see people, arms round each other, who had obviously lost loved ones. A sign of how long it would take to get this beautiful city back on its feet was provided by the fact that portakabins still act as some banks and shops.
Socialising took its toll on me, though, as some of my co-commentators can get very thirsty. Ian Smith and Simon Doull, the former New Zealand internationals, took me to what they said was a quiet spot in Wellington called the Bangalore Polo Club. But it was not horses that proved to be the trouble. Drinks are served alongside bowls full of monkey nuts and the club’s party piece is to encourage everyone to eat them, throw the shells on the floor and allow the pigeons to come in to eat them all up. It reminded me of the way my dear old dad felt about his budgies. Here in Wellington, in fear of having my head given a Jackson Pollock-style design by these feathered friends, I made my excuses and left pretty sharpish.
On a more cultural note and a break of routine for me, I accepted an offer from Mark ‘Tubby’ Taylor, the former Australia captain, to join him and his Channel 9 colleagues Brad McNamara and James Brayshaw on a tour of the Barossa Valley wine region. It was over three days and I’m sure I lost one of them. It was one of the best experiences of my life, fun from start to finish. I would tell you more about it, if only I could remember. Suffice to say there were lots of vineyards involved.