A FIFTH England player was sent home yesterday, an extension of the unremitting gloom that has so far surrounded the tour of Australia. But the broader picture of English cricket is less dismal, truly it is. The scene as it stands is like a computer screen in sleep mode. Be patient and when the power is switched on it will gradually emerge from blank uselessness into a many-faceted tool of huge capacity.
In as many words, that is the firm belief of everyone involved with the National Cricket Academy, not just the director, Rod Marsh, but, crucially, the young players lucky enough to have been hand picked by him to take part this winter. The more the England team struggles in the face of Australia’s bullying brilliance, the more vital it becomes to breed at the academy a group of young cricketers who believe not just that they are better than their peers but that it is their destiny to win back the Ashes.
Marsh, the archetypal tough Australian sportsman now utterly committed to the cause of the old country, sees nothing wrong, nor unduly optimistic, about the ECB’s determination to make it happen by 2007, in other words next time England play a series in Australia four years hence. By then he will have had five groups of “undergraduates” through his gradually evolving mixture of boot camp, school of life and university of higher education in cricketing skills. It is in its second year based at Del Monte, on the coast at Adelaide, a half-hour’s tram ride from the city centre. From next October the base will move to the new facilities at Loughborough.
So far only Simon Jones, Steve Harmison and Robert Key have been promoted from last year’s intake, but that was a fair start and each of them has shown some potential. James Anderson and Chris Tremlett, perhaps also Gareth Batty and Chris Read, will not be far behind them if Marsh is any judge, with Rikki Clarke still on course to follow them. Even at a rate of only three a year and allowing, as fair-minded planners must, for one or two who come through the conventional route of county cricket without making the finishing school, England should be more than sufficiently stocked with players of the necessary skill, character and physical hardness.
Competitiveness and selfbelief will be as much a part of them as the technical correctness that has been given a higher priority in this second year of the academy. Under Marsh and his regular assistants, Nigel Laughton, the efficient and enthusiastic young manager, Jon Abrahams, the assistant coach, Troy Cooley, the bowling expert, Richard Smith, the physiologist, and Stuart Osborne, the hard-working physiotherapist (who has had a regular flow of refugees from the main tour to deal with, too), the early programme has started at 7.30 every morning except Sundays with training and strength-building in the gym.
This year there has been work every day on cricketing skills, starting with video analysis based on shots taken from all angles by fast-film cameras. The emphasis has been on careful grooving of the movements that ensure a straight bat and a simple, repetitive bowling action under pressure. The ECB pays the ACB for the services used, including yoga and Pilates sessions and coaches such as Ian Chappell, brought in by Marsh to talk about and demonstrate the art of playing quick and spin bowling. Read and Batty gave an indication that the methods are working when they upstaged the senior players in Canberra on Tuesday.
Gradually, they and the others who are starting to fulfil the talent that made them professional cricketers in the first place should begin to support and challenge the maturer talents who have already established themselves as Test cricketers. Michael Vaughan, Marcus Trescothick or whoever it is that succeeds Nasser Hussain later this year might just be the luckiest England captain since Mike Brearley.
The day after the match against the Prime Minister’s XI, Read and Kabir Ali were back with the group of ten who have formed the unchanging element in this year’s group, going through an intensive training and fielding session at the Kingston Oval under Marsh’s direction.
In this case it is a bat that Marsh wields in a brawny left arm, driving the ball for his charges to pick up at full speed — he does not mind occasional fumbles so long as they attack the ball — and throw underarm at a single stump while another player waits to pick it up and hurl it on to a colleague in a non-stop chain of concentrated endeavour.
Marsh was limping a little from the effort of scoring a try in the game of touch rugby that preceded the fielding drills, but more than happy to talk in glowing terms of the character and talent of the players he chose after careful scrutiny of county cricket last season. He chose the ones who performed when they knew he was on the ground and he is pleased with them.
There is an evident mutual respect between the players and their rough-hewn but sage old guru. Marsh, MBE, is 55 now but preparing to live full-time in the Midlands and relishing the huge responsibility of trying to pull English cricket from the mire into which Australians have pushed them at home and away in every four-year cycle since 1989.
“They’re a really good bunch of kids,” he said of players whose ages actually range from 19 to 26. “I’d feel happy walking out of my office with a thousand dollars left on the table. Not only would they not touch it but they’d guard it for me. Whether they’ll be really good Test players I don’t know but there’s got to be some trust in these players.”
Already some has been shown in Batty, whom Marsh had selected as his captain for this year’s games until he was called to replace Jeremy Snape. His is a familiar story for young English finger spinners, also represented at the academy by Monty Panesar, the Sikh from Northampton. Batty has been a promising cricketer, from a family of talented players, since he was nobbut a lad in Bradford, but not until his third county did he make his mark under Tom Moody’s guidance at Worcestershire last season.
For Batty and all the tightly knit group under Marsh’s command, it has been the best thing to happen in his career. The match-playing phase has now been reached: two one-day games this week in Canberra, where a tournament is under way between Australia’s under-19 state teams, followed by the four-day game in Perth next week involving the convalescing Test players, Vaughan, Crawley, Butcher, Dawson and Tudor. Five county cricketers already in Australia will also take part: Will Jefferson, Kadeer Ali (Kabir’s cousin), Darren Maddy, Vikram Solanki and Ian Fisher.
The academy regulars will then have three weeks at home over Christmas before returning for five weeks in Australia, where they will play both England and Australia’s under-19 teams and New South Wales’s second team before leaving for a seven-match tour in Sri Lanka. They will do well not just because they are talented but because they are steadily building the physical hardness and mental confidence of winners.
