English cricket isn’t always in tune with the times, but it seems to have caught the wave of the “me-me” generation pretty sweetly. It even has its own name for it — the MBE generation, an exclusive club whose members are pretty much allowed to call their own shots. If you got a gong for winning the Ashes in 2005, you are in it.
It is okay, each MBE (Me Before England) is told. You are a superstar. You beat the Aussies. Tell us when you are fit to play, if indeed you want to play. We know you may be busy drinking at the well of celebrity, writing your next platitudinous book, staging your next benefit function. Just give us a shout when you are ready.
And now, as one dispiriting defeat follows another, we are seeing the consequences of this policy. If this week’s Test in Sydney is anything like the last in Melbourne, then offer a prayer of thanks if you are in England, because you will be comatose for most of it. Thankfully, the weather forecast for Sydney is watery. It is going to need to be.
When teams lose a lot, things have a habit of getting nasty. They are getting nasty for England in Australia right now. Kevin Pietersen has spent a fair bit of the past two days defending himself from the charge of putting himself before the team.
This debate centres on his original decision to bat at No 5 in this series rather than four, where he was positioned last summer in England. This is a micro-argument. The further down the order you bat, the further you are away from the dangers of the hard new ball (though in this England side possibly only one ball further away).
The crucial detail is that Pietersen was asked where he would like to bat. Not told, but asked. So he told them. He was happier at five. If the management didn’t like it, why didn’t they tell him? Because KP was an Ashes- winning superstar. But note this. Pietersen gave in and offered to move up before the management exercised their authority and instructed him. The past 15 months has been littered with forelock-tugging towards the MBEs. Ashley Giles and Michael Vaughan were allowed to rule on their own fitness for the India tour before breaking down. Marcus Trescothick was picked for Australia on his assurances that he had recovered from his breakdown. He lasted nine days.
Steve Harmison wants to miss the last warm-up match before the first Test in Brisbane? Go ahead. He wants to retire from one-day cricket three months before the World Cup? Fine, don’t worry about how far up the creek that leaves us. Giles and Geraint Jones, MBEs both, preferred to the gongless Monty Panesar and Chris Read? Of course.
The biggest error in this regard was picking Andrew Flintoff as captain. The whole country thought he should be captain in Vaughan’s absence, but the whole country remembered him as England’s biggest Ashes hero. He had earned the right. But Flintoff’s appointment has highlighted a flaw in the system that had previously operated under Duncan Fletcher’s stewardship: that the captain was responsible for executive decisions while the coach sat in the background as adviser and consultant.
Under Nasser Hussain and Vaughan, it worked because they were strong captains with clear long-term aims. Hussain inherited a team near the bottom of the rankings. He was always in the ear of his players, telling them how much they had to improve; he showed them how tall was the mountain they had to climb and began the ascent. One of those who blossomed under Hussain was Flintoff.
Vaughan was at least as hardheaded. He sat Hussain down after one match in charge and told his predecessor to stop dwelling on the loss of the captaincy and contribute something with his batting, or he wouldn’t be needed. Hussain scored a century in his next game. Vaughan’s cause was to improve the overall fitness of his team, which he did.
Flintoff has been unfortunate in that he is only a stand-in. That Vaughan has remained official captain is another deference to the Ashes win. This has denied Flintoff the chance to stamp his mark on the team. He is a strong man, but he may not be a strong captain. He could have told Pietersen to bat four. He could have told Harmison to play all the warm-ups. He could have given his players a three-line whip for Christmas Day (five of them split off from the team). He could have decided it wasn’t appropriate for him and Harmison to stay drinking with the Australians after the Adelaide defeat.
Flintoff is not an aggressive captain. He does not want his team to take the risks he didn’t think twice about taking when a player. Australia’s tactics of frustrating England’s strokemakers with defensive fields has worked well, but England have played into their hands with their own caution. When Pietersen was batting with the tail on the second day in Perth, the dressing-room instructions were that he should play carefully. Why? Flintoff prefers attacking from the front. In the last four Ashes Tests of 2005, England made the running in every game, batting first, getting a score on the board. Then they had something to work with. The same was the case in Bombay in March, the victory that created the myth of Flintoff as captaincy material. He looked less comfortable when India made a late charge in the Nagpur Test.
Flintoff’s boldest move in Australia was declaring in Adelaide, when England were making the running. But he has not had many other chances. The real test of a captain is when his back is to the wall. Hussain fought a brilliant backs-to-the-wall campaign in Pakistan in 2000 and stole victory, similarly, in Sri Lanka the next year.
In Australia, Flintoff hasn’t known how to hold a line. When Matthew Hayden and Andrew Symonds were batting in Melbourne, the game lurched out of England’s hands in the blink of an eye. The field placings reflected Flintoff’s uncertainties, although he has been hamstrung by the strength of his attack.
The day after the Sydney Test finishes, Vaughan is expected to be named captain for the one-dayers. He was pulled out of the MCC fixture he was due to play in on Friday, because the match wasn’t of the right calibre, not because of any fitness doubts. He will play a match in Bowral on Friday. But even if Vaughan were not fit, there must be a strong chance that Flintoff would give way to Andrew Strauss. It is not even certain Flintoff will play in the one-dayers. England’s priority must be to restore strong leadership. The other thing that must happen is that Fletcher’s offer to step down as a selector is revisited and this time accepted.
When England lost in Australia in 2002-3, then sank without trace at the World Cup, Hussain resigned as captain. Alec Stewart soon retired and John Crawley, Andrew Caddick and Richard Dawson never played again. There will be fewer casualties this time because the team is younger, but Flintoff’s captaincy and the futures of Jones and Giles must be in grave doubt.
The other upshot must be that English cricket stops treating Ashes series as the be-all and end-all. If England were to beat every other team bar Australia, they would be doing pretty well. The country’s reaction to winning the last Ashes was not so much to go overboard as to keel-haul itself in champagne. A 5-0 whitewash now might be good therapy. Perhaps they should also rescind all those MBEs.
