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28 ain’t the worst average for ODI’s and its not as if they lose only cos he does badly.
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Vaughan and England’s ODI quandary
By Will 4 years ago, at the end of May Leave a comment on this post
No surprises in today’s ODI and Test squad announcement, but plenty of questions. Vaughan’s “ODI cloud,” which hovers ominiously over his head each series, is getting darker the more he plays: he is just not scoring enough runs to warrant selection.
The selectors clearly didn’t want to take such a radical and potentially hazardous decision of dropping him from the ODI squad, in light of an Ashes series in July. Just imagine the Australians’ reactions. But the fact still remains that he is a poor one-day player for England - and no one, me included, knows why. He has one of the most textbook, pure batting techniques in world cricket. In Test Cricket, he is glorious to watch and can play all around the wicket: the Australians fear him, and rightly so given what he did to them a few years ago.
Yet he still averages only 28, and still hasn’t made a one-day hundred. In his favour is his excellence as a captain, and the respect he has as a leader. But the time will come, unless he scores heavily this year, for England to have 2 international captains for each form of the game.
Meanwhile, the nails in Graham Thorpe’s coffin are gradually being hammered in. His announcement that he was to play for NSW in 2006 upset and confused a few of the big-cheeses, including Graveney. And with Kevin Pietersen’s inclusion in the ODI squad, Thorpe is - I reckon - just a couple of poor performances away from international retirement. I hope he plays all summer, but I also feel Pietersen and Flintoff need to bat with each other against Australia if England are to counteract The Gilchrist Factor.
Who’d be a selector?
Tags: kevin-pietersen, michael-vaughan, selections, the-ashes |
12 Responses to “Vaughan and England’s ODI quandary”
May 31st, 2005 at 1.26 pm
May 31st, 2005 at 2.34 pm
28 is poor for someone of his talent..
May 31st, 2005 at 2.35 pm
Yes 28 isn’t that bad. Some of the more popular players have averages in 30s only. But in today’s ODI battlefield you need players who can, on their day, win you matches. Who can make it count big time when they have a good day. And Vaughan isn’t that kind of match winner. In fact building a good ODI team is the process of carefully identifying such players over a period of time and sticking with them even through low averages.
You know Ganguly has a great understanding of this aspect (I’m sorry I give only Indian examples 
That’s why he doesn’t have Laxman in ODI team despite Laxman scoring 5 ODI centuries in the year and 3 of them against Aussies !
May 31st, 2005 at 3.40 pm
What’s his ODI record against the Aussies? I suspect it’s better than his overall record.
Generally, I think the selectors’ problems are the kind that most international selectors would like to have. Although I must admit that until I read the one-day squad I’d forgotten all about Vikram Solanki…
May 31st, 2005 at 4.32 pm
He averages 31 in 6 matches against Australia, including that excellent 86 in last year’s champion’s trophy.
Perhaps I didn’t make my point clear though: I’m in favour of Vaughan, and a big fan of his, and want him to do well in ODIs…the point of my post, really, was the confusion I (and many others) feel in how someone of his *class* and ability can only average 28 and not score any hundreds. Yes, 28 isn’t dreadful - but it’s 10 short of what a top 5 batting lineup should be averaging
May 31st, 2005 at 5.50 pm
You’ve also got to take his strike rate into account. Yes, he’s up the order to build an innings for the likes of Pieterson and Flintoff, but Vaughan scores too slowly and puts the pressure on them to score quickly. In his last four ODI series (including against Zimbabwe), he scored 327 runs at 32.7, but with a strike rate barely above 60 - probably not much higher than his test SR. In a 50 over match, that would get you 180 runs.
He does accelerate as he scores more runs, but while he’s pootling away at the other end, the rest get on with scoring quickly.
In ODI, it’s as much about individuals and match-winners as it is about captains, so surely it’s time to bring in someone who scores more runs - or someone who scores more quickly?
May 31st, 2005 at 6.41 pm
That’s right Nick. And I think this summer will be the making, or not, of his ODI career. I happen to think England’s domestic one-day set-up is partly to blame, too, but that’s for another post, another day…see what he can come up with in the next few months. The looming Aussie giant might wake the run-scoring-monster in him 
June 1st, 2005 at 3.15 am
Your thoughts on Vaughan remind me of thoughts we used to have about a certain Rahul Dravid till not too long ago. Dravid has always been a immesnely talented and techinically virtually flawless player, but his Test form did not translate to much in the ODI arena. His sheer class meant that it was tough to drop him, but he often scored way too slowly to merit a spot in the lineup, and put loads of pressure on the rest.
Somewhere over the last few years Dravid hiomself probably realised this because he, very evidently, began to work on his ODI game. That it more or less coincided with him becoming the ’stand-in’ keeper in the ODI squad might be coincidence, or might not. But since that seeming awareness of his own shortcomings, he has evolved into a very valuable one-day player, the consummate middle overs man.
I hope Vaughan has been doing some thinking off late about his ODI form as well, for if not, that 2 Natwest series are just around the corner, and yup it sure looks like his head is on the block. It would be a pity, though, because he is so bloody talented.
June 1st, 2005 at 10.19 am
Good comparison between the two - although some Indians will cringe, no doubt (”Dravid in a different class to Vaughan” etc!). One blatent problem Vaughan had last year was the lack of a gameplan - he just went beserk, and ended up looking stupid. That Dravid moulded himself into a middle-innings-specialist - a role played significantly within his abilities - shows Vaughan ought not to have many problems. Ack…we’ll see
June 1st, 2005 at 11.29 am
Well, I don’t know about Dravid (I’ll try to get up to speed on sub-continental cricket over the winter and next summer when they provide England’s opposition) but there is one statistic that would argue that Vaughan is already the best Test batsman England have ever produced - it’s the proportion of 50s converted to 100s.
June 1st, 2005 at 3.49 pm
Yes Will, its well within his ability to become a useful player like Dravid (and no the comparison is not bad, specially in ODIs, as Dravid used to be horribly misfit He does need to realise and bring out the change. And one thing I noticed in Dravid recently, he overcame his inherent hesitation in playing anything but ‘good’ cricket.
He started innovating (he’s tried more reverse sweep in past couple of years than anyone else in Indian team !). And I can almost see that this shedding of inhibition is against his instincts as a learned batsman. Its not (and will never be) his natural game (which is probably why he’s still so bloody good and ‘proper’ in tests).
The downside being that we have these ‘lapses’ in his ODI batting style, as if he forgot to turn on the ODI mode that day. On these days we can enjoy the vintage Dravid ODI batsmen of old times
June 3rd, 2005 at 6.06 am
I see that,worma- the ‘ODI mode’ thing. Sometimes you feel he has just regressed fore those couple of hours. But the best is when you can see his classical play, perfectly blended into a high strike rate ODI style. Sublime.
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