England’s rust a warning to the future

Sorry Will, you say in your article that this isn’t an excuse but I can’t see how its not. In fact everything England have said up till now to explain their no show at Brisbane, from the talk about the pitch and the Kookaburra balls to lack of match practice, every thing really, its been typical England sour grapes. Its turned into a bit of standard procedure for all touring teams these days, turn up on an away tour and play a warm up game or two, then do poorly in the 1st test and blame everyone but your self, next thing you know England will be saying something was wrong with the Hotel services or something.

Tim May and his bandwagon of players associations keep on harping about cramped schedules, but all this is getting a bit too annoying now. Here you’ve got the modern day cricketer earning 100% times more then your average pro say 20-30 years ago, and yet he’s complaining about too much cricket on one hand and not enough warm up games on the other! They can’t have it both ways, now can they? Either folks like Harmison be prepared to spend longer periods of time away from home and their families, or they cope up with cramped tours 5 tests in one month and a bit, and not many warm ups. Cope up or leave (like good old Marcus).

The one-day component of Australia’s Test team has had even less preparation then England, and Australia are doing okay. And you are quite wrong about McGrath as well- he also needs plenty of work after a lay-off to hit peak form. There was much debate here in Australia as to sending him to Malaysia and India, where he could only get ten over spells in, or to have him stay home.

The ECB would be in a far better position to take a stand against rushed cricket if they hadn’t have crammed their own season with ODI tournaments. As late as 1997, a tour of England was a proper tour. However, one of the main reason that they abandoned all those touring fixtures was the refusal of counties to play strong sides against the tourists. What a disservice that has proved to be.

Certainly the English bowlers look under-done. The pace men came back a little bit yesterday, and it shows the benefits of having just one day’s Test cricket under their belt. Harmison….. jury out.

The thought that has been going through my mind is whether England would have been better off playing two spinners?

Strauss’ dismissal was simply a lack of discipline; it wasn’t as though the Aussies hadn’t telegraphed their plan. I was very impressed with Cook, he looked good and allegiances aside, I would like to have seen more of him. A shame he got an excellent ball from McGrath.

Collingwood looked particularly ordinary to me; unbalanced even in his stance. There are some fundamentals, taught from an early age that are so basic as not to dis-regard and being balanced in one’s stance is one of them.

The mind-games of an Ashes series have begun. Strauss has lost the first round. Will be fascinated to see the duel between Warne and Pietersen and later on Warne and Flintoff.

Now lets not generalise “cracker the cricket dog”, I do “care” about one-days, and I’ve also very much enjoyed Australia’s domination in the first couple of days, as must have a lot of Aussie fans I’m sure. And I’d not be dissapointed at all if the entire series was just as one-sided, and after losing the series last year, who is to say the Aussies would mind a 4-0/5-0 thumping win, with 2/3 innings wins.

Would it be churlish to remind Steve Harmison (and possibly the rest of the England squad) that he is being paid handsomely to fly round the world first class to play a game in the sunshine, and that he could be sweeping the streets instead?