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    Where to now for England?

    By Will last year, at the start of January Leave a comment on this post

    Not really had time to write anything on Australia’s magnificent performance, and England’s complete acquiescence. So I’m opening it up to you, before which I’ll just offer a brief thought which is nagging away at me.

    Nasser Hussain and David Lloyd made some fascinating remarks following the loss at Sydney. They noted that Australia have a team bus, and a designated bus driver - usually one of Stuart Clark or Shane Warne. Warne would be seen hauling his bag from the hotel to the bus, fag in mouth and off they’d go to the ground.

    England, on the other hand, have a huge, luxury coach in which to travel. The bags are all sorted for them and they’re surrounded by security guards and pamperers. They don’t lift a finger. This alone can’t lose a team the Ashes, but it’s evidence of the effect 2005 had on England; an over-reaction to a series which was far closer than people realised. Then, England pick-pocketed the urn from Australia; in reverse, this time, Australia have stolen it back like a violent bulldozer prising an ATM from a high-street wall.

    Your thoughts? Where do England go from here?

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    6 Responses to “Where to now for England?”

  • Reverse Swing wrote:
    January 6th, 2007 at 4.39 pm

    The thorough review that the ECB has put in place is a start, as long as it actually comes up with proper answers rather than simply turns into a series of meaningless platitudes that result in no action being taken and the same incompetent faces keeping the same jobs. (Mike Selvey in the Guardian today refers to the ‘bowling dossier’ that was lost at the MCG, and how ‘nicks’ was spelt with a ‘k’ - what cricket brain came up with that?)

    How did we get to the situation where the bowling attack in the first test consisted of two bowlers have either confessed they were overawed (Harmison) or had the coach do it for them (Anderson the show-pony), together with a spinner who hadn’t played first class cricket for a year, and a skipper who patently wasn’t 100% fit???

    Why was Trescothick picked?

    The tour schedule was a disaster - how the ECB agreed to it beggars belief. If that’s all Cricket Australia offered them, then they should have organised their own warm up games.

    Bottom line is that Australia started planning for this series at about 7pm on 12th September 2005 - England need to start working now for 2009.

  • Wraye wrote:
    January 6th, 2007 at 5.09 pm

    Agreed.

    Take the captaincy away from Fred, let him heal. Choose players on fitness and performance. Get rid of the bleedin’ nanny squad round them.

    Back in 1981, Botham was cheesed off like mad and desperate to play, Brearley had Willis bowling up the slope “to make him angry” and look what happened. In 2005 they were united and fighting. In 2007 they were a bunch of tourists and it showed. Just how many concerts did they go to? Send ‘em to a boot camp!

  • Innocent Abroad wrote:
    January 6th, 2007 at 10.03 pm

    AIUI England players’ contracts are handed out annually. I’d suggest that come April or whenever they do it only these players should be offered one:

    Batting: Cook, Bell, KP, Collingwood, Vaughan*
    All-rounder: Flintoff.
    Bowlers: Hoggard, Panesar.

    Vaughan to skipper*

    *If fit. If not, give Cook the captaincy - he’s older than when the Proteas gave it to Smith.

  • Larry Teabag wrote:
    January 7th, 2007 at 1.23 am

    Where do England go from here?

    Let’s just keep our fingers crossed that the answer isn’t “down the pan”. I agree that it’s difficult not to see this fiasco as, at least in part, a result of the celebrity excesses of the last year or so.

    Hopefully this will have brought them down to earth with a crash… but not such a big one as to cripple them.

  • SpryCorpse wrote:
    January 7th, 2007 at 6.37 am

    While tempted to say “who cares?” :-) I guess that England needs to pay heed to the obvious fact that the Aussies have created new benchmarks in sustained intensity and concentration.
    Enticing Troy Cooley away from England didn’t do any harm either. Lee got better as the series progressed and even McGrath was getting the ball to swing a tad.
    England need to work harder, prepare smarter and don’t give up - surely Australia will come back to the field a little with four senior guys out.

  • 13thMan wrote:
    January 7th, 2007 at 1.39 pm

    “…how the ECB agreed to it beggars belief. If that’s all Cricket Australia offered them, then they should have organised their own warm up games.”
    Who went home for a rest between the Champions Trophy and coming here? Who asked for the first 4 day game to be changed from a 1st class fixture to a glorified net session? Not Australia. I’m afraid this sounds very much like the old German refrain: ‘We were stabbed in the back, it wasn’t our fault.” It was solely Englands fault, and trying to sheet the blame elsewhere is not going to fix your numerous problems.
    Aside from anything else, it appears that CA may well have offered your lot more practice, but it appears that the MBE-clad Ashes champions of 2005 didn’t need to actually prepare for the series. Australia toured England in 2005 with a simlialr degree of complacency - but being a better team were only just beaten. CA and the team clearly accepted that they had mistakes, and addressed them accordingly. The ECB, and team, now need to do likewise. No-one appears to be preapred to do so at this stage.

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