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Loading ...Some good points well made Rich, but is there really “no tougher hurdle in the game right now”?
It happens in other sports too – notably rugby where players all too frequently refer to their next game being ‘huge, massive, the biggest game of our careers,’ etc.
Every winter some media-trained track-suited England player previews a tour by telling us how X (destination) is the hardest place to tour because it’s hot, the food is different, the travelling is torturous or, heaven forbid, the opposition are good at cricket. Isn’t that the idea of touring? Sri Lankans aren’t mad about Durham in May either.
This sort of waffle is all about ‘bigging up’ a series to generate interest. It is tedious from players, predictably overdone by Sky TV, and utterly unnecessary, but increasingly frequent, from supposedly balanced cricket writers.
Dare to be different; it’s the toughest hurdle because it’s the next one, but if international cricket tours were not tough they would be pointless, wouldn’t they?
Just wait for the nominated England player’s pre-Bangladesh tour interview in February – ‘huge, hardest place to tour, some world class players there, blah blah blah….’
Success breeds success?
By Rich Abbott last year, mid-December Add your comment below
When England sneaked the Ashes in 1953, winning by one Test, Bill Bowes wrote that “satisfaction in the result must not blind us to the need to build strongly.” When England sneaked the Ashes in 2009, winning by one Test, modern day scribes penned similar sentiments. In fact, most added ominous warnings about the winter tour to then-number one Test nation, South Africa.
Fast forward a few months and some uncharacteristic limited overs success, and the tone has changed. England now have a pretty decent chance – they must do, Michael Vaughan says so, revealing in his Sunday Telegraph column that he “really fancies England to win this Test series”.
But why? Are people reading too much into the impressive victory over South Africa in the Champions Trophy, and the subsequent drawn T20 and victorious ODI series? Is it wrong to read anything into such matches?
England’s recent record suggests it is. Results since the 06-07 debacle down under show very little correlation between limited overs and Test success: a slap in the face to that much vaunted variable, momentum. When Test and ODI series have been paired together in recent years, England have an uncanny and near-impeccable record – at winning one and losing the other.
Illustrating how England have become a model of inconsistency, and boding badly for the two months ahead, a win one/lose one pattern has occured on the following occasions:
Australia, away, 06-07
West Indies, home, 2007
India, home, 2007
Sri Lanka, away, 07-08
New Zealand, away. 2008
New Zealand, home, 2008
South Africa, home, 2008
West Indies, away, 2009
Australia, home, 2009
In other words, most series England have played. But, to take that as the full story would be to ignore the times that ODI series have been significant as eye-opening and mindset-altering precursors.
This theme is explored by Simon Barnes in his book, The Meaning of Sport. In it, he discusses England’s limited overs success in the early summer of 2005, and its subsequent ramifications for the Test series.
It showed the England players that the Australian side was composed exclusively of human beings. The sort of people who bleed when you prick them. The wine they drink is made of grapes. They ache, they err, they worry, they defecate, they get tired, they get homesick. And they could, conceivably and occasionally, be beaten.
Despite this bunch of South Africans sitting far below that Australian team on the greatness spectrum, there is probably no tougher hurdle in the game right now. Phase one of the tour has been completed to perfection: we may not have been led to believe it a few months ago, but it turns out Graeme Smith’s men are beatable.
Tags: england-in-south-africa, michael-vaughan, simon-barnes, The Meaning of Sport |
2 Responses to “Success breeds success?”
December 15th, 2009 at 12.49 pm
December 15th, 2009 at 7.01 pm
Thanks Ernie, point taken. If an England player does pedal that line before the Bangladesh tour, then we’re in trouble. I tend to think of cricket as less ‘media training’ contaminated as most other sports – having a number of players with brains helps – but it clearly is commonplace. In the Simon Barnes book I mention, he describes a scene from some tour in the eighties where a small number of hacks are sat around the pool listening to a relaxed David Gower talk candidly. Obviously wouldn’t happen now. Not without an England media man lying on a lilo in close proximity anyway…
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