England’s consistency in being inconsistent with their batsmen - a recipe for disaster
Since the start of 2014, England have handed a whopping 14 batsmen maiden Test caps. While the number in itself is concerning, the performances of the players and the way their selections have been handled have been an abomination, and if not addressed, might turn out to be fatal.
If you had told Andrew Strauss when he retired in August 2012 that seven years down the line, England would still be looking to replace him, he would have probably laughed it off. Seven years later, it’s almost as if England’s worst nightmares have come true, as they now realize that not only are they yet to find a replacement for Strauss who retired in 2012, but also for Alastair Cook, who bid goodbye to international cricket last year.
Add to this an unstable No.3 position and Joe Root’s dilemma of whether to bat three or four, and you have the perfect recipe for disaster. To sum up England’s batting woes - since the start of 2014, of all English batsmen to have played six or more Test matches, no one averages more than 40, barring Root. During this timespan, they just won 44% of all Tests they played. However, breaking this statistic down tells quite a story. While they have won 61% of all their home matches, the number drops down drastically away from home, just 26%, where the batsmen are usually tested in unfamiliar conditions.
To their agony, they have tried everything, but it just hasn’t clicked. Be it failed experiments in the form of Alex Hales, James Vince and Dawid Malan where they hoped they’d replicate their ODI form, or batsmen getting found out at the top level in the form of Sam Robson, Adam Lyth, Ben Duckett, Keaton Jennings, and Tom Westley, or the rare case of Haseeb Hameed who completely lost his touch after an injury, or the unfortunate early retirement of James Taylor, everything that could possibly go wrong has gone wrong for England with their batting, over the course of the last five years.
This makes one wonder the exact cause of the problem. Is it an issue with the roots, the structure of County Cricket? Are the batsmen who are breaking through not good enough to meet the laborious demands of Test Cricket? Are the selectors to blame for the mismanagement of players? Five years of experimentation and course correction to no avail, and now they are staring at the Ashes, days after escaping an embarrassing defeat at the hands of noisy neighbors Ireland - which saw yet another sub-par batting performance.
The problem started with the retirement of Strauss, after which they blood in a certain Nick Compton. Compton opened alongside Cook in England’s famous triumph over India in 2012 and had served as a decent foil to Cook, and the duo operated successfully as a pair. A few months down the line, Compton registered two centuries against New Zealand away from home, and it looked like he had all but sealed his place as Cook’s batting partner. But out of nowhere, a decision was taken to move Compton to No.3 and open the batting with Alex Hales, who, then, was in the form of his life in ODI cricket. England’s obsession to give white-ball players a go in Tests was no secret, and by deciding to open with Hales, they did just that. Soon after being moved to No.3, Compton struggled, had a string of below-par performances, and was soon shown the door. As the saying goes, why try to fix something which is not broken?
The Alex Hales red-ball experiment turned to be a failure, and so did a zillion others which followed. While Michael Carberry’s Test career was unfortunately caught in the crossfire of the 2014 Mitchell Johnson who breathed fire, Garry Ballance, whose career in the initial stages promised to fill the Jonathan Trott-shaped hole, hit a jolt and took a steep dive out of nowhere - a dive after which Gary never found his "Balance" ever again.
The structure of County Cricket cannot be blamed because in fact the men who have made their debuts - Rory Burns, Ollie Pope, Mark Stoneman etc were indeed the highest run-getters in the domestic season. However, the quality of county cricket, and the handling and selection of the players by the management could be and should be put under scrutiny.
21-year-old Ollie Pope, who averages 53 in first-class cricket, was axed after just three failures against India. James Vince, who looked to be coming to terms with Test cricket as his career progressed, was axed despite scoring a 76 in his last innings. Ben Foakes, who was an integral part with the bat in their victory in Sri Lanka, was overlooked like he never existed in the first place. Keaton Jennings, who had an evident technical flaw, was given more chances than even Rohit Sharma between 2010-13. Tom Westley, Sam Robson, Mark Stoneman, and Adam Lyth were chopped and changed more often than Ravichandran Ashwin’s bowling action. The latest addition to this lot is Jason Roy, who again has been a blind pick purely based on his limited-overs form.
While the quality of the players can be questioned, it is unfair to expect results from them without giving time and axe them if they fail to deliver, despite everyone being in the embryonic stage of their Test careers. It is indeed baffling that a country which revolutionized its ODI cricket through its planning is struggling to replicate the same in Test cricket, and their thought process in selection seems like a jargon impossible to decipher.
Little can be done when you don’t identify the right players and give them the rope they deserve, and instead constantly put your faith on white-ball players to replicate their form in red-ball cricket - everyone cannot be a Virender Sehwag or a David Warner. The situation might be under control now thanks to the exceptional quality of Root and the odd brilliance from the rest, but if not restructured soon enough, one must imagine, unlike the Ireland match, they will face consequences for their dire performances.
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