28 Days' Data

Miller Peter

Description

"We will have to look at the data." As this quote hit the airwaves it was said to sum up England's backward and stuttering performance at the 2015 World Cup. It didn't matter that Peter Moores, the coach at the time, had been misheard - he said he would look at it later. The narrative of a team held back by too much information had taken hold. But this was not the first time England had struggled in cricket's premier event. England's history with one-day cricket is a troubled one. Despite inventing the limited-overs game more than 50 years ago they have never won the World Cup. 28 Days' Data tells the story of England at every World Cup since 1992, speaking with those that were there and the journalists that covered their efforts to pick through the remains. With interviews from England captains, players and coaches, this is the definitive take on England's failed attempts to be world beaters in the shortest forms of the game - and whether things might finally be about to change.

Sujets

• Inglaterra
• England

Informations

• Publié par: Pitch Publishing Ltd
• Date de parution: 27 juillet 2016
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781785312373
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 1 Mo

Extrait

First published by Pitch Publishing, 2016
Pitch Publishing
A2 Yeoman Gate
Yeoman Way
Durrington
BN13 3QZ
www.pitchpublishing.co.uk
Peter Miller and Dave Tickner, 2016
All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse-engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of the Publisher.
A CIP catalogue record is available for this book from the British Library
Print ISBN 978-1-78531-150-5
eBook ISBN: 978-1-78531-237-3
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Contents
Foreword by George Dobell
Prologue - We ll have to look at the data
1992 World Cup - Front runners, almost winners
1996 World Cup - From finalists to also-rans
1997-1998 - The Hollioake years
1999 World Cup - Embarrassed at home
2003 World Cup - Cricket and politics make an ugly mix
2007 World Cup - Caribbean go-slow
Twenty20 cricket - The inventors playing catch-up
2011 World Cup - Entertaining failures
2015 World Cup - England s Greatest Hits
The future s bright, the future s solar red
Epilogue - Redemption (almost)
Authors Note
T HE story of one-day cricket starts long before the focus of this book, but this is an attempt to understand why England went from almost winning the 1992 World Cup to consistent underachievers for the next two decades. We have tried to speak to as many of those who played for or coached England as possible, but it was difficult to speak to those who are still within the England set-up. Access is, perhaps understandably, closely guarded. We hope that we have been able to tell as accurate a version of events surrounding the most recent tournaments as possible. We are extremely grateful to all of those who took the time to speak to us on the record, and those that were able to fill in the gaps off the record. We could not have done this without them. When we have spoken to someone for the book we have tried to make it clear they are speaking directly to us by using the present tense says ; quotes that we have collated from elsewhere are attributed to their original source. We would like to thank the following interviewees for sparing the time to speak to us: Jonathan Agnew, Mike Atherton, Lawrence Booth, Ali Brown, Robert Croft, Phil DeFreitas, Mark Ealham, John Etheridge, Angus Fraser, David Fulton, Ashley Giles, Graham Gooch, Adam Hollioake, Nick Hoult, Nasser Hussain, Raymond Illingworth, Steve James, Nick Knight, Andrew Miller, Lord MacLaurin, Peter Moores, Alan Mullally, Paul Nixon, Kevin O Brien, Kevin Pietersen, Derek Pringle, Jack Russell, Owais Shah, Neil Smith, Alec Stewart, Andrew Strauss, and Graham Thorpe.
Thank you to Pitch Publishing for agreeing to let us tell an unloved story. We hope the chance you have taken is worth it.
Also, thanks to those of you who were a sounding board for ideas, and to proofreaders and transcribers. You know who you are and you know you are appreciated.
Foreword
By George Dobell, Senior Correspondent, ESPNCricinfo
A N optimist, they say, describes the glass as half-full. A pessimist describes it as half-empty. And a regular supporter of England at cricket World Cups expects the glass to fragment, explode and kill everyone in the near vicinity.
It is, psychologists would tell us, a conditioned response. We ve experienced so much disappointment associated with World Cups that we should, by now, consider it a success if the team arrive at the venue on the right day (beyond them in 2003, albeit with mitigating factors), sober (the 2007 tournament was like Woodstock; if you remember it, you probably weren t there) and looking smart in their blazers (something they didn t manage until 1987).
So this book should probably come with a health warning. It will bring back memories of long-buried traumas. There s the Wasim Akram spell in 1992, Andy Bichel beating England all on his own in 2003, Kevin O Brien producing an innings so incredible he should probably have worn a cape (2011), the day-night loss in Wellington that was completed before there was any need to turn on the lights (2015) and, maybe grimmest of all, the 1999 elimination that occurred before the event s theme song was released. A theme song whose video suggested that only the insane attended cricket.
There are recurring themes in the catalogue of failures contained here. Most of all there is the prioritising of Test cricket to the detriment of the ODI side and the habit of abandoning long-held plans on the eve of the tournament. Invariably, England have gone into World Cups a bizarre mixture of the exhausted and the inexperienced.
For that reason, England s debacle at the 2015 World Cup has a strong claim to be ranked the most disappointing performance of all. They had, you see, been extended every advantage heading into it. The Ashes had been moved - we had three Ashes series within two years to ensure England could spend the whole winter of 2014/15 honing the relevant skills - and, in eight months between August 18, 2014 and March 14, 2015, they played 23 matches in all formats and 22 of them were ODIs. Yet, having persevered with Alastair Cook long after the point when it became clear to most that he was - in ODIs at least - part of the problem rather than part of the solution, they then changed the identity of their opening bowler and No. 3 batsman on the eve of the tournament. In a format where role identity and familiarity is so important, it was a self-defeating move.
It might be tempting to conclude that England have always been hopeless at ODI cricket, but that would be simplistic. They have been, in their own conditions at least, the best in the world on several occasions and should have won the Champions Trophy in 2004 and 2013. It often seems to be the way that England s successes are explained away but, in 2012, when they beat Australia 4-0 at home and Pakistan 4-0 away, they were rated the best ODI side in the world for a reason. Let s not forget that. Even after they lost the Champions Trophy Final in 2013, there was no reason to think that, with Graeme Swann, Jonathan Trott and Kevin Pietersen available, they would not challenge in the 2015 World Cup.
Peter Moores carried the can for that failure. And it is only right that the coach should take some of the responsibility. But he didn t inherit a handful of aces when he took the job about 12 months earlier. Instead, he took over a team in transition, an administration committed to a captain not worth his place in the side and found himself representing a board whose behaviour has left many supporters disillusioned. He became the focal point for their anger and the scapegoat for the failure. Lampooned for a phrase he didn t say and a method in which he didn t believe, he became more pi ata than coach. He wasn t the problem.
He may not have been the solution, either, though. It is true that results improved, in ODI cricket at least, once he left. But he wasn t the only departure. England also discarded several of their senior players - all of whom had failed at the World Cup - and instead embraced younger, fresher talent developed in the county game. Almost immediately, they started to enjoy better results.
There might be a lesson there.
For while some blame the standard of the ECB s domestic competitions for England s failing in World Cups - they argue that players are disadvantaged by developing in that environment - it is not an argument that stands up to much scrutiny.
Consider Ian Bell, for example. Bell was chosen to open the batting in the World Cup in 2015. But he had not played a domestic T20 match between June 25, 2010 and August 23, 2014.
It was a similar story with the man who was to lead England s bowling attack in the event, James Anderson. He has, at the time of writing in May 2016, played five T20 games since June 2010 and didn t play any in 2012 or 2013.
And, at the time Cook was selected in the England squad to play in the Stanford series in late 2008, he had a career-best T20 score of 15.
The problem wasn t so much county cricket as the fact the top players had stopped playing in it. As a result, they failed to keep up to date with the latest developments in the game. It showed in Australia and New Zealand.
We shouldn t be surprised. The one global limited-overs tournament that England have won - the World T20 in the Caribbean in 2010 - came when England discarded several players on the brink of the tournament and embraced players fresh out of the county game. So Craig Kieswetter, man of the match in the final, made his T20 international debut in the first game of the tournament. So did his opening partner, Michael Lumb, while Michael Yardy was playing just his fourth such game and his first for three years.
The point of all this?
The key to improvement is not to radically overhaul our county system. It is to embrace it.
There is plenty of talent out there. And the domestic game still offers the opportunity to learn and develop new skills. We need to ensure our international players have the opportunity to play enough county cricket to ensure they remain in touch with changes within the game much as even an experienced doctor will benefit from regular training sessions to ensure they remain up to date with medical advances.
Remember, Australia have never won the World T20 and India haven t won it since the IPL was formed. It s not the cricket we tend to admire in those competitions. It is the marketing.
Domestic cricket has a PR problem, for sure, but it remains the foundation for all that is good in England cricket. We need to build up