I just love the fact the English Media are now turning on them
England’s arrogance and entitlement is becoming off-putting
Refusal to explain snub of day-night practice match before second Test and ‘keep the faith’ message are insulting the intelligence of fans
It is not the value attached to vibes, or “camaraderie” as Brendon McCullum prefers to call it, that I find most bewildering about this
England team. It is not even the fact that, with a 12-day break between Tests, they would rather luxuriate by the Queensland coast than
send their bungling batsmen to Canberra for a pink-ball match, their one chance of exposure to the day-night setting before facing Mitchell Starc and Pat Cummins under the lights in Brisbane. It is the idea that, even when taking a decision incomprehensible to those outside the Bazball bubble, they feel no need to explain themselves to anyone.
“Keep the faith”: that was McCullum’s message to fans after England’s
Perth debacle. They might have a little faith if the head coach or his captain deigned to unpack the logic of their laissez-faire approach, which involves spurning any practice of a format in which Australia have won 13 of 14 Tests. Even before an infamous two-day defeat, the talk was that the Gabba would pose England’s most daunting challenge, with Starc – taker of a staggering 74 wickets with the pink ball, 39 better than the next best bowler – swinging it around corners. Now that the stakes are even higher, with a 2-0 deficit surely terminal to any hope of regaining the Ashes, the grand plan for maximising the extra break is to “make sure morale doesn’t drop”.
Impregnable self-belief is not, in itself, a weakness in sport. If harnessed correctly, it can be priceless psychological armour. The problem is that England have no substantive reasons for their refusal to adapt. Ben Stokes, in his first remarks after his side capitulated in Perth, said: “We know the preparation is correct – it works for us.” Does it, though? Last time I checked, the choice to warm up with a game against the Lions on a Lilac Hill featherbed
culminated at Perth Stadium in batting so brainless you wondered if half of them had even seen sharp bounce before.
By talking in “trust the process” bromides, they are insulting the intelligence of fans who have moved heaven and earth to come here. There are urgent questions that need to be asked about England’s half-cocked build-up to this series. Why, for example, have there been three years of County Championship experiments with the Kookaburra ball, as a ruse to replicate overseas Test conditions, if England cannot even be bothered to adjust properly to the conditions they face next week? Why did India spend eight days last year training at the WACA, if not to harden themselves for the Perth experience? Whether in Perth or Brisbane, the Bazball approach remains broadly the same: never mind the evidence, feel the energy.
Stokes and McCullum act as if they are on a higher philosophical plane
In no other major sport would this be sustainable. If Thomas Tuchel took England to next summer’s World Cup without any serious matches in the lead-in, merely a kickabout with the under-21s in Miami, there would be an overwhelming public backlash – especially if his team then lost 3-0 in the opening group game. Similarly, if Steve Borthwick’s players had been dealt a hiding by the Wallabies this autumn, and if he had then fronted the press to declare he would change nothing against the All Blacks, the response, quite rightly, would have been derision.
In cricket, by contrast, we are living through a strange period, where Stokes and McCullum act as if they are operating on some higher philosophical plane, beyond the understanding of anybody not in their coterie. Of all the international teams I have studied up close, there is an arrogance and entitlement about this England side that can be quite off-putting. They give the impression that they are on some divine quest to upend the fundamentals of the game, and that they are free to duck reasonable scrutiny on the grounds that outsiders cannot grasp the magic at work.
This conceit is about to be put to the sternest examination. If England lose in Brisbane, having sent none of their misfiring batsmen to confront a Prime Minister’s XI, the backlash will be instant and severe. Supporters, until now united by gallows humour about the Perth result,
will turn against the players they have paid such vast sums of money to follow Down Under. The statistics do not lie: the 11 England players who took to the field in Perth have played 24 pink-ball Tests between them. Australia? 89.
And yet the tourists are too wedded to their sacrosanct methods to ask underperforming stars to address their inexperience.
It is one telling symptom of a wider malaise, where a team puffed up on their own publicity seem now to believe they are unaccountable.
Refusal to explain snub of day-night practice match before second Test and ‘keep the faith’ message are insulting the intelligence of fans
www.telegraph.co.uk
