Over recent weeks, the England cricket hierarchy has been at pains to show it learnt lessons from a dismal Ashes in Australia. Chief executive Richard Gould, director Rob Key and captain Ben Stokes have led a charm offensive aimed at showing they really do care about county cricket, that they will not be giving failing England players any more leeway, and that preparing for a Test series might actually be a good thing.
Stokes grabbed more attention this week with another interview to the ECB website, in which he insisted his relationship with head coach Brendon McCullum is not strained by a difference of opinion on England’s approach, and that they are “95 per cent aligned”.
All of which has left former England captain Michael Vaughan perplexed. “I have no idea why that interview was released,” Vaughan says. “I don’t think there’d have been one person waking up that morning thinking, ‘Oh, Ben and Baz have got an issue’. Two hours later, that interview gets released, and it’s clear that they’ve had a bit of a problem in the winter.”
Vaughan was not convinced by Key and Gould’s PowerPoint presentation to the media at Lord’s which attempted to lay out England’s next steps and was dismissed as “management speak” in some quarters. “The corporate messaging was just corporate messaging,” says Vaughan. “Slideshows for slideshows’ sake, just to try and prove that they’re becoming more of an attention-to-detail organisation.
“If they really wanted to put on a front then Ben Stokes, Rob Key and Baz McCullum should have been presenting those slides in front of the media. I have no idea why Richard Gould was talking about cricket. He’s the CEO. He’s what I call the bean counter of the game, and looks after the finances.”
The question now is whether England will really change. Can the bridge between the County Championship and the England Test team be rebuilt after it was left to decay for four years?
There are certainly places up for grabs when England take on New Zealand at Lord’s in June, in the first of three Tests. Zak Crawley’s position as an opener is in serious doubt. The bowling unit is not set in stone. Vaughan, who is speaking to promote the Barclays Knight-Stokes Cup, a new national hardball competition for state schools, believes there must be changes at both ends of the line-up if England are to start afresh.
“They need tone-setters with bat and ball, so they need someone who opens the batting with Ben Duckett. You can’t expect to be the No 1 team in the world with someone who averages 31 from 64 games [Crawley]. We need to get away from just selecting players because they play in the vibe this era has created. Your opening batters have got to average over 40.
“And then I’d be looking at someone like Ollie Robinson. With the new ball in Australia they were poor, and they need someone that’s going to set the tone. England needs to sit with Ollie and if it’s a mental thing, if it’s a fitness thing, if it’s an attitude problem that Ollie Robinson has, England have to iron it out. They’re not a good enough team to just put someone like Ollie Robinson on the scrap heap. You look at his numbers in Test match cricket, they’re up there.”
There is plenty of time for County Championship players to catch the eye, with four more rounds of games before McCullum and Stokes pick their side. But there is already a familiar name at the top of the run scoring charts: Jamie Smith had an Ashes to forget with the bat and the gloves, but he has made a brilliant start to the season at Surrey, scoring two centuries in two matches batting at three.
The concern with Smith is that his teammate Ben Foakes is Surrey’s preferred wicketkeeper. Smith is likely to retain his place in the England Test team, even after some brainless shots Down Under, but his glovework needs attention. Vaughan says it is time for him to knuckle down and learn the art of the keeper, even if that means taking matters into his own hands.
“He’s obviously not keeping for Surrey, which is a problem for me. Like Shoaib Bashir, he wasn’t getting in his county team but he’s England spinner, that can’t be right. But [Smith] should play because he’s too good … His batting’s going to be fine at seven – I’m sure he’ll end up maybe at six in time.
“But I just look at Matthew Prior, when he first started for England as a wicketkeeper-batter, and his keeping was a little bit flawed, and suddenly he went and worked away with [former England wicketkeeper] Bruce French, worked his nuts off every morning and drilled and caught loads of balls and became a brilliant wicketkeeper-batter. I look at Jamie Smith and think, ‘Go on, take a leaf out of Prior’s book’.”
England were criticised for their lack of specialist coaches at the Ashes, with only a temporary bowling coach and no fielding coach on the tour, during which they dropped 18 catches. There was also no keeping coach to work with directly Smith on his struggles behind the stumps.
“The coaching has to get better, it’s as simple as that,” adds Vaughan. “Baz McCullum has got to coach the team and he needs to bring in expertise. And if Jamie Smith is working with Alex Stewart or Bruce French, whoever, Jack Russell, that wicketkeeper coach should be around the England team for the preparation days. And if I was the coach of England, which I’m not, I’d be fine with players bringing in their own coaches to make sure that they’re ready for the Thursday start.
“I’ve never, ever seen a keeper improve by not catching balls. You have to do all the drills. You have to catch loads of balls, and that’s on the Tuesday morning, the Wednesday morning, the Thursday morning, the Friday morning. Every single keeper that I see that gets to the top in their profession are catching balls all the time. I just need to see a bit more of that.”
Over a thousand teams have sign up for the chance to play at Lord’s as stars encourage greater access to cricket in state schools. Find out more here.
