There is a hole in your bucket, dear Liza, dear Liza.

an amazing article.....a long one....but truth in content and biting sarcasm with words.....bordering on the dark humor genre if you are an English supporter

There is a hole in your bucket, dear Liza, dear Liza by Jarrod Kimber on Cricinfo
http://www.espncricinfo.com/magazine/content/story/763425.html


You had to be at Headingley to really understand how much treacle Nick Compton was batting in. If it's possible for a batsman to sink beneath a pitch and only pop up for air at the end of each over, Compton was doing that. He knew there was pressure on him to make runs. And while many were calling for him to speed up, many of them were cricket journalists who wanted to leave Leeds. England had more time than Harlequin and the Ticktockman.

Compton didn't, though. He was an odd choice for England. He does not fit the blueprint of an English player. He is a county player who makes runs. He is a self-made man. It's hard to see how he ever would have fit into their team environment. If Compton wasn't an instant success, he wouldn't last.

What is weird is that his batting is almost perfectly designed for England. It's how they got to the top of the world. Top-order batsmen putting a exorbitant price on their wickets. Taking their sweet time. Tiring balls and bowlers. And building totals that gave their bowlers a psychological advantage almost every time they bowl. That is what Nick Compton does. He's not pretty. He's not fun. His batting reminds no one of jazz hands. He just accumulates in his own bubble until someone pops it.

This year he is averaging 42 in first-class cricket. He will score over 1000 runs for the fifth time. Compton made back-to-back hundreds in New Zealand. Three Tests later he was discarded. Dropped for not scoring quick enough in a game that England won by 247 runs, or just because he wasn't the right kind of guy.

But Nick Compton will never play for England again. He is just not one of them.

****

To the outside world Jonathan Trott seemed like a run-making robot. Face ball. Mark crease. Face ball. Inside the crowded England dressing room they knew better.

There had to be signs before the Gabba that everything was not right. And perhaps they even tried to do their best to keep Trott happy and performing. But it didn't work. All that preparation looked silly when one Test into the Ashes their No. 3 went home. Their wellness technicians had failed.

Trott was the poster boy for calm, efficient, focused England. But after that Test he became the poster boy for everything that was wrong with English cricket. The lack of fun. The tedium. The strictness. The soul-sucking machine that ate the good times. Trott wasn't having fun. He wasn't feeling relaxed. So when his cricket went wrong he tried harder. Which just made it worse.

England did much the same. The team might have stayed on the tour. But mentally they checked out. The sight of an English player smiling at practice disappeared. Meanwhile Darren Lehmann had his face in perpetual smile mode. Andy Flower had been one of the best coaches in the world, but now he looked like a confused man. And he couldn't change tack. He just kept sailing in the same direction he always had.

Flower backed himself and his ways. But while his ways did so much, they also appeared part of the problem. With England on seemingly endless tours, and playing and preparing in the same grinding way, it was no great surprise that key members couldn't handle it anymore. Trott went home. Swann gave up. Anderson was zombiefied. And Matt Prior's game stopped working.

When Andy Flower delivered his epic pre-match valediction in Sydney, Trott and Swann were gone. Prior was out. And the other senior players looked on blankly. Flower could no longer move his players.

In the Ashes, Mitchell Johnson provided shock and awe. England produced shlock and awful.



England could have used "rebuilding". But it lacks the sparkle of "new era". So it became a catchphrase. Low ebb, which some suggested, was never going to stick for the ECB

****

Where did Simon Kerrigan go? Had Shane Watson actually blasted him into oblivion? Were there groundsmen sweeping him up off the pitch at the breaks? Because he bowled eight overs at The Oval, and then was never seen again. He was not even seen as Australia tripped all over their second-innings total-setting. Not even for an over. When Swann retired in Australia, he didn't even get his name mentioned. James Tredwell did. Monty Panesar played. And Borthwick played.

Scott Borthwick. You remember, right? The Durham batsman who England picked as a bowler five Tests ago. He took wickets, perhaps not brilliant ones, but any wickets in Australia should have received a gift of land back in the UK. He shared his only Test with Boyd Rankin.

Rankin is gone as well. Not that he ever felt included. He was hired to play goon number three in the second act of the Ashes. Big men, bouncing the ball hard into the wicket and making Australia jump. He was an underwhelming understudy to Chris Tremlett.

Tremlett phoned his performance in. He was picked on memories and hope. One Test in and England decided he was not who they wanted. It seems like they never told him. He just continued to turn up day after day, essentially refiling paperwork that didn't need refiling, not knowing if he'd ever be needed again. He and Michael Carberry are not fans of ECB communication.

Michael Carberry was sort of the follow-up to Nick Compton. He fit in better, and he could do a great Viv Richards impersonation. But despite all those people in the ECB camp, it seemed no one would provide him with an answer for why he wasn't there anymore. He might as well be Graham Onions or James Taylor, if either of those people still exist.

****

In the 2012 World T20 they failed to make the semi-finals when they turned up as reigning champions. They collapsed from a near unloseable position in the Champions Trophy final.

They lost to the Dutch.


Nick Compton drives authoritatively, Worcestershire v Australians, Tour match, New Road, 2nd day, July 3, 2013
Nick Compton was discarded three Tests after he made back-to-back hundreds in New Zealand © Getty Images
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****

At Trent Bridge a tired Stuart Broad ended the match bowling at Stuart Binny pace. There is a thought that Broad is a clever bowler who can out-think a batsman. He can be. But you know when he's really good: when he bowls really fast. Full or short, but really fast. With swing, or even without, but fast, yeah. Because Broad can bowl really fast. He is a proper fast bowler. His spell at Durham in the Ashes was fast. His spell at Lord's against the Kiwis was fast. His hat-trick against India was fast. His hat-trick against Sri Lanka was fast. So the sight of Matt Prior up at the stumps to him as he bowled the old man's Saturday- afternoon spell of gentle outswing was not inspiring.

Broad has bowled a lot of overs. Graeme Swann has bowled more.

Swann bowled so much, he seemed to be playing for more teams than just England. I'm sure he must have played some ODIs for Sri Lanka, and a Test series for Bangladesh. Increasingly, you could hear the creak of his elbow as he bowled. He had it fixed once, and to celebrate, he bowled a lot more. England spent much of his career with no other spinner and no serious allrounder to share the load. Swann bowled until he was no longer good at it. He could have bowled in two more Tests while being no good at it, but he'd bowled enough. He doesn't bowl now.

His friend Jimmy Anderson still bowls. He bowls more often than any seam bowler has ever bowled at Test level. He bowls more than spinners as well. At Trent Bridge a year ago, he bowled a 14-over spell. It won the Test match. It was his last five-wicket haul. He has not been horrible since then. He was Man of the Match at Trent Bridge. But he doesn't look like the Anderson who helped England get to No. 1. He looks like a man who has bowled more deliveries than anyone else in the world. He's a hologram of himself; you can literally see the flickering as he runs in.

When England's batsmen stopped making their monumental totals, it was these three men who saved them. Regularly. Now one is gone, one is a hologram, and one is bowling slow. Why? Because England's schedule is stupid. Stupid. They simply play too many Tests. They play Tests more often than India and Sri Lanka play ODIs. They play Tests while you are sleeping, when you wake up, and during your afternoon nap. They do it over and over again. They're probably playing one now.

And while old players like to say modern players are soft and can't handle workloads, and that they bowled 83-over spells barefoot in the snow, the truth is, no one has ever endured the workloads these three men have had to endure at the top level. And here is a little secret for you: others have played a lot of cricket, but most of it has been in county seasons. It rains a lot in county seasons. You can bowl in third gear in county seasons. You can coast in county seasons.

None of Swann, Broad or Anderson are all-time greats. Swann is the only one with a bowling average of under 30, and it's 29.96. At Test level, they can't coast. They are just not that good. They have to play at their absolute maximum or they will fail. They played to their best. They went as hard as they could.

During their time together they beat Australia. They beat India. They beat Pakistan. They beat Sri Lanka. They beat New Zealand. They beat West Indies. They beat Bangladesh. And they drew with South Africa.

They lost to the schedule.



When Giles Clarke said that Alastair Cook came from the right kind of family, cricket groaned in the UK. It was proof that your upbringing and background still mattered in England

****

The phrase "new era" is grating. And too close to "new error". It sounds like it has been market-tested, or suggested by a sports psychologist. It's positive and peppy, and it doesn't really mean a thing. South Africa are in a new era. India are in a new era. Australia are using old players in a new era. Sri Lanka are about to enter a new era. It a new era for New Zealand too.

England could have used "rebuilding". But it lacks the sparkle of "new era". So it became a catchphrase. Low ebb, which some suggested, was never going to stick for the ECB.

So what is new? The chairman and captain are not new. The coach is not really new. The bowling coach is not new. The two main bowlers are not new. The No. 4 batsman and wicketkeeper are not new. The old coach is there, hiding somewhere behind his green curtain at Loughborough.

So what is new? The selectors are new. The assistant coach is new. Nos. 2, 3 and 6 are new. Two allrounders are new. And the managing director is new.

They fired their batsman most likely to win them matches. And their batting coach. And they continue to lose. It's more than possible that a positive catchphrase won't win it for them. It's more than possible they can't manage this. They couldn't manage Kevin Pietersen, and these last nine Tests have been as bad as what they said, hinted or leaked KP's behavior to be.

KP didn't fail consistently against the short ball. KP didn't bowl the wrong lengths. KP didn't put six fielders out for a No. 10. KP didn't bowl the bowlers to death. KP didn't schedule the bowlers to death. KP didn't drop all the simple chances. KP didn't take over world cricket. KP didn't mismanage the players. KP didn't fail to communicate with the players. KP didn't get the analysis wrong. KP wasn't outcoached. KP didn't get mankaded. KP doesn't back people based on their family. KP was KP. For better or worse.

This whole team was crumbling in front of them and they were whistling new era at us and moaning about someone they asked their fans to move on from. There is a hole in your bucket, dear Liza, dear Liza.

****

When England officially announced their part in the Axis of Admin with Australia and India, they tried to spin it as their way of saving cricket. They thought we were all incredibly stupid people. Some in the "small seven" felt England were joining India and Australia in a new empire. One last chance at grabbing at power and money. Others were disgusted that England would be involved with those dastardly Indians, who were clearly running, or ruining, everything.

Their team has been just as bad.

They peed on a cricket pitch. Some claim there was such bad karma that they haven't won a Test since. But they also didn't win at The Oval, so it might be more than urinating causality.

They stole Sri Lanka's coach right before Sri Lanka came over to play them. They have more money than Sri Lanka, and they wanted Farbrace. They got Farbrace. It was all a bit, "I want an oompa loompa now, daddy."

Stuart Broad not walking seemed to break the heart of every major sports newspaper writer in the UK. Those men who had not watched cricket outside the Ashes in decades suddenly noticed it and got upset. Stuart Broad had nicked to slip (actually it was a drop by Brad Haddin, first) and not walked. And he'd done it to the bowling of that terribly entertaining young No. 11, Ashton Agar. It was against the Spirit of Cricket.

They had also invoked the Spirit of Cricket rules when Ian Bell "made a mistake", wandered out of his ground while the ball was still in play and was run out by India on the last ball before tea. Andrew Strauss wandered all the way into the Indian dressing room to have him reinstated. Or reintegrated.


Kevin Pietersen leaves the SCG with his Test future in doubt, Australia v England, 5th Test, Sydney, 3rd day, January 5, 2014
Kevin Pietersen: a convenient scapegoat for England's failings in the last few years © PA Photos
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Yet Broad is happy to do up his shoelaces for hours on end when England want to slow down the over rate. Or leave the field at the end of a drinks break to go to the toilet to take time out of a game. No team has ever been as organised or professional at time-wasting as England. They are the Neo of world cricket. Time literally stops when they want it too. And that has been a lot of late.

When the Sri Lankan offspinner Sachithra Senanayake legally mankaded Jos Buttler, England were upset. They were less upset about all the twos Buttler had scored while he was out of his ground, repeatedly getting a head start. Sri Lanka had broken the spirit of the game; Buttler had just broken the Laws, even after being warned.

When James Anderson puts his hand over his mouth, he is sledging someone. When Joe Root pretends he is clapping his hands near a batsman to gee on his team, he is really sledging. Swann once said he wanted to kill a player during a tour match in Sri Lanka. Pietersen bad-mouthed James Taylor to his own team, and abused Strauss to the opposition. His team-mates abused him back. The whole team had an honesty session. KP was too honest and they dobbed him in.

Off the field they are not much better. Paul Downton said stuff about Pietersen, then apologised. Giles Clarke, well, he is Giles Clarke, there is no other like him. Well, actually he is a lot like Pietersen. Arrogant, bombastic, prone to saying stupid things, and breathtakingly unapologetic. And ultimately living in his own world.

When he said that Alastair Cook came from the right kind of family, cricket groaned in the UK. It was a massive step backwards. It was proof that your upbringing and background still mattered in England. All the Sky money you want can't shake that single damaging impression that cricket in the UK is still for those who went to schools older than Wisden.

There are some that think English cricket has an image problem. Really, they just have a problem.

****

The Lord's balcony is a private place to chat. But conversations there can be seen by anyone left in the ground. So the conversations between Cook and Broad were looked at with great interest from the press box. So too were the conversations between Anderson and Moores. And then again when Cook and Moores sat there. All three conversations were had with the door of the balcony shut. All three were serious and long. England were still in the ground four hours after play.

It looked more like soul-searching than them naming their favourite songs from Hedwig and the Angry Inch.

Occasionally there was a ghostly figure moving behind them, but the men didn't turn around or fear them; they just continued their haunted conversations.

They seemed oblivious to the fans still drinking their champagne in the pavilion. They didn't stop if someone stumbled out onto the ground to take an out-of-focus selfie. Nor when the Sky cables were removed or the boundary-rope triangles were collected.

All three conversations looked exactly like people breaking up in a public place. There was no anger, just a devastated acceptance. The stench of hurt and confusion could be smelt from the other side of the ground. They had the look of men who didn't know how to get out or improve. It was a balcony. It could have been a gallows.

****

Sports teams love business fads, because people in sports haven't worked in business much, so they have no idea how unimpressive business methods are. How pointless and depressing it all is. Group hugs. Thought showers. KPIs. Punch a puppy. Blue-sky thinking. Singing from the same hymn sheets. And endless matrixes. England's backroom is littered with these sorts of things.

They even employed the famous Myers Briggs personality tests to better understand how to best use their players. Or how to best fire them.

You cannot fail a Myers Briggs Test. But if England took it right now, they would. If England lose 4-0 against India, they will be ranked sixth in the world. Supposedly the most professional side in cricket's history. Sixth.

They manage. They test. They superfood. They analyse. They sabermetric. They annoy. They waste time. They spin. They rule. They catchphrase.

They lose.

Jarrod Kimber was 50% of the Two Chucks, and is the mind responsible for cricketwithballs.com

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© ESPN Sports Media Ltd.

Right or wrong that is an interesting article, with food for thought and beautifully written

and here us part-1...reads more like part-2

Together they fall
England rose to No. 1 in the rankings with a machine-like efficiency but the signs of an impending breakdown were quickly apparent

A low ebb can typically be found in any city in the world at 3am on a Saturday morning. It's someone lying in their own sick, urine and faeces. The night started with such high hopes.

In cricket, a low ebb is when you get the exact pitch you have ordered for a Test, you win the toss, and then you lose against a team which hasn't won away from home in three years. The Test started with such high hopes.

****

The ECB has a blueprint for its perfect kind of cricketer.

An English cricketer should be someone who has come through the English set-up in some way. County cricket form is less important. They need to have impressed at academies, on Lions tours, been through the testing systems, be easy to handle, aggressive but defend first, respectful of authority, and young.

The bowlers should be tall and fast, bowl long spells. The spinners should be orthodox and consistent. The body shapes should be slim, muscular and fit for purpose. And in leadership they should be from the right kind of family.

****

A fresh-looking Stuart Broad bounces through to deliver a full and swinging ball to MS Dhoni. Dhoni plays an aggressive waft that looks designed largely to get an edge. India lead by 52.

Harbhajan Singh walks in at No. 8. Broad goes full and straight with this newish ball. It is given out lbw. Despite the obvious deflection. Broad is on a hat-trick. DRS schadenfreude takes full effect. India lead by 52.

Praveen Kumar faces the next ball. Broad is on a good length this time. Praveen's bat seems to be operated by an invisible goblin that won't allow it to move properly and the stumps fly. Broad flies past him into the arms of his ecstatic, hat-trick-happy team-mates. They bounce with joy. They are a team. They are as one. The fans raise their beers in triumph. Ian Botham applauds like a loving dad from the balcony.

It is July 30, 2011. Before Broad's intervention, India were 52 runs ahead with five wickets in hand. They would move that lead to 67. They would lose by 319 runs. India go down 2-0. Then 3-0, 4-0.

England are No. 1.

****

Every kind of spin not in the MCC coaching manual is mystery spin when described in the UK. There is a whisper that Pippa Middleton's former beau, Alex Loudon, had a doosra. But he's now working in the city, meaning that one day he'll end up back in cricket as a managing director.

The thing is, to the rest of the world, a delivery perfected in the '90s and around since the '60s, is not a mystery. It's a delivery. It's like a googly being called a mystery in the 1920s.

When England toured the UAE in 2012, Ajantha Mendis had been bowling the carrom ball for almost four years. Rangana Herath had bowled it more than 12 years ago. Jack Iverson played in 1950 with his carrom-like ball. Yet England were defeated by the mystery of a doosra in the UAE.

It was like dying from swine flu in four years' time. Or still collecting beanie babies.

Saeed Ajmal used this "mystery" ball to torment England. And there is no problem going out to him. Players the world over have done it. But saying it's a mystery, that's the odd part.

Ajmal is obviously a genius. His hands should be saved for future generations. He will end up in working in Vegas. But Abdur Rehman is just a spinner. Not in a bad way. But he's a normal human spinner to Ajmal's alien-lizard-spin-god spinner. Yet Rehman took almost as many wickets against the newly crowned No. 1 team. That was the real mystery. Not that Rehman took wickets, but that he destroyed England. That they continued to play him like he was bowling cryptic crossword grenades. Rehman averages 27.75 in his career; 30.47 in the UAE; and 16.73 in that series.

Then there is Mohammad Hafeez, who took another five wickets. The three of them took 48 wickets in three Tests. Pakistan won 3-0. England had been No. 1 for a few months and their first series back they'd been smashed by a genius of modern conventional offspin, a quickish left-arm orthodox and a part-timer taking all but 12 of the wickets available to them.

England swept , stood and theorised as Pakistan won all three Tests. In the second Test in Abu Dhabi, they needed 145 to win. They nearly got halfway there. Not a mystery, more a horror.

****


Ashton Agar hits over the top during his record innings, England v Australia, 1st Investec Test, Trent Bridge, 2nd day, July 11, 2013
Ashton Agar threw England's plans into disarray at Trent Bridge in the 2013 Ashes © Getty Images
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Ashton Agar was, had Australia named it as such, a flirt with a new era. The search for the magical teenager who could transport them back to the top. Agar was dropped after only two Tests. Now he's a Big Bash novelty marketing item who may one day come back.

To England he is much more. He was a major sign that thinking on their feet wasn't their strong point.

When England toured Australia, their menu made the media. It included superfoods like kale. Because when England do a team menu, they aren't talking food groups to look out for, or general cuisines their players might like. They are giving chefs every single food they want, how it should be cooked, what it should be served with. Other than a cutlery preference, there is almost nothing left to chance.

At the time, you could fit into two camps, the "look at these morons thinking quinoa will help them bowl" camp. Or those who said: "Well, it's a professional set-up, of course they monitor what their players eat, but do they have to be so extreme?" There is, of course, a third way of looking at it: that if England have taken away personal choices for players on meals to such an extent, what else is not in the player's hands? What other decisions that normal human beings make do English cricketers not have to make?

We know their strategies are devised for them. We know they are based on cricket sabermetrics that most of us will never understand. Video crunched into meta data and then fed to them on specially designed Swiss-chard forks. This is the data, now implement the code, bowling unit.

David Saker is not a coach of technique, he is a coach of tactics. The beer-swilling bogan outswinger with a bad temper who could have been something with the ball, but instead is something with a bowling attack. But David Saker and the analysts didn't have the data on young Ashton. He was at No. 11. He was a teenager. It was as if he had scrubbed all his private information from cricket's Google and was just a naked virginal elfin boy in front of them.

It took England all of 98 runs to work him out: 98 carefree runs. Every single one of them was a giggle for him and pure frustration for them. They had no plans, they had to bowl to him like you would in club cricket. Work him out just from how he batted. They could not. England's finest cricketers could not work him out and it almost cost them a Test match.

The Agar moment wasn't a one-off. There is no English fan that hasn't screamed at a ground, TV or radio for England to pitch it up. While attacks around the world have been bowling fuller and fuller, England have seemingly gone the other way. They've missed the good-length revolution and they continue with the lengths that just don't seem to work. It's hard to remember the last time they bowled fuller than their opposition.

Paul Farbrace said their plan to Bhuvneshwar Kumar and Ravindra Jadeja after lunch at Lord's on the fourth day was to pitch it up. But their bowlers bowled short. With no analysis, they are no good. With analysis they are no good. And sometimes they decide not even to listen to the analysis and are just as bad. Clearly their food is not super enough.

****

Graham Gooch was the perfect man to talk about an epic innings. "To score runs like that you need attitude, you need good technique, you need knowledge and you need spot-on concentration." The innings was Hashim Amla's at The Oval.

In the past, England players had played innings like that. Jonathan Trott, Alastair Cook and Kevin Pietersen had all done it. But in the first innings of that Test, Cook made a hundred but then didn't get to the pitch of a drive. Trott played a lazy drive on 71. And KP was out-thought by Jacques Kallis the over before the new ball. It felt like an aberration. This was not how England had played to get to No. 1.

They would surely fix it and come back strong from their innings-and-12-run loss. But it didn't happen. Andrew Strauss' form had already been free-falling, now it was free-falling into an inescapable black hole. Cook didn't pass 50 again in the series. Trott made one more fifty. And KP played his innings at Headingley, then went to the after-match press conference and said it was "tough being me".



Steven Finn had been through every system, test, seminar, counselling session and analysis that England could come up with. And they'd taken him back to a state of a skinny, confused teenager

Pietersen did this press conference without his captain by his side. Which is very rare for an end-of-match press conference. It then turned out why when he was dropped for calling Strauss a "doos" on a text message to Morne Morkel. It was then whispered that KP had been unforgivably hard about James Taylor, England's debutant at Headingley. The dressing room had become an open book, a tacky romance novel. You could all but see the long-suffering Strauss being brutishly handled by the bare-chested Pietersen on the cover.

That all of this came in the series in which Hashim Amla made 482 serene, England-like runs just made it all the worse. England were upset with themselves. They were losing. And they weren't making big daddy hundreds. They were also no longer No. 1.

****

There should be no other emotion other than pure joy watching Tino Best bat. It's like a puppy with a squeaky ball. At Edgbaston there were lofted off drives, edges that went past hands, cover drives off the spinner, a straight six off the sightscreen and the odd wondrous hoick to wherever the ball wanted to go. At one stage he told Denesh Ramdin to bat for him.

Eventually Graham Onions took his wicket. But not before Best had made 95. Steven Finn, Tim Bresnan and Onions had been hailed as the great back-ups that proved that England were producing quality cricketers who could continue to move them forward when Broad and James Anderson retired. The machine was what worked, the cricketers were just fresh products for ongoing domination. Two years later Onions is being ignored, Bresnan has never got back to his best after his injury and Finn, well, Finn...

Finn wasn't ruined by Best. Despite the rumours, Finn wasn't ruined by any one thing. But he was in ruins.

Graeme Smith played a part. Middlesex may have done so too.

But none of them were in Australia during the Ashes. None of them were there while one of the most naturally talented fast bowlers on earth was decomposing. None of them were in control of him, or up against him, as he bowled for England against a collection of 2nd XI players in Alice Springs. Finn's bowling in Alice Springs was not first-class quality bowling.

It was as if Finn had done a brain swap with Simon Mackin. Mackin was a young, tall Aussie quick who had played not one first-class game at the time. He bowled the quick, hostile, clever spell, while Finn produced the spasmodic, random bowling of a club bowler who is not quite good enough. This was Finn who had been through every system, test, seminar, counselling session and analysis that England could come up with. And they'd taken him back to a state of a skinny, confused teenager. A skinny teenager with 90 Test wickets.

****


Alastair Cook and Matt Prior exchange stares after a dropped catch from MS Dhoni, England v India, 1st Investec Test, Trent Bridge, 2nd day, July 10, 2014
Matt Prior chose to step aside from England duty despite Alastair Cook's backing © Getty Images
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When Andrew Strauss was asked in a sweaty Galle catering room whether he was nearing the end of his career, it made everyone there feel very uncomfortable.

"Andrew, all of us in this room respect what you've done for England, but that is now four successive defeats. Have you taken this team as far as you can?"

You could hear each sticky intake of breath.

Strauss' team had become No. 1 only four Tests earlier. But England had lost all four and Strauss had made one hundred in his last 23 Tests. Strauss was respected as an Ashes winner, and as a batsman, but his batting had gone and his team was losing. The question shouldn't have been ridiculed or gasped over. It should have been the question that was being asked by England. They could have quite clearly decided that he should stay, but they had to ask the question.

Instead, Strauss would play for seven more Tests, make two hundreds, lose, win and draw a series, and lose the No. 1 ranking. Then he would leave.

There was always a saying that it was harder to get out of the Australia team than get into it. England could never be accused of that. But at the heart of their team, that special group of people who all get along so well, it is not easy to get dropped.

If we are to believe what the gossip and insiders tell us, Pietersen is the single-worst human being to put his pads on. Now, that may or may not be true, but Pietersen played over 100 Tests. Trott was an emotional wreck at the Gabba but, had he wanted to, he would have played in Adelaide. Matt Prior must have suffered one of the biggest form slumps in the history of wicketkeeping during the Ashes. He missed two Tests before he was straight back in like it was all a bad dream.

And now Cook. He is averaging 14.33 this year. His team has not won a Test in their last ten. Cook has said he wants to keep fighting and that he is not a quitter. He also said Matt Prior could go on as long as he liked minutes before it was decided otherwise.

England refuse to be honest with reality. They have built a team ethic, and they are desperate to keep it. So instead of one man going off a cliff, they all jump holding hands.

JK has an endearing style of writing, and there are a lot of valid points in there in that article. Nice read as always.
Expect a 'Jarrod is a so and so' response from a lot of England followers though!.

msp83 wrote:JK has an endearing style of writing, and there are a lot of valid points in there in that article. Nice read as always.
Expect a 'Jarrod is a so and so' response from a lot of England followers though!.

And even an Australian or two, msp. I don't find his style of writing endearing at all.

Morelike, it's "easy to kick someone when they are down" style.

It's pathetic... no more no less. National teams aren't like football clubs, you can't buy talent, and sometimes there is no one to blame. Even Australia went through a through a rough patch. New Zealand's rugby team is probably the lone exception to the rule.

You have to admit he has a point on the over bowling and the grinding schedule

ChequeredJersey wrote:You have to admit he has a point on the over bowling and the grinding schedule

Same for everyone, CJ.
Australia were all over the planet in the lead-up to that last Ashes series. They perhaps managed it better and stuck to the plan.

Linebreaker wrote:

msp83 wrote:JK has an endearing style of writing, and there are a lot of valid points in there in that article. Nice read as always.
Expect a 'Jarrod is a so and so' response from a lot of England followers though!.

And even an Australian or two, msp. I don't find his style of writing endearing at all.

Morelike, it's "easy to kick someone when they are down" style.

Read his recent articles on Bhuvneshwar Kumar and Ishant Sharma? The one on Kumar is a particularly good read.

Jarrod Kimber is Australian and hence he sees the English system from and outsider's perspective and makes some very unique observations that would be missed by an insider...

His observations on ECB's expectations of what an ideal English cricketer should be like...and the how it's difficult for "outsiders" to fit in.......on how the English school /good family background is a deemed criteria in a captain...and the hypocrisy in the KP-saga......are extremely astute.

and written in a biting satirical tone....and it would hurt some...but I guess "hurt" was an intended impact.

That inspite of being possibly hurtful...it was passed by the CI editors implies that the truth in his observation was acknowledged.


the part on work-load on bowlers and too much cricket, and power grabbing by board, commercial consideration overriding cricket only...are the non-unique to English cricket. All modern day cricketers and boards are subjected to these issues in one form or the other.