England v West Indies, NatWest Series, Trent Bridge

Muddled England adopt the retro look

The Wisden Verdict by Andrew Miller

June 27, 2004

Geraint Jones played well, but was part of an ill-balanced batting line-up © Getty Images

Last week, Michael Vaughan announced to the press that he wanted to bring an end to the era of the one-day specialist. "If you can play well in one form of the game, then you can do so in the other as well," he was reported as saying. On that evidence, it's quite a mystery how England ended up with the motley crew that took the field today.

Admittedly, the loss of Andrew Flintoff is a huge blow to England's equilibrium, but the selectors' response has been as far from Vaughan's stated aim as is humanly possible. Instead of one towering allrounder and a clutch of Test-class specialists, England promoted a debutant wicketkeeper to No. 3, and equipped themselves with three bit-part replacements in the middle-order, who contributed 18 runs and six overs between them. Once Vaughan and Marcus Trescothick had fallen early, the quality of what remained was simply not up to scratch.

It was a measure of the inadequacy of England's selection that they actually came improbably close to salvaging something from the match. The three specialist seamers - Steve Harmison, Darren Gough and James Anderson - bowled with such passion and perseverance that, had those slip catches not gone begging, there might have been a chance to put the West Indians under pressure. But Vaughan was always one bowler short of a sustained fightback, which was quite a feat, seeing as he had earlier been three batsmen short as well.

The bits-and-pieces approach to one-day cricket went out of fashion around the time of the 1996 World Cup. In 1999, and again in 2003, Australia's success was forged by batsmen and bowlers of the highest class, but as ever, England remain hopelessly behind the times in one-day cricket. Today's match was more like an attempt to relive the fleeting glory of 1997-98, when Adam Hollioake famously led England to victory over West Indies in the final of a tournament in Sharjah, with a team that posterity has recorded as the motley-est selection of journeymen imaginable.

But today's side was not, in fact, a patch on Hollioake's patchwork quilt. Rikki Clarke, Ian Blackwell and Anthony McGrath may be modern-day equivalents of Mark Ealham, Matthew Fleming and Dougie Brown, but those guys were at least complemented by a batting line-up of Ally Brown, Alec Stewart, Nick Knight, Graeme Hick and Graham Thorpe - players who would not have disgraced an all-time England one-day team.

In mitigation, England have been caught out by the most outrageous run of bad luck with the weather - six of their last 11 games have been washouts, and a seventh was restricted to 30 overs a side - and they are hamstrung by the absence of men such as Graham Thorpe, who has retired from one-day cricket, and Mark Butcher, who is probably too long in the tooth to be making his one-day debut now. Besides, it is extremely important to keep the Test combination fresh ahead of the vital battles that lie in the coming months.

But all the same, the vim and verve that West Indies' one-day side produced today was in stark contrast to England's lethargic approach. Dwayne Bravo epitomised everything that is good about the new West Indian generation, bowling with guile and intelligence on a helpful wicket, and fielding with great skill as well, not least when he threw down the stumps with Strauss just back in his ground. He wasn't called upon to bat, but you can bet he would have made a better account of himself than his English counterparts.

For the good of the series, however, West Indies' victory is the best thing that could have happened. With New Zealand revitalised after their Test traumas, and Brian Lara at the helm of a youthful unit of matchwinners, it is suddenly England who will have to fight for the right to attend their own party.

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