The Difference Between Retreat and Surrender

From Dunkirk to Burma, from India to Hong Kong, the English used to excel in tactical retreat and strategic withdrawal. Why have their cricketers become so naff at it? Their display on Tuesday veered between transfixed inactivity to ill-timed spasms of aggression, the prosaic nature of the challenge of playing for a draw seeming to hold no appeal for them. A year ago in Perth, the South Africans Jacques Rudolph and Justin Kemp gave a superb display of positive defence to stalemate Australia. They set themselves to score in certain sectors of the field, but not others. They carefully restarted with every bowling change. They turned over the strike to exploit their left/right-hand contrast. England had noone prepared to emulate their example. Kevin Pietersen might have run himself out in getting off the mark; the sweep to his first ball from Warne then put him in the Private Pike category of stupidity.

Part of the problem, I suspect, which I have raised here before, is the nature of modern preparation for Test cricket, which has become increasingly biomechanical in its emphasis, with training dedicated to the reliable reproduction of skills and match situations simulated by drills. Players are so cosseted because of the concern about their international workloads that they play virtually no first-class cricket; coaches tinker with them in the nets as though they are no more than static mechanisms, and Test matches essentially staggered deployments of resources. How many times had Ken Barrington batted out time in first-class cricket before being expected to do it for England? How many times had Andrew Flintoff?

Nothing prepares a player for cricket matches than other cricket matches. Your skills are tested under different scenarios. Your nerve is assessed under pressure. You are accountable to teammates for your performance. Your performance is taken down on your permanent record. These days, it seems, a good many players are helpless without management telling them their ‘role’, and setting their ‘performance benchmarks’. Management has a vested interest in this: it enhances its own importance. So does the player: it enables them to evade responsibility. My favourite quote of the Champions Trophy was Steve Harmison’s response to his omission in the Daily Mail: ‘I don’t quite know why I was dropped yesterday because the management didn’t tell me, but I can only assume it was because I didn’t bowl particularly well in the first two games.’ Perhaps the memo from human resources got lost.

This won’t change, by the way. Economic forces militate against it. Be prepared for more cricketers who can hit a perfect cover drive under no pressure at all, but who fall apart on the first day of series and blame ‘nerves’.