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Stephen Waugh recently made a telling assessment to The Australian on the chances of Australia, captained by Michael Clarke, winning back the Ashes:
“Australia has to learn how to win … They just don’t quite believe in, or know how to, win again. It really is a habit.
“England have become really good at winning and really good at not losing. They fight hard.”
Waugh played his cricket and thinks about it as hard as his name sounds. And there are two important points to his analysis.
First, it is important to win Tests in the Ashes series. But is also important not to lose Tests.
Every Test not lost is another Test that doesn’t have to be won just to keep the ledger on the right side.
One of the problems, among many, of Clarke’s baggy green caps is they have lost Tests that should have drawn, and allowed England to draw Tests that Australia should have won.
This is what Waugh means when he says England are really good at winning and really good at not losing.
England regard draws as half-wins and fight very hard and successfully to draw Tests that they are liable to or should lose.
This bring us to Isaiah Berlin’s essay ‘The Hedgehog and the Fox’. The essay is a study on history and historical figures, centreing on Tolstoy’s famous novel that embraces Napoleon’s attack on Russia, ‘War and Peace’.
Berlin takes his title from a Russian proverb: ‘The fox knows many things but the hedgehog knows one big thing.’
The argument he develops through contrasting Napoleon’s military and mercurial genius with the stubborn, single-minded scorched earth tactics of the Russian generals is that hedgehog leaders generally defeat fox leaders in drawn-out campaigns.
You can take this argument and apply it to cricket.
Stephen Waugh is the epitome of the single-minded captain (and player) who used the brutal tactic of mental disintegration of the opposition as the motif of his captaincy. He was involved in eight Ashes series triumphs, including two as captain.
He was never rated as a captain by the pundits (including myself, unfortunately). But he was a winner because everything he did on the field and off it was calibrated to ensure England’s morale would be destroyed before and during the Ashes battles.
There was a clarity to his captaincy. He wanted his team to score their runs quickly, at the rate of 300 a day. Australian bowlers were continually putting pressure on the England batsmen.
None of this was pleasant for England, on and off the field. When Waugh’s team were in the position of putting their boot (metaphorically) on the throat of the England team, they ensured the other boot was used to smash their faces as well.
The difference between the single-minded hedgehog Waugh and the clever fox Clarke is startling.
It is not only a massive difference in style, it is a massive difference, as captains, in Ashes series victories.
My objection to Michael Clarke as a captain is he is praised for being clever, personable and cheerful, on and off the field.
But these are qualities that virtually ensure his failure as an Ashes captain.
If you go through the successful Ashes captains on both sides, you would be hard-pressed to find one, on either side, who was a pleasant, laughing fox on the field. About the closest to this type I can think of is Richie Benaud.
But Benaud was ruthlessly tough as a captain and when his tactics are analysed they are more attritional hedgehog tactics than clever fox tactics.
But leaving aside Benaud, who may be an exception to my hedgehog-fox rule, the successful Ashes captains have generally had distinct hedgehog tendencies.
Think Douglas Jardine, Sir Donald Bradman (read Malcolm Knox’s book on the 1948 tour of the UK by Australia to see how disliked by the English players and some of his own team), Sir Leonard Hutton, Ian Chappell (ask Ian Botham), Allan Border (the original captain grumpy), Stephen Waugh, Michael Vaughan, Andrew Strauss and Alastair Cooke.
The last two England captains have been criticised for their unimaginative captaincy. They have captained sides that have several South Africans, the epitome of the single-minded hedgehog, in the sides.
South Africans don’t play games for fun. They play to win. Then these winners become grinners.
In the last Ashes series in England, Clarke got all the plaudits from the pundits for his imaginative, clever captaincy.
Cooke was criticised by the same pundits as being one-dimensional and boring in his captaincy. And Cooke’s England side won the series 3 – 0.
So Michael Clarke needs to drop the ‘good guy’ image. He needs to become a Captain Cranky in the Stephen Waugh and Allan Border manner.
No more bantering with the opposition, especially on the field.
No more love-ins with his own bowlers on the field and more tough love. When they don’t bowl the mean line and length expected of them, don’t give them a hug, give them a bollocking.
Think Shane Warne and Glenn McGrath and the way they strangled opposition batting line-ups to a slow, sometimes violent, death with their unrelenting hostility in everything they did on the field.
Stop trying to impress the pundits with smart-arse tactics and field placings. Just get the bowlers to bowl in the areas where their deliveries are most dangerous and get mad at them if they don’t.
Get mad at batsmen who throw away their wickets when they have the bowlers at their mercy.
Don’t fraternise with the England players until the Ashes series has been won.
Give batsmen hell if they don’t dig in to ensure a losing Test is drawn rather than lost.
Make life miserable for the England batsman, from the openers to the tailenders.
Graeme Swann doesn’t like bouncers, so bounce him and the others like him – Jimmy Anderson and co.
Copy what Stuart Broad does when England really needs a wicket. If you have to bowl negatively to ensure a draw rather than a loss, then bowl negatively.
Remember that Test cricket is a long game, so captains must play the long game to win a Test. But Tests can be lost in a matter of minutes.
So Clarke has to have his players at their best every second, every minute and every hour of every day.
Think of a boxing match. It can be lost in a flash with a knock-out but can generally be won by fighting out every round.
Gideon Haigh has a fabulous take on the zen of the Ashes series for Australians when he says, “The Ashes series gives Australians a licence to hate the English.”
Let this be the guiding principle behind every decision taken by Clarke as captain.
I once heard a distinguished English amateur batsman and MCC captain Dennis Silk talk about how the proper attitude of a captain towards a visiting team should like the husband who cut off the tail of his dog before a visit of his mother-in-law, so there would not be a skerrick of welcome for her when she arrived.
This is a bit drastic. But it reflects the right attitude for Clarke to take for this Ashes series.
Cricket is a gentleman’s game played best by batsmen and bowlers with the playing inclination of thugs. We don’t want the Australian team to be loved, we want them to win. The love will come out of the victories.
That’s why I say that Michael Clarke needs to make Waugh to win back the Ashes from England.
Join The Roar’s Brett McKay at 1pm today for an interactive Ashes Q&A.