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In his giant doorstop of a memoir, Steve Waugh illuminatingly reflected on the follies of English selection policy.
Noting England’s tendency to drop fast bowler Devon Malcolm, and revert to medium-pacers deemed more stolid than stodgy, Waugh recalled his surprise and relief whenever the Jamaica-born speedster was omitted from England’s final XI.
“We were always amazed whenever we played England and Devon Malcolm’s name wasn’t on the team sheet,” Waugh later told cricket.com.au.
“They always picked the medium-pacers who were consistent but they never really went for the match-winners, and we couldn’t believe Devon Malcolm didn’t play regularly against us.”
Malcolm’s Test record is, admittedly, a chequered one. In 40 matches, he averaged over 37 with the ball, and he was hardly an exemplar of economy and control. He never cemented a place in the national side – but cementing wasn’t his forte. Instead, big Dev could be a redoubtable demolition merchant on his day.
His bags of five include an infamous 9-57 against South Africa at The Oval in 1994. Barely two years after apartheid’s collapse enabled the Proteas’ readmission to international cricket, Malcolm taunted his opponents with the quip ‘you guys are history’, before producing one of the most searing and hostile spells of fast bowling ever witnessed north of the Dover cliffs.
Surely a team that resorted to the likes of Martin McCague, Mark Ilott, Neil Foster and Martin Bicknell could more regularly have made room for such an erratic if frustrating talent?
In an insightful reappraisal of Malcolm’s career, Andrew Miller wrote that ‘the quest for a genuine fast bowler has been one of England’s obsessions for decades’.
But has it though? If anything, English cricket has a healthy habit of relegating sheer pace to the county circuit, or to the dressing room. John Snow’s absence from the 1974/5 series remains the most infamous and perplexing example, while Mark Wood’s omission from England’s side for this week’s Adelaide Ashes Test was indubitably the most predictable.
Wood was the only English bowler to consistently trouble and intimidate Australia’s top order at the Gabba, regularly reaching speeds in excess of 150 kilometres per hour. But he has paid the price for team defeat, as well as administrative spinelessness.
In times of crisis, England – a nation where managing disappointment seems something of a national pastime – retreats to the reliably flaccid. Over the years, Australian cricketers have earned a reputation for risking defeat in order to pursue victory. The ethos of English cricket is almost entirely the opposite: its most quintessential representatives would prefer the certainty of honourable failure to anything too shameful. This has naturally created an atmosphere of perpetual despondency.
Mark Wood (centre) celebrates a wicket against the West Indies in Saint Lucia. (Photo by Shaun Botterill/Getty Images,)
English cricket captains have at times been so unswervingly defeatist that they seem caught in a mindset of irredeemable hopelessness. If you want to know what it is like to be in damage control before any actual damage has been inflicted, look no further than Joe Root.
In place of Mark Wood, we find that familiar duo, Broad and Anderson. As far as double acts go, the pair has, of late, resembled less a Trueman and Statham than something between a Marks and Spencer and a Morecambe and Wise. From a batsman’s perspective, Broad and Anderson are purveyors of a product much more likely to induce tears of joy than pain.
The Broad and Anderson experiment has been a failure in Australia, and for entirely explicable reasons. James Anderson has toured here six times – his first was in 2002, as part of England’s ODI squad – and Stuart Broad four, yet each possesses only one Test five-for on Australian soil.
Anderson’s village-green variety of outswing might be inimical to batting averages under English skies, but it lacks the pace necessary to prosper in the Antipodes. Similarly, Broad’s back appears incapable of bending to the degree required to produce protracted spells of genuine speed.
I recently read a description of an English seaside town that might serve as a metaphor for Anderson’s career. Here is what Yorkshire author JB Priestley wrote in his novel Faraway:
“A hundred years ago, Lugmouth was probably considered to be a town with a fine future; and now it is regarded as a town with a great past. It has never had a real present. It exists in a perpetual state of rapid development and decay.”
That sums up Jimmy. Everyone agrees he was once a decent player, but no one can quite work out when.
It is impossible to know what difference Wood’s exclusion will make to the outcome of the Adelaide Test and the fate of the Ashes. While Australia possesses a stronger and incontestably better-rounded side, it is possible, perhaps even likely, that the absence of one of the very few contemporary Englishmen capable of sustained express pace has killed whatever residual chance England possessed.
The main problem, however, is not what the selection does, but what it says about the current state of English cricket, and its aversion not merely to risk but to anything remotely daring and dauntless. As the career of Devon Malcolm demonstrates, the lessons of the past remain unlearned. While English selectors had the courage to leave out Broad and Anderson in Brisbane, they now seem more intent on appeasing their two jilted warhorses than on taking any further refreshing gambles.
Perhaps those same selectors are relying on their side’s supporters not to notice their behind-the-scenes machinations, and have formed the view that we English fans have become so resigned to our status as lapsed optimists that a little bit more disaffection won’t hurt us. But let no one call me a cynic. I’m very upbeat about England’s prospects for future Ashes glory.
I’m already looking forward to 2095.
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