England coach and selector Chris Silverwood has defended the selection of the first two Test teams and said he would have done the same thing if given the chance again.
Silverwood was in a defiant mood as he was grilled after the tourists fell 2-0 down in the series after barely firing a shot on the hosts.
England’s decision to leave veteran seamers James Anderson and Stuart Broad out of the first Test was then compounded when they went into the second Test without their only bowler with genuine pace – Mark Wood – and also left spinner Jack Leach out of the XI.
“There is always going to be divided opinion,” Silverwood told English media on Wednesday.
“You pick a team and not everybody’s going to agree with you.”
Asked if the would pick the same teams again, he replied: “To be honest, I would,” adding “I was happy with the skillset we had in the pink-ball Test, so I would pick the same team again.”
Plenty of pundits and former players have suggested both captain Joe Root and Silverwood are in danger of losing their jobs after this tour, unless England can muster a comeback in the final three Tests.
While Michael Vaughan suggests there is just one candidate – Ben Stokes – to replace Root as Test skipper, coaches can be more readily found.
Silverwood was asked if his job was on the line.
“It always is,” he replied. “When you take a job like this, you accept that.
“Do I believe I’m the right man? Yes I do, or I wouldn’t have taken the job in the first place. You’re under pressure constantly, aren’t you?”
Root criticised his bowlers for hitting too short a length during his post-match press conference – a move that surprised plenty.
“I nearly fell off my seat when I heard that,” former Australia captain Ricky Ponting said of Root’s post-match comments.
“Whose job is it then to make them change? Why are you captain then?
“If you can’t influence your bowlers on what length to bowl, what are you doing on the field?
“Joe Root can come back and say whatever he likes but if you’re captain, you’ve got to be able to sense when your bowlers aren’t bowling where you want them to.
“And if they’re not going to listen, you take them off, simple as that.
“Give someone else a chance that is going to do it for you. Or you have a really strong conversation with them on the field to tell them what you need.
“That’s what captaincy is all about.”
Silverwood said the team had a frank discussion in the change rooms.
“What you saw was what we got in the dressing room after. We had a really good talk, which was needed,” Silverwood said.
“The chat we had in the dressing room was very honest. If we want to win this Test series and compete in this Test series, we have to be better.
“There were a few things thrown out there. There were some honest chats, which was great. It was good and it was healthy. We had a really good talk, which was needed.
“I think there are some lessons to be learned. We have to learn quickly.”
Silverwood also spoke on England’s recurring no-ball problem which has already cost Stokes and Ollie Robinson wickets in the series.
England head coach Chris Silverwood. (Photo by Chris Hyde/Getty Images)
“Wickets off no-balls are unacceptable,” he said. “I brought it up and we faced into that.
“This cannot happen. It’s a basic error. The lads accepted that.”
But for all Silverwood’s self defence the selection issue looks likely to haunt him.
“Selectorally they’ve got it wrong this year,” said former captain Michael Vaughan on the Follow On podcast.
“They played a pink ball game in Ahmedabad where India played 4-5 spinners and England played all the seamers and one spinner. It was a dustbowl and Joe Root got 5-8.
“So tactically and structurally in terms of the team they’ve got it wrong for quite a while now they’ve been making some glaring mistakes.”
Former England bowler Jonathan Agnew wrote on the BBC website that Root’s post-match comments were telling.
“It is extremely unusual for Root to go public with criticism of his bowlers, rightly saying they bowled too short.
“To accuse England of bowling too short is nothing new – they did the same thing on the same ground with the same result four years ago – but criticism usually comes from us in the media, rather than the captain.
“Why did Root do it? He must have thought he had to force his message through, perhaps because the bowlers are disagreeing with him. Remember, two members of that attack are James Anderson and Stuart Broad, England’s leading wicket-takers of all-time.
“We are not talking about a big adjustment. Just a couple of feet fuller in length. Root can do certain things, like setting particular fields to encourage it, but it is ultimately up to the bowlers to deliver.”
But Agnew warned it was important that Root’s criticism did not lead to internal divisions.
“It is key that this sort of talk does not lead to a split in the dressing room, especially when past tours of Australia have unravelled quickly,” he wrote.
“For bowlers, it can be frustrating seeing your own batsmen getting out cheaply when the opposition makes you spend hours running through the dirt.
“Similarly, batsmen can get angry when they see their own bowlers unable to land the ball in the areas the opposition cause trouble from.
I doubt Root would have made his feelings so clear if he thought there was a risk of division in the England team, but he was explicit in saying they must learn quickly if they are to avoid having a very difficult time over the next month.
“It is worth remembering that Root has said his captaincy will be defined by this tour, so he will be feeling very uncomfortable if he can see a 5-0 coming towards him.”
Meanwhile already missing England fast bowler Jofra Archer has had another setback and will miss England’s tour of the West Indies after undergoing a second elbow operation, it was announced Tuesday.
Archer, 26, had surgery on Saturday and he has now been ruled out by the England and Wales Cricket Board of the three-Test tour of his native West Indies in March — a series officials had hoped would mark his comeback to international cricket.
Gray-Hand
Roar Rookie
It’s certainly not his fault. But a good leader is able to command respect, even of difficult players. Someone who can’t convince others to follow them, by definition, isn’t a leader.
Paul
Roar Guru
so it's his fault his players are being disrespectful by not taking direction? Riiiight. These are grown men on seriously good money who should not have to be forced to take direction. If they can't do what the skipper tells them, they should have a very limited future in the game.
Derek Murray
Roar Rookie
I’m plagiarising this from Mike Atherton’s article in today’s Times but it blows my mind: Of course England chose not to play Wood in Adelaide, preferring instead a sluggish five-man seam attack of the type they promised never to select again for a Test in Australia. In Adelaide four years ago James Anderson, Stuart Broad and Chris Woakes bowled 88 overs between them in the first innings for combined figures of 88-20-230-4. Last week those combined figures in the first innings read: 77.4-22-234-4, a startling confirmation of just how little Joe Root has learnt from his mistakes. What’s also worth considering is that Broad spoke against his captain, justifying the lengths they bowled, suggesting they’d kept the scoring rate down. In fact, they’d conceded 4 more runs in 10.2 less overs than their dismal contribution 4 years back. I’d like to think they sack an a-hole who spoke against the skipper like that but shall see
Gray-Hand
Roar Rookie
If he can’t get his players to follow his direction, he’s not a good leader.
Doctor Rotcod
Roar Rookie
That didn't work. Australia got them at an English Test rate,not the typical four runs an over, so the win would have come in four days or fewer not five. Probably ten sessions...
Jacko
Roar Rookie
Oddly enough I remember people saying Botham wasnt technically good enough too. Stokes looks a special player to me but is lacking fitness and form atm.
Brendon the 1st
Roar Rookie
Broad is saying they're trying to restrict runs
Doctor Rotcod
Roar Rookie
I did see that in the first Test, the English bowlers only bowled 5% of the time at the stumps. How can you win or want to win doing that? The % of full ie wicket taking deliveries , as employed by the Australians,compared to the English, which were bowled in the 2nd Test might be equally enlightening.
Al
Guest
Test cricket, at its simplest, asks just two questions of a team: How are you going to take 20 wickets? How are you going to score more runs than your opponent? If you can't answer the first, the second becomes moot so, perhaps, there's just one simple question - how will you take 20 wickets? For the first test, the English selection of Leach and non-selection of Broad was truly bizarre. What was in their playbook - how did they answer that very simple question? Then in the second test, they went in without a spinner. Is Leach's confidence shot? Is Root's confidence in Leach shot? Have they not done any research on these day/night matches in Adelaide? Or, maybe they have and their conclusion was that Anderson and Broad would get the ball hooping in the evening session. It certainly seems that that is at least partially true, judging by the defensive fields and bowling that they employed in the first two sessions. But planning on taking most of your wickets either in the evening session or with the new ball (preferably both) doesn't leave a lot of overs to take 20. By the time the English failed to take their first 10 wickets and the Australians declared their first innings closed, the win may well have been out of reach. So, heading down to Melbourne where, from time to time, teams look to have been playing on synthetic-on-concrete, how are the English going to take 20 wickets? I suppose they could just wait for the Australians to get themselves out, but that's looking less likely than it has recently.
U
Roar Rookie
Woakes is useless outside England. So that’s him out. You just have to pick what you want from the last two. You might get more wickets out of Anderson and keep runs down with Broad. I’d say Wood, Robinson and Anderson/Broad for Boxing Day.
U
Roar Rookie
Costanza logic
U
Roar Rookie
Needs more yorkers on his toes to snap him out of that silliness
U
Roar Rookie
He doesn’t have any other options. Aussie selectors have several
Burns and Hameed both average 30, poor but substantially better than Marcus 'the new Warner' Harris
JGK
Roar Guru
I heard today that Anderson, Broad and Woakes have played 7 overseas tests for England for 6 losses and a draw. And that Broad and Anderson have only won 2 of their last 15 away tests together.
Paul
Roar Guru
Silverwood dug the hole by his poor selections Ben. His problem now is trying to either fill the hole in over himself, by admitting he screwed the pooch, or trying to dig his way out of trouble by using non-existent justifications for his bad calls. Either way he's in a world of trouble.
Paul
Roar Guru
I think Root is probably a very good leader, Peter. Give him 10 decent players who are willing to follow his direction and I think you'd see a very different captain
Paul
Roar Guru
I think Stuart must have been feeling a tad concussed when he wrote this piece Dave. This is the key bit " and although there was an argument that we could have bowled fuller, because the ball did so little, our economy rates would have gone through the roof. Without movement, fuller means you're bowling genuine half-volleys and that's not a great place to be." So Stuart is effectively saying they were already bowling full, there was no movement, so bowling even fuller would have meant being belted because they were then bowling half-volleys. I'd have thought that also meant the Aussie bats had really poor techniques. I reckon at least 70 or 80% of the time they were playing the bowling off the back foot, which is not good unless the ball is being bowled, back of a length. But of course it wasn't because Broad said it wasn't.
Pom in exile
Roar Rookie
Exactly. Modern schedules are the death of competitive series I think. When England won here in 2010/11, they played a number of warm up matches before the series started and were acclimatised and ready for an Ashes series, that’s no longer the case due to how much cricket is played internationally even 10 years later.
Hooter
Roar Rookie
I think they are paying the price for their World Cup focus and success.