What a Mess – continued
What are we to make of the current state of cricket, and in particular of England’s tour of New Zealand?
I made my feelings known when the ECB first published the teams (http://4theloveofsport.co.uk/2024/02/05/an-unholy-mess/).
Once more Indian billionaires prove they control world cricket. The IPL promises players such riches that few can resist accepting the offer of a place in an Indian franchise. And who’s to blame them? Over the decades cricket has been a hard grind with minimal rewards. Not now, for a lucky few.
Dreamy sums of money are there for a chosen few. But the IPL pays no heed to cricket going on in other parts of the world. Why should it? It is boss of all it surveys.
So four England contracted players, Sophie Ecclestone, Danni Wyatt, Nat Sciver Brunt and Alice Capsey, made themselves unavailable for the opening weeks of the NZ tour. In stark contrast the captain, Heather Knight, and Lauren Bell, didn’t; they placed national loyalty higher. Is that now unfashionable, even incomprehensible?
Then we may ask how the franchises are built up. Once selectors have secured the top players from around the world, who completes the roster? Apart from dozens of Indian hopefuls, we must suspect they go for instagram favourites, rather than players at the top of their form. Issy Wong received an invitation. Whenever she wasn’t picked for an England match over the past year, armies of Indian admirers asked what was wrong with the selectors.
They didn’t express a view about all the other young English hopefuls who were absent. It’s all about attracting the biggest personalities, and through them the largest crowds possible – forget about the quality of the cricket. In most matches the lesser lights may well neither bat nor bowl, just field. But they get paid just the same.
Back to New Zealand
Next the four absent players return to parade. Dilemma: what to do with them? Do they deserve to be selected straightaway, or requested to wait their turn? It’s not as if their stint in India has brought them to peak form. Wyatt didn’t feature. The stats of the other three were less than consistently impressive. (see below)
Nor can they claim to have achieved much on their return to the demands of their contracts. In the first ODI in Wellington NSB scored 12, Capsey 0 and Wyatt 16. In the field NSB took 1-44, Ecclestone 1-39, both off the full 10 overs.
In the recent ODI in Hamilton NSB scored 2, Capsey 6 and Wyatt 2. Ecclestone made 14. In the field things looked far better: NSB took 3-21 off seven; Ecclestone 1-27 off 9. But Capsey was the most expensive of the six bowlers, going for 0-27 off four.
I quote these figures in some detail to point the question: was their selection correct and fair, despite their unwelcome absence earlier? Of the quartet only NSB and Ecclestone are obvious choices every time. Did other players on tour deserve to be discarded as a result?
Jon Lewis, the moonlighter
The answer to these questions was made far more difficult by the actions of the head coach, Jon Lewis. He saw fit to abandon his squad and his responsibilities in order to take charge of one of the Indian franchises. I have yet to discover another example of such dereliction of duty that would allow him to say: ‘Oh, but X did exactly the same in (1066).’
For him to say he would be leaving the IPL early to return to the England team was pretty pathetic excuse-hunting. In the event he left his franchise, UP Warriorz, after the group stages, to arrive in New Zealand a fortnight after the players.
If the ECB thought it a valuable experience for him to be involved in the IPL, UPW’s finishing position of fourth out of five hardly supports the view.
Who’s in charge?
A feature of the ECB’s reporting on the NZ tour is the statement: ‘Heather Knight named an unchanged side’ (for the game in Hamilton). I was under the impression that it was the head coach or a selection committee who had that vital job. Possibly the phrase slipped out because they weren’t actually sure Lewis had managed to return to the duties they were paying him for.
Since they gave him and the players the OK to fly out to India, we are left wondering what their priorities really are.
Calendar Clashes
Behind all this confusion lies the absence of a global calendar. One such has recently been introduced for women’s rugby. We have yet to discover whether any rough edges still remain there, leading to double bookings like the IPL clash. At least in the case of rugby, there isn’t a small corner of its empire that can go its own way, knowing it has the financial pull to ignore dislocation and confusion elsewhere.
And cricket has allowed itself to indulge in several variant forms of which at least three hold sway around the world: test matches, ODIs, T20s. Others, like The Hundred, are limited to a single nation. Rugby limits itself to two, 15s and 7s – and that’s not for want of trying. Touch rugby, ten-a-side and other diversions have their proponents.
Below the surface of the NZ tour lurks the unspoken belief that the English knew they were taking on one of their lesser opponents, so it wouldn’t matter if they were shorn of one or two stars. Thus far (5 April) any such thinking has proved correct. Although the difference in rankings may appear slight (ODIs 2nd and 5th; T20s 2nd and 4th), in practice there is a considerable fall away as we go down the ladder of success. In other words, the ECB knew it didn’t need to pull out all the stops.
Here are some individual stats from the IPL:
Capsey 3-0-13-0 and 0
Capsey 0 and 1-0-3-0
Capsey 46
Capsey 27
Capsey 15 and 1-0-5-1
Capsey 48 and 1-0-5-1
Capsey 0 and 1-0-3-0
Capsey 3-0-13-0 and 0
Ecclestone 3.3-0-31-1 and 6
Ecclestone 4-0-20-3
Ecclestone 4 and 4-0-22-1
Ecclestone 0 and 4-0-30-0
Ecclestone 8 and 4-0-15-1
Ecclestone 4-0-38-3
NSB 3-0-30-0 and 19
NSB 4-0-27-2 and 27
NSB 5 and 4-0-38-0
NSB 2-0-14-2 and 45 (PotM)
NSB 2 and 2-0-23-0
NSB 2-0-18-1 and 10
NSB 23 and 4-0-18-2
They show occasional fine English performances, but the overall effect was to confirm the dominance of Australians and a handful of other top players.
