Andrew Strauss must find England road to recovery

There was a gathering on Monday in Leicestershire at Stapleford Park, one of those grand country houses with a croquet lawn and giant outdoor chess board, the kind of place Hercule Poirot might have enjoyed poking around. You know the sort — “secluded”, the brochure says; inconvenient, everyone else says. Still, we travelled in aid of a good cause: Test cricket, which the ECB fears is in decline and in need of a fillip. There was an awful lot of what West Indians would call “gaffing”. A lot of chat.
Most of the arrows were well aimed: the need to “rebrand” Test cricket so that each match becomes special rather than humdrum; the marketing potential offered by the sport’s superstars, two of whom happen to wear the crown and three lions; the need to get the stronger nations playing against each other more often in a competition that gives every game some context — a world championship of Test cricket, in other words.
The ECB will look at playing neutral Tests in England, too, as it positions itself as the “home of Test cricket”. As the rest of the game pays lip service to the idea of the primacy of Test cricket — all the while undermining it — the ECB leads the way in trying to protect the sport’s greatest asset.
That is the good news as we enter 2009. The bad news is that England are not very good at this game we hold dear. As England’s cricketers embark tomorrow on their first match of the new year in Basseterre, St Kitts, they do so as statistically the fifth-best Test team on earth, which sounds all very well until you realise that, discounting Bangladesh and Zimbabwe, there are only eight to choose from. Not impressive for a nation with resources second only to India and ambition to match. By any empirical measurement, England start the year in modest shape, bereft of confidence, too, after a calamitous and wholly avoidable sequence of events that resulted in them losing captain and head coach on the same day. It is typically English to begin a year that includes Test series home and away against West Indies, the World Twenty20, the Ashes, a Test series in South Africa, possibly a Champions Trophy and various Stanford irrelevancies in the kind of state that a boxer might end his fifteenth round rather than begin his first. It is now Andrew Strauss who must apply the balm and the magic sponge as captain, and many of the clues to the strength of England’s midsummer Ashes challenge will be discovered over the next six weeks when, against a side who have not won a Test series against significant opposition for six years, England will be expected to rediscover and hone their competitive instinct and put the troubles of the past month behind them.
Ultimately, England ought to be too strong, but West Indies should not be taken lightly. They have probably started to climb out of the trough and in Shivnarine Chanderpaul they have the next best batsman in the series to Kevin Pietersen, in Ramnaresh Sarwan and Chris Gayle they have two other high-class batsmen and the quickest, if not the most consistent, bowling attack around. Fidel Edwards, Daren Powell and Jerome Taylor will get England’s batsmen hopping about with the new ball, although their low trajectories should mean scoring opportunities with the old. Dale Richards, 32, the Barbados opening batsman, was the only face in a 14-man West Indies squad named yesterday that England may not know.
In sport, it is the moment of triumph that is remembered. Invariably, though, the snapshot of success is preceded by the kind of toil that is quickly forgotten. When Michael Vaughan held the Ashes trophy aloft at the Brit Oval in 2005, it was an image two years in the making. Strauss has only six months until England next face Australia, but nevertheless much can be achieved over the next two series against West Indies.
The first thing to do is start winning. Much of the apparent dressing-room discord has been overplayed — the England team are like any other group of diverse, driven professionals for whom success has been elusive and any professional sportsman will acknowledge the essential truth behind the aphorism of Steve Archibald, the former Scotland forward, that team spirit is something glimpsed only in the aftermath of success.
Having said that, harmony among the senior players and how they relate to the management team is important — which Peter Moores found to his cost. To that end, Strauss will no doubt spend much time trying to get the key pieces of his jigsaw in the right order, coaxing Stephen Harmison back to his best, using Andrew Flintoff wisely, watching Pietersen carefully before rehabilitating him slowly back into the decision-making process when the one-day matches come around and making sure the competition (envy?) between the last two works to his team’s advantage. They are a talented triumvirate, but the first two are water to Pietersen’s oil.
It would help the players if they had a clear sense of where accountability and responsibility among the management lies. At Stapleford Park, all England’s chiefs were there — Hugh Morris, Geoff Miller, Andy Flower and Strauss — as they will be at some stage in the Caribbean, but it was not clear whose voice carried most weight.
Work to do, then, but much to play for in 2009. There should be plenty of high-class Test cricket, the pinnacle of which will be the most prestigious battle of all. And, as everyone knows, a decent tilt at the Ashes will do far more to boost Test cricket’s flagging fortunes than a lot of hot air in a remote country hotel.
source:the london times