Trescothick: Don’t give up on English cricket... let’s give it a bit of love
BATTING LEGEND A CALM VOICE IN DANGEROUS TIMES
IN a sport trying to eat itself, Marcus Trescothick remains a reassuring voice of abstinence. From sandpaper concealed in an Australian fielder’s Reg Grundys to the blazers at Lord’s tampering with their own Twenty20 invention and coming up with T16.4, cricket is in danger of losing the plot. But as Trescothick takes guard for an astonishing 26th season and his testimonial year at Somerset, he pleaded: “Don’t give up on English cricket – let’s give it a little bit of love.” Now 42, dear old ‘Banger’ is one of the game’s most important statesmen. Since his tearful withdrawal from the international circuit’s hamster wheel in 2006, Tresco has become the poster boy for mental illness tearing at the soul of sportsmen where depression and anxiety were once dismissed out of hand.
Nobody at the top of England’s order has given the ball such a satisfying biff since the last of his 76 Test caps.
And as a resolutely fair voice in the dressing room, never subscribing to cliques or kangaroo courts, it is unlikely that England would have discarded Kevin Pietersen with summary wastefulness if Trescothick had been a key witness for conciliation.
Thank goodness for Tresco applying a dash of commonsense to the madness – every little helps.
He said: “This isn’t a time to give up on English cricket – because 2019 is just around the corner. This time next year, there will be a great opportunity for the game to take centre stage with an Ashes summer and a World Cup on home soil.
“It will be the biggest show in town and the England boys need to make sure they are at the forefront of the headlines – just like the girls when they won the women’s World Cup last summer.
“We need someone to set the summer ablaze, to entertain people and we’ve got the players to do it.
“England’s Test cricket isn’t quite clicking and people will form their own judgments why that’s the case, but we need to get behind Joe Root as captain and give him all the support he needs.
“He is absolutely the right man to take the Test team forward and we all want to see him regain the Ashes next year.
“Although opening partners for Alastair Cook has been an issue and nobody has really nailed down that place, the players are out there.
“Mark Stoneman has probably come the closest so far, but Haseeb Hameed and Keaton Jennings are both good enough to get another chance and let’s not forget facing the new ball is never an easy gig. Sometimes it’s more comfortable to bat at four, five or six when the ball is older.”
Like England luminaries including all-time No.1 wicket-taker James Anderson, Trescothick is concerned by the long shadows cast by T20 franchises, notably the Indian Premier League, diluting the sanctity of Test series.
He said: “You have to be fearful for the future of Test cricket because the sheer amounts of money have turned Twenty20 into a beast you can’t tame.
“But do we want it to go that way as a nation? There is still a huge appetite for five-day cricket in this country because England still sell out Test matches and I haven’t fallen out of love with the game.
“I’m still waiting for the day when I wake up and I don’t want to do this any more, but after 25 years there’s no sign of that happening.
“You are a long time retired and maybe that’s what makes me keep wanting to work hard and keep scrapping.”