Are England hiding behind ‘play without fear’ mantra?
Derek Pringle analyses why Eoin Morgan’s men hit the panic button against India and fell into a spiral of self-destruction
England’s humiliating self-combustion in the face of what most commentators were saying was a par T20 score for Bangalore, was as wilful an act of self-destruction as I have seen. Never has the old cliche of players’ minds being on the Business Class seat taking them home rather than the challenge in front of them seemed more apt.
To lose three or four wickets in 19 balls in a short format like T20 would be deemed careless but to lose eight, as England did, on the best batting pitch of the series, suggests a collective failure of mind and mettle.
England were 119-2 in the 14th over when Eoin Morgan, the captain, top edged a sweep off Yuzvendra Chahal to deep square leg and was caught. Morgan was going well but it was certainly not disaster. At the same stage of their innings India were only one run to the good at 120-3. But Chahal is a leg-spinner and one England seemed unable to pick, so when he had Joe Root lbw next ball with a slider the panic button was struck with calamitous consequences.
It can be difficult to gather your thoughts in front of an Indian cricket crowd on the verge of ecstasy, but modern players are meant to be attuned to all eventualities what with their travelling retinue of psychologists, analysts, doctors and masseurs, not to mention the coaches. But is what happened next, as player after player chose the dumbest option available to throw away their wicket, a failure of the individual or a failure of the system?
Listening to some of the analysis afterwards it wasn’t clear. Nasser Hussain, usually sound of knowledge and opinion on all things cricket, thought that England’s inability to play or bowl spin to the required standard in India was their downfall. True, they made a pig’s ear of playing Chahal, but he was not turning the ball that much and until this match Moeen Ali had enjoyed better figures in the series.
Hussain then suggested that England’s players should get more involved with T20 franchises around the world, with a pointed dig at Joe Root for making himself unavailable for this year’s Indian Premier League.Yet this ignores the fact that England reached last year’s World T20 final in India without having paid much lip service to the world’s T20 franchises, losing only when Ben Stokes bowled a poor last over.
The evidence that playing in IPL will help players to improve their T20 skills is not emphatic. While it is true that Morgan, who has played several IPLs, enjoyed a good white-ball series with 281 runs at 48, Jos Buttler, who has played for Mumbai Indians, had a shocker. The jury, therefore, remains out on that one. There is a curious logic, too, among media commentators, that Morgan’s runs have put to bed the scandalous issue of him not leading his side in Bangladesh because he did not trust the security assessment of England’s own security experts. Since when has moral courage been measured in runs? It is like Donald Trump suddenly being deemed an angel because he has deigned to do a trade deal with the UK. Mind you in our post-truth, fake news world, that could well happen. The lemming-like behaviour of England’s middle and late order is still difficult to explain. Most commentators talked about the crushing effect of scoreboard pressure forgetting perhaps that they had banged on previously about India’s total being only a par score. For me, it is the modern players’ reluctance to take responsibility. Hence their need for the mantra to “Play without fear” to be repeated ad nauseam so they cannot be blamed for failure. Well, top level sport is as tough a meritocracy as there is and a trite little epithet like that should never be an excuse for players not to use their brains.