Simon Briggs Conquer Australia and Root will join the immortals
England’s fresh-faced skipper needs to adopt the ruthless streak of some of his predecessors, writes
Captaincy is 90 per cent luck and 10 per cent skill,” said Richie Benaud, in one of his most famous aphorisms. “But don’t try it without that 10 per cent.”
The quote applies in spades to the nine England captains who have won Ashes series in Australia since the start of the 20th century. In order, they are Plum Warner, JWHT Douglas, Percy Chapman, Douglas Jardine, Len Hutton, Ray Illingworth, Mike Brearley, Mike Gatting and Andrew Strauss.
We are talking about strong men here, outstanding leaders in both the tactical and human sense. They had to be, because they were putting themselves through one of the toughest examinations in sport.
Australia is an unforgiving land, as a generation of 19th-century explorers discovered. Even if you survive the heat and the barrenness, the uniquely venomous local fauna will probably finish you off anyway. Still, if crossing the Outback on a donkey was a daunting prospect, facing Mitchell Starc and Pat Cummins over 25 days of Test cricket cannot be far behind.
On the bright side, the rewards are commensurate with the challenge. Win an Ashes series in England and you are a hero; win one Down Under and you are made for life. Especially as it only happens – on average – once every three trips. Twelve years is the normal interval between triumphs, although Strauss broke a 24-year drought.
The halo effect can transform a man’s reputation. Gatting’s captaincy record stands at just two victories from 23 Tests. Yet those two were timed for maximum impact, coming as they did at Brisbane and Melbourne in 1986. Today, Gatting is remembered more warmly than many leaders with better stats, and the explanation must lie in that hell-raising, party-till-we-drop tour.
This is the threshold on which Joe Root now stands. He feels like a stripling when compared to the gallery of legends listed above, as fresh-faced as a chorister reporting for Matins. In fact, that impish expression is slightly deceptive, for he will be 27 next month. Still, should Root somehow come home with the urn, he will be the youngest man to lead a successful Ashes tour Down Under, undercutting Chapman’s record of 28.
The nine names listed above had one thing in common: a ruthless streak. Chapman was a hale and hearty character, who declined into an unrepentant boozehound later in life. Jardine had the burning zeal of a puritan preacher. Illingworth and Hutton were abrasive Yorkshiremen, while Brearley was an urbane, emollient Londoner with a Cambridge degree. But when the situation called for it, they were all ready to step on the kangaroo’s throat.
They were also all fortunate, in different ways, to be granted that opportunity. In Brearley’s case, he was up against a denuded, Packerised Australia side team who had lost their best players to World Series Cricket. The others had a game-breaker of some kind to call upon. In at least three cases, this was an express-pace bowler who could plunder wickets at the same time as shifting the emotional temperature of a match.
To succeed in Australia, a captain must establish some sort of relationship with their chief executioner, the man who actually fires the bullets. They do not necessarily have to like this fellow. Indeed, Archie Maclaren (who captained the 1902-03 tour to defeat) resented his ill-tempered spearhead Sydney Barnes enormously. During a particularly rough section of the three-month sea crossing, he harrumphed: “At least if we go down we’ll take that bugger Barnes down with us.” But some sort of mutual understanding, a sense of confidence in each other’s work, is essential.
This applies to slow bowlers too. Warner had a secret weapon in 1903-04. His name was Bernard Bosanquet, and he had come up with a new way of spinning a ball out of the back of the hand while playing a parlour game called Twisti-twosti. The “bosie” would later be renamed the googly, but not before it had befuddled Australian batsmen from Brisbane to Hobart. “Unkind people said that I ‘ran’ Bosanquet into this team because he was a friend of mine,” wrote Warner in his book, “[but] when he gets a length he is, on hard wickets, about the most difficult bowler there is.”
The ultimate bogeyman – from an Australian perspective – will always be Harold Larwood. In the 1930s, his name was used to frighten wayward children, for he was the human slingshot who turned Jardine’s “Bodyline” into an irresistible force. Like the googly, this tactic felt like a subversive attack on cricket’s orthodoxies. Unlike the googly, it would be banned within three years.
Jardine hatched his plot after the first recorded session of video analysis. Poring through Pathé News footage of the 1930 Ashes must have been demoralising at first, as he watched Don Bradman assemble his historic total of 974 runs at an average of 139. But then – eureka! Batting on a “sticky dog” at the Oval, Bradman had flinched away from a Larwood lifter. “I’ve got it, he’s yellow!” yelled Jardine, as he jumped out of his seat.
His monomania delivered a 4-1 series victory, mainly by reducing Bradman’s average to a near-mortal 56. As diplomatic cables thrummed between Melbourne and London, the whole affair echoed the uncannily prescient prediction made by Jardine’s school cricket master, Rockley Wilson, before the series. “He might well win us the Ashes, but he might lose us a Dominion.”
Back on the field, the need for speed applied equally well to the next two successful tours. Len Hutton, a man of few words and even fewer Hs, introduced himself to Australian reporters in 1954-55 with a disingenuous claim. “Noo, we ’aven’t got much boolin’,” Hutton said. “Got a chap called [Frank] Tyson but you won’t ’ave ’eard of ’im because ’e’s ’ardly played.”
Any doubt over the quality of England’s attack evaporated after Ray Lindwall foolishly felled the barrel-chested Tyson with a bouncer in the second Test, sending him to hospital with a bump on his head that could reportedly be seen from 100 yards away. When he returned, Tyson bowled with such extreme pace that the slips had to retreat halfway to the boundary. Benaud always said he was the quickest thing he
Should Root come home with the urn, he will be the youngest man to lead a winning Ashes tour Down Under
ever saw, fractionally shading Jeff Thomson.
Then there was John Snow – a real handful for everyone in 1970-71, including Illingworth himself. Despite being the son of a Worcestershire vicar, as well as a published poet, Snow had a rebellious, anti-authoritarian streak that Barnes might have recognised. In Melbourne, he triggered a riot by drawing blood from the scalp of tailender Terry Jenner. The ensuing hail of bottles and beer cans sent both teams scurrying from the field.
Unfortunately, Root does not possess a fast-bowling firebrand to match Larwood, Tyson or Snow. Yes, James Anderson and Stuart Broad might rank among England’s finest new-ball pairings. But they are both into their final acts, and are probably giving away around 15mph between them to their Australian equivalents, Starc and Cummins. On the two bounciest pitches, in Perth and Brisbane, such a disadvantage is usually fatal.
A captain can only work with what he has got. Had Ben Stokes been available, England could have tried to emulate the 1986-87 blueprint, in which a tight-knit and consistent attack was inspired to victory by the charisma of a barnstorming all-rounder. As it is, they might be better off looking at the Chapman tour, when Wally Hammond compiled a Bradmanesque tally of 905 runs. It was a unique example of an English batsman defining the state of play Down Under.
Thus far, events have conspired against Root. To make the Stokes situation worse, the roll call of injuries among the seamers is longer than Paul Hollywood’s shopping list. Jake Ball, Steven Finn, Mark Wood – you could field a decent attack from those lying in the sick bay. To make up for all the absentees, Root will probably have to rewrite the playbook by piling up three centuries himself – a feat never achieved by an English captain in Australia – and applying scoreboard pressure via a disciplined attack.
With respect to Benaud’s aphorism, 10 per cent skill may not be enough in this case. Lady Luck has been maddeningly elusive to date. Yet miracles do happen in Australia. How about the John Mcdouall Stuart expedition of 1861, in which a group of 10 men crossed the mainland from south to north, then returned unscathed? Root’s mission is scarcely less difficult.