England require quick fix on strategy and selection
Hosts go into T20 series with batting under cloud Root the perfect opener for run-up to World Cup
While India and Pakistan contest the Champions Trophy final, England and South Africa prepare for their threematch T20 series, knowing they still do not have what it takes to win a one-day global trophy.
For England, their anguishing semifinal last Wednesday told us that not enough of their batsmen can think on their feet and not enough of their batsmen or bowlers have the techniques for slow or turning pitches, never mind ones that are both; and as the 2019 World Cup is organised by the International Cricket Council, and used pitches will feature as that tournament progresses, England had better revise their strategy and personnel fast.
England’s one-day team are very good at hitting rather than batting; and the particular Achilles’ heel in this Champions Trophy was their opening partnership. Before the first game, against Bangladesh, England captain Eoin Morgan said it was “strong”, but the opposite proved to be nearer the case. It would have been correct to say both Jason Roy and Alex Hales were capable of strong innings but as a partnership they had not put on 50 for the first wicket for a year, since they scored unbeaten centuries against Sri Lanka in a world-record stand. This was the trouble: England’s starts were either all or insufficient, and usually the latter.
In this week’s T20 internationals Roy and Hales will form the perfect opening pair: all guns blazing from the first ball, probably the most gifted pair of shot-makers England have had to open an innings – by the definition of being able to hit any ball for six. But one-day global tournaments are won by specialist batsmen who can score hundreds in any conditions, not by those who take high risks and are inconsistent – because their failures are all the more likely to occur on the highpressure occasion of a knockout match.
The big mistake made by England’s coaches, captain and selectors was to open with Sam Billings whenever Roy or Hales was not available, starting in Bangladesh last October when Hales absented himself. Billings has many qualities but had never opened an innings on any regular basis: wicketkeepers normally do not. And thus it was that when Roy had to be dropped after scoring 18 runs in the three qualifiers, Jonny Bairstow had to open an ODI innings for the first time: novelty, at a time when you most need stability.
The right opening pair would have evaluated the Cardiff conditions and a par score more quickly than the improvised one. Both Hales and Bairstow had an early escape thanks to the Decision Review System, and Bairstow was dropped twice, yet both kept forcing the pace, trying to dominate too soon.
England had scored 34 off 35 balls when Hales took the high-risk option of walking down the pitch to coverdrive, and was caught for 13. Bairstow pulled to deep square leg for 43 off 57. He has never scored an ODI century, having seldom been given the opportunity: this was the crack in his game, revealed under pressure.
England, having started in fourth gear, dropped to third as Joe Root and Morgan ticked over, then second after Root strained for a boundary instead of being content with singles, then first gear for the rest of their innings. The tempo was the reverse of what it should have been. The four specialist batsmen had not found the answer, so why should the all-rounders and tail?
From now on until the next World Cup, Root would be my choice to open, a batsman who has opened in Test cricket and has learnt to pick up all the cues to survive and adapt; a batsman at his best when there is pace on the ball. Bairstow should be given the chance to move in at three, there to learn how to convert his starts into ODI hundreds.
And a space must be found in the middle order of England’s next one-day team, for the September series against West Indies, for Lancashire’s Liam Livingstone. He is in England’s T20 squad against South Africa but down the order, with not much chance to show what sets him apart: an autodidact, not over-coached, who can think on his feet, who went to Sri Lanka with the England Lions after one season of county cricket and worked out how to score a century in each innings of an A Test, as only Kevin Pietersen has done – and in conditions which resembled Cardiff.