Cricket: do England need a new captain?

Even by England’s standards, this was a “complete fiasco”, said Paul Newman in The Mail on Sunday. Their Caribbean tour went from bad to worse last week when they stumbled to another “shambolic” defeat. The second Test against West Indies was wrapped up in only three days: England were beaten by ten wickets, scoring only 319 across their two innings. With another Test still to play, they have already lost the series to a team ranked a lowly No. 8 in the world. So far, England’s batsmen have averaged a pathetic 16.05 runs per wicket – their worst return since the 1880s.

What is it about England and batting collapses, asked Mike Atherton in The Times. Whatever the opponents, whatever the conditions, they keep collapsing. That’s because they have only one way of batting, said George Dobell on Espncricinfo. They react to every challenge by “trying to hit the ball harder, further and faster”. The top-order batsmen, in particular, lack the discipline to grind out results, but there are no obvious alternatives: never in the history of English cricket has there been “such a dearth of top-order batsmen”. Blame county cricket, said Geoffrey Boycott in The Daily Telegraph. It keeps devoting more and more time to white-ball cricket, while marginalising the longer form of the game; as a result, too few “decent” Test batsmen are rising up the ranks. Meanwhile, the captain, Joe Root, and coaching staff encourage the players to attack when they bat, no matter the cost. It’s time to consider drastic solutions, said Rob Smyth in The Guardian. Namely, a “change of captain”. Until Root took on the role, two years ago, he averaged 53 runs an innings; over the past 12 months, that has dropped to 33. He has gone from being a world-class batsman to a “good batsman and, at best, a decent captain”.

© IAN BAKER/THE OLDIE “What’s mansplaining? It’s when one explains to someone, typically a woman, in a manner regarded as condescending or patronising, that one is actually bullshitting.”