Vaughan blow no
Freddie would be galvanised if they made him skipper
MICHAELVaughan’s probable absence from the first Test will be a blow to England because he’s been an inspirational captain, but there is no reason why it should become a crisis.
While it has definitely been the case that much of the team’s recent success has been down to their influential captain, it should be remembered that there is another man, behind the scenes, who is just as important — Duncan Fletcher. A great deal of England’s improvement over the past couple of years can be put down to the way the team have carried out the plans expertly laid down by their coach. T h e p l a y e r s h a v e b e c o m e extremely well regimented in that respect and will know exactly what those plans are and what their role is in their execution.
To an extent, that makes the loss of a captain somewhat easier to bear, even though it cannot be denied that Vaughan has been excellent in his ability to tinker with those plans on the field to suit the occasion, or offer a quick reaction when one hasn’t worked.
What England must guard against is his injury becoming an excuse for the players if things don’t go well on the field.
Pakistan is the sort of tour where, if things are going well, everything is fine, but, if the opposition get on top, then any little problem or cultural difference can be exaggerated and a siege mentality set in.
Marcus Trescothick has always been a very fine stand-in captain for both me and Vaughan. He has a great cricket brain and is always very loyal to the team and the man for whom he’s filling in.
He is not the sort of character who would suddenly make up his own plans in an attempt to stamp his own authority on the side or stake his claims for the job. He would simply carry out the team’s plans to the best of his ability and, as such, would not let anybody down.
There is, however, another option. I would consider Andrew Flintoff to stand in for Vaughan. Trescothick is England’s best player of spin and is therefore the key batsman in Pakistan.
The added responsibility might just galvanise Flintoff. He has revealed his concerns about being without his family on this trip and captaincy would give him so much to think about that he would never become distracted.
I know Vaughan said in his recent book that he would worry about giving the captaincy to Flintoff in the long term because he might have too much on his plate. But for now, with the special demands a tour of the sub- continent can bring, the same argument could be applied to Trescothick.
Where Vaughan will definitely be missed is as a batsman. The last time we toured Pakistan, in 2000, two of my senior players, Mike Atherton and Graham Thorpe, ‘came to the party’ to use Fletcher’s favourite expression.
The one thing this England team do lack, after the cull of senior players in recent years, is experience and Vaughan is one of the few who has any experience on the subcontinent.
Without him, the onus will be all the more on Trescothick and Andrew Strauss. Yet it will also give an unexpected opportunity to Ian Bell. It is time for him to hold his hand up. He has been around a while and it looked as though he was going to be dropped after his struggle in the Ashes, but Vaughan’s injury has changed that.
I see that Alec Stewart recently tipped Bell to regain his place in the side and go on to score 5,000 Test runs. There is no question that he is a richly-talented batsman. What he needs to do now, in adversity, is seize the moment and prove it.
Five years ago we won our threeTest series in Pakistan 1- 0 with a dramatic win in the dark in the final Test in Karachi. But we played it differently then. There were no superstars in my team and we had not been to the sub- continent for a decade.
I knew the pressure Pakistan would be under to beat us and I thought the best way to turn the heat up on them would be to sit in there, to retain control and never to let the opposition get away from us.
I didn’t have Steve Harmison and a vastly matured Flintoff in my side. In our case the whole was greater than the sum of the individual parts and the team bought in to what we were trying to achieve from the very first ball — notably Ashley Giles, who had an outstanding tour.
But this England side have been successful by being positive and attacking and there is no point telling Kevin Pietersen to defend once he has played himself in.
Indeed, Flintoff often got out cheaply on our later tour of India by trying to defend too much and has to play his natural game now.
I am delighted and not surprised that England have gone for Alastair Cook as cover for Vaughan because Fletcher always likes to make forward-thinking selections. Cook would have been my choice. He’s very Strauss-like in his strokeplay and attitude and I think we have another outstanding young cricketer on our hands.
From what I have seen of him at Essex, he has what it takes to make it at the highest level. It’s just a shame that he will add to the inexperience of the side at the moment although, of course, that youthfulness hasn’t exactly hindered England too much recently.
I captained England A in Multan 10 years ago and it’s a testing place to visit. The Test will be played in a different, more recently built stadium, but I notice Virender Sehwag scored 300 on it last year, so it must be flat.
Hence the need to score big runs if, as you’d hope, England bat first, with Giles then being a key figure when they bowl.
Results of warm-up matches do not matter. The Test will be completely different to what we have seen so far on two lively wickets in Rawalpindi and Lahore.
England must put the absence of Vaughan and Simon Jones behind them and keep moving forward.