SO, WHO’S GOING TO STEP UP AND SAVE ENGLAND?
Test places are up for grabs when the County Championship starts today....
IT was not so long ago that the start of a new County Championship season felt like a quaint sideshow.
The England team was a closed shop — to place yourself in the window seemed futile. But when the competition begins today at six venues stretching from Leeds to Southampton, there will be international careers up for grabs. There may be a chill in the air, but there is also a frisson.
And yet this is a mixed blessing. On the one hand, the Championship needs all the edge it can get, especially with the Indian Premier League poaching some of English cricket’s most talented white-ball operators. But it also says plenty about the dismal state of the Test team after a winter in which they completed the worst overseas sequence in their 141-year history.
By surrendering the Ashes 4-0, then losing to New Zealand for the first time since 1999, Joe Root’s side extended their winless record abroad to 13 matches, of which 10 have ended in defeat.
Mark Stoneman, James Vince and Dawid Malan are yet to nail their places in the top five. And Alastair Cook is battling perceptions that he is nearing the end of a momentous career.
As one member of the England dressing room confided: ‘There’s only Joe Root, Jonny Bairstow and Ben Stokes in the top seven who are nailed on.’
It is a desperate situation in which to begin a home season that sees the visits of Pakistan and India, two teams more than capable of further upsetting England’s apple cart. And it places the onus on the domestic game to come up with cricketers capable of thriving at Test level. R ECENTLY, the conveyor belt has threatened to come to a complete halt. Since Root made his Test debut in Nagpur at the end of 2012, only one other player has come into the team and averaged over 40 with the bat. That was Lancashire opener Haseeb Hameed, who managed three Tests in India in 2016-17 before breaking a finger and hasn’t played for England since.
Hameed is one of three toporder players — along with new county colleague Keaton Jennings, who signed from Durham, and Middlesex opener Nick Gubbins — who have a chance.
Gubbins is expected to be out until the end of April with a hamstring injury but if Hameed can work out his game against the short ball, England may not take long to come knocking once more. Young English batsmen with the kind of temperament that has sustained Cook’s Test career for 13 years are increasingly scarce. This is his big chance.
Even Northamptonshire’s Ben Duckett, whose winter ended in farce when he was dropped by the Lions after pouring a pint over the head of Jimmy Anderson during a night out in Perth, cannot be discounted, although injury will delay his start to the season, too.
Other middle-order possibilities include the feisty Lancashire batsman Liam Livingstone and Worcestershire’s Joe Clarke. Score a hundred in early-season conditions and the selectors will take an interest.
County bowlers may also spy the odd opening. Not only is there an awareness that the prolific new-ball partnership of Anderson and Stuart Broad is entering its twilight, but England’s travails on flat overseas pitches have hammered home the need for pace, variety and high-class spin.
The inclusion for their last Test of the winter, in Christchurch, of Durham quick Mark Wood and Somerset slow left-armer Jack Leach suggested Root and the management had cottoned on.
While Chris Woakes and possibly Moeen Ali are likely to resume their Test places in home conditions, the selectors will need to cast their net wider in search of an attack capable of taking 20 wickets abroad — something England have failed to achieve in any of their last 10 overseas Tests.
Somerset’s Jamie Overton is quicker than his twin brother Craig, who made his debut during the Ashes, and could be in the running. There are also hopes for Sussex left-armer George Garton and Northamptonshire’s Richard Gleeson.
Garton will miss the opener against Warwickshire at Edgbaston because of an injury sustained on Lions duty, but he understands the premium this summer on raw speed.
‘Being able to swing the ball at pace is a big asset,’ he said. ‘I try to be an aggressive wicket-taker, moving the new ball into righthanders and reversing the old one.
‘I’ve seen split- screens of my action and it’s been likened to both Mitchell Johnson and Mitchell Starc, so that’s not the worst company in the world. They’re guys I try to emulate and they’re used in the way I see myself — a wicket-taking option in short, sharp bursts.’
Garton, who turns 21 on Sunday, has played only nine firstclass matches, but was used in the nets by England ahead of the first Ashes Test in Brisbane as preparation for Starc, his fellow left-armer. He is in the mix.
Almost a decade older but no less intriguing is Gleeson, who until three years ago was plying his trade for Cumberland in the minor counties championship. Now he is topping 90mph for Northamptonshire and impressing those who know him well.
‘I haven’t faced anyone who moves the ball at pace as much as he does,’ says his county captain Alex Wakely. ‘Even Mark Wood doesn’t swing it as much. If England are looking for something a bit different, he’d love to grab the opportunity.’ I N the spin department, two Tests against Pakistan in late May and early June are not likely to provide much joy for the likes of Leach. But with winter tours to come on the slow pitches of Sri Lanka and the West Indies, he and Hampshire leg-spinner Mason Crane need to stay in the news.
The bad news for England’s long-term Test prospects is that the County Championship looks more marginalised than ever. Ten of the 15 rounds of four- day matches will be staged in April, May and September, when seaming pitches are the norm.
If England’s last two winters have told us anything, it is that their cricketers need more exposure to flatter pitches on which batsmen can build an innings and bowlers need more than mediumpace line and length to take wickets. Yet as the emphasis grows on the white-ball formats, and with attention turning to next summer’s World Cup, only three four-day matches will take place in July and August.
This season represents the best chance in years for a young county thruster to make a name for himself and fill a gap in England’s rickety Test team. But if anyone succeeds, it will be in spite of the schedule, rather than because of it. The priorities of English cricket come with a worrying question mark.