So could Brailsford really start new cycle?
Strauss sounds out Olympic hero to help
SIR DAVE BRAILSFORD has been sounded out to join the highperformance review team that will help shape the future of English cricket.
Brailsford, 58, is a serial winner as a coach in cycling, overseeing Olympic golds and Tour de France titles with Great Britain and Team Sky/Ineos Grenadiers, and drawing admiration from Sir Andrew Strauss as a result.
Strauss has been tasked with carrying out an exhaustive audit of the English game in a bid to improve fortunes on the global stage and is expected to put together a panel of individuals with expertise in other sports and industry.
Cricket has regularly reached beyond its own boundaries in times of self-reflection. Notably in 2007 when Ken Schofield, one of golf’s leading administrators, headed a post-Ashes review.
As recently as six months ago, Newcastle’s technical director Dan Ashworth, then at Brighton, joined Warwickshire’s cricket audit committee to offer advice on developing high performance environments.
Earlier this week, when addressing the media in Bridgetown, Strauss spoke of being bold and ambitious in driving change.
Brailsford, whose potential involvement was revealed by Telegraph Sport yesterday, provided input as the England football team prepared for the 2014 World Cup and later advised the Football Association on establishing a worldclass decision-making structure.
The initial stages of the review will revolve around high performance principles and how to deliver on them simultaneously through a developmental pathway and domestic structure to the national team. The independence external opinion provides is viewed as crucial in ensuring vested interests do not get in the way of Strauss’ ambitious goal to make England the number one side across all formats.
Joe Root’s team will slip to fifth place in Test cricket later this month unless they can complete only a second series win in the Caribbean in 54 years. If they are to complete only a second victory in 15 matches at the Kensington Oval today, to take a 1-0 lead with one to play, it will be in no small part due to Ben Stokes’ efforts.
Stokes bought England time with his rambunctious batting on the second day of this grind of a Test match but West Indies, the first of eight teams above them in the World Championship standings currently, stamped on their watch by digging in for close to 200 overs in reply to 507 for nine declared.
So benign was the surface and so spiteless the tourists’ attack that their star all-rounder was also forced into an extended slog as a bowler. Indeed, when Root opted for the third new ball midway through a sleepy fourth afternoon, Stokes had sent down 26 of the 162 overs that West Indies had negotiated. Only left-arm spinner Jack Leach had bowled more, and Stokes was not finished, contributing three more with the fresh cherry.
It said as much about England’s shortcomings as his indefatigable nature.
On the eve of this series, the 30year-old shared a belief he had let the team down with his performances in the Ashes and promised some big performances.
And here was Root’s right-hand man, good to his word, highlighting a return to prime physical condition by following his near run-a-ball innings of 120 by energetically bowling the holding overs and prising out Alzarri Joseph, his 172nd victim in the process. He is now two shy of being in England’s top 20 Test wicket-takers.
The worry was that he combined that defensive role with that of spearhead as a lack of threat left new-ball pick Chris Woakes out to pasture.