England can expect a wake up call unless changes are made

Jun 2 2008 By Jack Bannnister

England’s blind allegiance to continuity has created history, with the unchanged team for the third and final Test match against New Zealand at Trent Bridge on Thursday being the first time in 125 years that the same team will take the field for the fifth successive match.

National selector Geoff Miller peddled a typically defensive party line with “ we have won three of the last four Tests, two away from home, and we know we have quailty players with plenty of character.”

The important X factor is that the opposition is New Zealand, now denuded of four former fine cricketers, and the next Test after Trent Bridge is against South Africa.

Does Miller mean that assuming England do not lose the third Test that, six weeks later, the same team will play South Africa at Lord’s? If so, expect a rude awakening against a pace attack that will cash in against a top order that continually adopts a too tentative approach.

It is not just the batting that has problems, although most of the debate since victory at Old Trafford has centred on Paul Collingwood and Ian Bell, and not James Anderson who is the biggest worry of the lot.

Perhaps Michael Vaughan is crossing everything he’s got that the talented Lancashire pace bowler will suddenly discover a consistency that has eluded him since debut five years ago.

Or perhaps the England captain is hoping that the cavalry in the person of Andrew Flintoff will ride in to take on South Africa, and bat at six to allow a five-man attack that can afford the hot-and-cold Anderson.

Vaughan is living in dreamland, because the gamble he and the management were prepared to take in mid-May by selecting Flintoff after only 93 overs will become even more risky in six weeks’ time.

Flintoff’s intercostal muscle injury received three weeks ago is only halfway through the normal recovery period, and he insists he will not rush back to bowl flat out until he is ready. One sporting medic says that “you can’t seriously consider Freddie until he has bowled at least 200 overs to ensure full bowling fitness in a body that has had more than its share of breakdowns.”

That realistic figure will take at least five four-day matches, or two or three plus several one-day games. Either way, that would exclude the all-rounder from the first two Tests against South Africa and, all being well, allow his return only at the beginning of August.

It was nonsense to admit late last month that his recovery was so unexpectedly slow that he would miss the New Zealand series because, as explained in this column three weeks ago, there was not the slightest chance of him playing for approximately six weeks.

The England and Wales Cricket Board spin machine keeps spewing out such optimistic bulletins every time there is an injury; i.e., Simon Jones, Flintoff four times, Vaughan, Ashley Giles, and Darren Gough.

The Trent Bridge match gives the top order it’s best chance of justifying the faith shown by Miller & co. But the harder the 11-man back-up team try to justify their emplyment, the more clogged the minds of everyone become.

The biggest truism in cricket , first espoused by former England and Yorkshire fast bowler Bill Bowes is that, “ cricket is a game of head and heart as well as arms and legs.”

The arguments for continuity have won the day. Now it is time to put up or shut up for at least three of the chosen eleven to dispel a growing perception that the England dressing-room has become more difficult to vacate than enter.