Graveney the scapegoat for ECB failings

Jan 22 2008 By Pat Murphy

David Graveney has been sold short by the England and Wales Cricket Board in losing his post as the chairman of selectors to Geoff Miller.

In palming him off with the nebulous title of 'management performance director' they've succeeded in keeping him within the ECB tent, rather than his making public waves about how he has been treated.

When President of the United States, Lyndon Johnson had the apposite phrase to quell those he saw as potential rebels. He'd palm them off with some sinecure at the White House, saying 'I'd rather have him p****** out of the tent than p****** into it from outside'.

That's been the fate of Graveney. They're worried that he'd publish a book that would prove an embarrassment, detailing his eleven years as chairman of selectors and homing in on his difficult relationship with the then-head coach, Duncan Fletcher.

The ECB wouldn't want the public to know about the time that Fletcher refused to allow Graveney to cadge a lift back with the players to the team hotel in Colombo, Sri Lanka. Fletcher's reason? "You'd upset the players by your presence."

This to the chairman of selectors, who was about to have an important meeting with Fletcher about central contracts.

That exchange tells you all you need to know about Fletcher. The ECB, having experienced some damaging headlines over his self-serving autobiography last autumn, didn't want Graveney exercising his right of reply after Fletcher had written that he'd lost confidence in Graveney. The differences of opinion between Fletcher and the other selectors over the non-selection of Chris Read and Monty Panesar would have fascinated England fans.

So the ECB had to find a job to keep Graveney quiet and the smallish salary means he can afford not to go public on his disappointment at being sacked. Somehow English cricket has got by without a 'management performance director'. Apart from looking at the bright sparks at the various county academies and putting on a cheerful, patriotic front on his visits around the shires, it's difficult to know what Graveney's new job entails.

But Graveney was vulnerable after the laughable lack of positive action in the wake of the Schofield Report, that much-trumpeted dissection of England's travails, set up in the wake of the 5-0 Ashes thrashing a year ago. All that it has done is re-arrange the administrative chairs, give Hugh Morris and John Carr new titles - they were already big cheeses at Lord's anyway - and sacked Graveney.

Miller is a genial cove, vastly experienced in cricket matters, who played 34 Tests and is highly regarded on all sides by the cricket fraternity. Like Graveney, he has been exceedingly conscientious in his duties as selector, which are purportedly part-time. Tell that to these two, who have clocked up around 35,000 miles each summer on England's motorways, looking at likely lads. Part-time pay, but not in commitment.

But what does Miller bring to the table that surpasses Graveney's credentials as chairman? On Friday at Lord's, at a press conference arranged at just two hours' notice (why the rush?), that point was put to Hugh Morris, the new managing director of cricket. Twice. Each time he shouldered arms, waffled about a bright new future and failed lamentably to address that central issue.

And the goalposts have moved in terms of the amount of time Miller has to spend on tour with the England seniors. One of Schofield's recommendations was that the chairman of selectors should spend all his time on the tour, to avoid nonsenses like in Antigua on the 2004 West Indies tour when Fletcher and captain Michael

Vaughan dropped Chris Read for the final Test, without informing the three other selectors, who were not in the Caribbean. They found out by Teletext.

But on Friday it emerged that Miller only has to be around on tour on an ad hoc basis, when it's deemed to be important. Why the change of emphasis? Could it be that the ECB had to compromise with Miller, who is booked up a year in advance for his lucrative and excellent speaking engagements on the after-dinner circuit?

Miller's formal title is 'national selector'. So are the two new appointments, James Whitaker and Ashley Giles. What's wrong with calling Miller 'chairman of selectors'? Marketing gibberish is at work here - as if a fancy new title will create a sense of change and dynamism. The only change is that, deservedly, Miller will earn around £80,000 a year, more than double Graveney's stipend over the past decade.

The media will see through the ECB's latest PR cock-up and continue to call the post 'the chairman of England's selectors'. Just like we still call 'referee's assistants' linesmen, no matter what the smart advertising bods in their red braces decree.

Meanwhile, Graveney is the only individual to be sacrificed after the Ashes debacle and he's been found a job to keep him quiet. He deserved to be treated with more dignity after his selfless and successful stint over the past eleven years.

• O'Neill's fine words can speak volumes
  Martin O'Neill is not only an outstanding manager, but he possesses a wider vocabulary than his rivals in the Premier League. And vindication of that quality came from the public on Friday night.

Five Live ran a clip from an interview recorded earlier in the day when I asked O'Neill if he was interested in signing Jermain Defoe. O'Neill said he didn't want to particularize but preferred to talk in general terms about the need to sign a few players, with all the usual caveats - the price, the character involved, blah blah.

Perfectly sensible comments from O'Neill who has always baulked at doing his transfer business in public, as I wrote in last week's column.

Our exchange made for entertaining listening as I engaged in the ritual, fruitless dance of attempting to tease scraps of information from O'Neill. But after the clip was broadcast that night, one of the studio guests jibbed at O'Neill's taciturnity.

Just to stir the pot, he also added "Anyway, there's no such word as particularize." That set the text message board humming. Within five minutes, stacks of texts vindicated O'Neill's choice of language. One texter even summoned up the Oxford English Dictionary as evidence.

My copy of the Concise OED backs him up. Basically 'particularise' means to specify, or name specifically one by one. So, as they say on the Holte End, O'Neill had found 'le mot juste'.

I await that alleged expert - an Italian-American journalist - eating a slice of humble tiramisu. But with the information super-highway foursquare behind O'Neill last Friday, it's timely to remember that a bloke bright enough to get a place to read law at Queen's University Belfast isn't prone to the grammatical flights of fancy of a Glenn Hoddle or an Ian Holloway.

O'Neill knows his Hamlet from his Lear, his Gertrude from his Cordelia. Not every football manager reads only Rothmans' Yearbook.