A CALL from England should be an occasion for celebration but these days it must feel like receiving the black spot. As the NatWest Series against Sri Lanka begins at Lord’s this morning, those players on the fringes must feel that their best chance of seeing it through to the World Cup is to remain standing and wait for the rest to drop.
Duncan Fletcher, the coach, has seen the silver lining on many a one-day cloud of late, but even he was struggling to place a positive slant on the latest injuries, which have interrupted the international careers of Glen Chapple and Ed Joyce almost as soon as they began. “I don’t know where to turn,” Fletcher said yesterday.
Where Joyce is concerned, the answer would seem to be to stay put. Assessment of his right ankle injured in the Twenty20 international at the Rose Bowl on Thursday evening showed too much swelling for a definitive prognosis, but at least initial fears of a serious problem have been dispelled. The selectors will decide next week whether to call in a replacement.
Depending on progress in the Champions Trophy in India in October and the triangular series against Australia and New Zealand in the new year, England have between 21 and 26 matches to construct a team before the World Cup. Fletcher believes that a new player generally needs at least 30 to feel comfortable in his role.
While injuries have caused more difficulties than the selectors can have imagined when they took the calculated decision to build for the 2007 competition immediately after the last World Cup in South Africa, it is also worth noting that they have given debuts to as many as 20 players in the three years since. Somewhere, judgment has been awry.
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Such a turnover means that England have rarely fielded a settled team and only Marcus Trescothick of the side that lost the first match after the 2003 tournament remains in the present squad. Michael Vaughan, James Anderson, Andrew Flintoff and Ashley Giles are injured but the likes of Jim Troughton and Anthony McGrath are way off the radar.
In itself, criticism of the selectors for making wholesale changes after losing 5-1 to India in March and April was unfair. There is no point in continuing with players deemed short of the standard required simply because they have experience. But having taken such a view of Kabir Ali so recently, why then recall him to replace Chapple? While batsmen new to the Test environment have been strikingly successful in the past two years, the story is different at one-day level. Only Ian Bell, since South Africa, has marked his first appearance with a half-century, and that against Zimbabwe. The next best are Geraint Jones and Matthew Prior, who both made 35.
Andrew Strauss, the acting England captain, is a case in point, scoring a hundred (and almost one in each innings) on his Test debut but only 3 on his first limited-overs appearance. “Test cricket is not easier but as a batsman you can play your natural game and don’t have to change your plan,” he said. “In one-day cricket the extra pressure of scoring quickly forces you from your comfort zone and inexperienced players probably find that harder. Sides who have won the World Cup in the past have had a lot of experienced batsmen. That is why, for the guys at the start of their one-day careers, the more they can play, the better.”
Bell is entitled to echo those comments louder than anybody, having been in and out of the side. The injury to Joyce should bring another chance while Tim Bresnan could make his first appearance in the absence of Chapple. Stephen Harmison will be playing against Sri Lanka for the first time this summer, Twenty20 notwithstanding.
The ICC rankings suggest a close series. Sri Lanka are at six and England seven. Had this been the case on April 1, England would have had to qualify for the first stage of the Champions Trophy.
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NUMBER CRUNCH
8-2 England’s win-loss record against Sri Lanka in one-day internationals at home. Overall, England have a 19-13 advantage, but the past 12 matches have been split equally between the teams
16.67 England’s win percentage when batting first since March 2003 against teams other than Bangladesh, Zimbabwe and Ireland. They have won only four out of 24 such matches.
20.50 Mahela Jayawardena’s batting average in one-day internationals against England in England. His overall average against England is a far more impressive 36.15.
30.91 Muttiah Muralitharan’s bowling average in one-day internationals since 2005 (48 wickets in 36 games), as against a career average of 23.15. His economy rate in the past 18 months is 4.28, up from his career economy rate of 3.84.
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70.47 Kevin Pietersen’s average in one-day internationals he has played for England since 2005. He has scored three hundreds and seven fifties in 24 matches.