Nasser Hussain’s hot-headed decision to give up the captaincy — the most sensational resignation since Peter May retired in 1961 at the age of 31 in quiet rage at the media attention the job was attracting — has precipitated a crisis in the England team.
Before he became captain, his critics said Hussain was too fiery to make a good leader. In the end, they were right. After three years of relatively stable behaviour, we witnessed 12 months of minor explosions before the top finally blew off the volcano last week in Birmingham. It’s rumbling still, as his intervention in Friday’s row between Graeme Smith and James Anderson showed.
When England’s middle- order was taking leave of its senses on Thursday, on the team’s first day of cricket since Hussain resigned, the spectre of the side lurching from one disaster to another in a manner not seen in an Australia-free year since the “summer of four captains” in 1988 was raised. Those who praised Hussain as the man who stopped English cricket being a laughing stock were perhaps a tad rash. But if Hussain’s teammates disported themselves like men befuddled, bedazzled and bemused, who could blame them? Anybody who thinks Hussain’s recent behaviour is rational — which is what he maintained last Monday evening as he attempted to justify his bizarre action — must think again. Only two weeks ago (and just five days before South Africa scored a staggering 398 for one on the Black Thursday of the first Test) he spoke lucidly in one of the conference rooms at Trent Bridge, on Twenty20 Cup final day, of the reasons why it was important that he carried on as Test captain, even though Michael Vaughan had made a promising start as one-day skipper. For those present, it was persuasive stuff. Persuasive, because Hussain knew it to be true.
Asked why he was staying on as Test captain, he replied: “Because I have to do what’s right by the team. Good things are happening in English cricket. We’ve won our last three Tests. The boys are playing well. Why rock the boat? Why do something that puts the team’s success at any kind of risk? Let’s not have change for the sake of it.
“The selectors want me to do both (play and captain) and I believe it’s the right thing. Eventually that will change, whether it be in two months or six months. We’ve just got to make sure the timing is right.”
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No suggestion that he would be asking Vaughan to take over nine days later. Hussain’s aim had long been to carry on playing, whether as captain or not, until September 2004. As a player that’s fine, as long as he’s making an unarguable case with the bat.
The notion that he was planning an immediate withdrawal from international cricket was scotched by his agent, who said there were no plans for him to begin a media career. Sky Sports, for whom he worked during the Twenty20 Cup, had no vacancy, nor had they for England’s nine Tests next winter. Besides, Hussain’s lucrative contract as an England player does not expire until September 30, and the conversations he had last Tuesday at home in Essex with his wife and two young children will have dwelt on that fact.
To add to the surreal air of the last week, Hussain claimed last night that had England lost the first Test — rather than drawn it somewhat fortuitously, thanks largely to the weather — he would not have resigned. “I would have believed I had messed up the game and it was up to me to me to turn the series round,” he said. “But it was a draw and the series was still 0-0, no damage had been done and it was time to move on.”
His claim is all the more bizarre since he informed David Graveney, the chairman of selectors, of his decision to resign at breakfast time on Monday morning, while the first Test was still in progess. However it only adds to the sense that Hussain made a hasty decision, and the right time for him to step down would have been September, allowing Vaughan to begin his captaincy reign overseas (where the media spotlight is softer), starting with an easy trip to Bangladesh.
Overall, Hussain will be judged — indeed, has already been judged — a success as captain. He brought that rarest thing in English cricket, consistent success, for a period of 12 months and often even when England were manifestly the worse team, as in India two years ago when he made the opposition fight to translate their superiority into material advantage.
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But it is easy to exaggerate the improvement in the team’s fortunes. Hussain’s record of 17 wins in 45 matches is bolstered by some easy victories. For instance, lowly Zimbabwe were beaten three times; Sri Lanka, the only other team to lose a series to England since 2001, were seen off twice when Muttiah Muralitharan was barely fit; South Africa were beaten at Centurion because Hansie Cronje wanted to keep the bookies happy.
THE MAN who first stopped English cricket being a laughing stock was Hussain’s mentor, Graham Gooch, who made England competitive again against the team that was then the world’s best, West Indies.
In the late 1980s, England’s selection policy was a shambles — May, the chairman, briefly made his godson Chris Cowdrey captain — and it took Gooch’s obsessive desire to haul the team up by their bootstraps. He held Viv Richards’ mighty side to a 2-2 draw in 1991.
The West Indies side that Hussain beat three years ago was but a shadow of that one. But like most England captains of recent times, the reigns of Gooch and Hussain were broken on the Australian anvil, and in Hussain’s case he knew all along that ultimately he would be judged on Ashes results.
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Nowadays, merely the prospect of playing the Australians can do funny things to a man. Look at Sourav Ganguly in the World Cup final. For no good reason other than that it delayed facing Brett Lee and Glenn McGrath, he chose to bowl first on a perfectly good pitch.
As he approached last winter’s tour of Australia, Hussain became similarly unhinged. Going one up against India, he started playing for draws, desperate not to leave home on a false note. Andrew Flintoff was made to play when unfit, a decision that would scupper his Ashes tour. In the end, England were lucky to escape with a 1-1 draw. Hussain’s fuse got noticeably shorter.
His Ganguly moment came at Brisbane on the morning of the first Ashes Test, when he quaintly decided to bowl rather than bat. It was another perfect batting strip, and Australia racked up millions. The series was over in 11 days. By the second match, Shane Warne was having no trouble sledging him out, and when the Ashes were surrendered Hussain made an odd speech about the shortcomings of county cricket, even though the top players are now rarely exposed to it.
Almost immediately, the World Cup was happening. A row over Zimbabwe loomed. His first reaction, that it was not for sportsmen to resolve, was correct but he was taken to task for it in the media and started taking an interest. His behaviour was decent, honest — but wrong. He should never have got involved. Twenty-four hours before England’s opening match, he was holding a press conference to wish a plague on all administrators’ houses. He almost quit then. In failing in Australia, he knew he had failed where it mattered most and that the critics would be after him for it.
Logically, there was no reason for him to carry on as Test captain, except that he wanted to. He argued, with some persuasion, that he could not step down until there was an obvious candidate to replace him, although this has not stopped people in the past.
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What made things doubly difficult was England winning the NatWest Series under the leadership of Vaughan. On returning, Hussain was clearly going to have to reassert command in the dressing-room. This needed time: a few days, certainly one match. He could have done it but barely bothered to try. He looked resigned from the start.
Hussain, one of whose pieces of captaincy advice to Vaughan was to make sure he kept the media happy, had noted comments about the players enjoying themselves under Vaughan. People didn’t “enjoy” playing under Hussain because it was too serious a business for that, and he operated by administering “a kick up the backside now and again”.
“People need to be a little scared of you as captain,” he told me recently. Instead of recognising that his methods still had merit, he panicked into trying to be more like Vaughan. “I found myself not quite the captain that England needed or wanted,” he said last Monday. “It was difficult for me to be something completely different.” But nobody had asked him to be. If people prefer playing under Michael, he was saying, I’m taking my bat home. It was, as Geoffrey Boycott observed, a decision made in haste.
Perhaps what was remarkable was not that Hussain flipped, but that he kept things in check so long.