“Bring in someone who is brilliant at decision making, who has such good sense, such a good reading of the game who can help you”; Sky Cricket experts considered whether England needs someone to give Joe Root more help after a troubling start at The Ashes
Head coach Chris Silverwood and captain Joe Root have faced criticism after England’s poor start at The Ashes
England are 2-0 down at The Ashes with their picks and decision making getting a lot of criticism.
About him Sky Sports Cricket Podcast, Mike Atherton, Rob Key and Nasser Hussain discussed some of the most puzzling decisions and whether captain Joe Root needs more help, whether that should come from the head coach and how getting rid of a head coach has left Chris Silverwood more open to The critics.
Here’s how that discussion went …
Mike Atherton: Don’t you think that, in a way, the thinking behind the team selection (for the second round) was really worrying and confusing? Whether you accept that England’s spinners are good enough or have faith in them is quite a different matter.
When you looked at the selection of that team for this surface, for a new bowling sort of kind, five right-arm closer, all in a tight pacing range, shutting out your extreme pacing man, resting, they said he was totally on. shape, resting for what? We’re 2-0 down, and the course just didn’t make sense.
I couldn’t see any situation where that selection made sense for this game and I find it quite disturbing because they have to talk about the selection, obviously, before the game. There’s no cricket common sense that that team comes up with on that field.
Rob Key: That is another problem they have. Joe Root takes a lot of sticks and, tactically, he’s not the best captain in the world, but that’s nothing new. But really, the captaincy has brought a lot to his hitting, made him a better player with that responsibility, and you take it a bit. As a setup, what you have to do is understand that – it’s nothing new that Joe Root doesn’t always make the best decisions.
So what you need to do is bring in someone who is brilliant at making those decisions, who has such a good mood, such a good read of the game that he can help you. So when you come to Brisbane and you think ‘we could have a bat here’ on a green field, that person, whoever the coach is, says’ wait a minute, don’t worry about that, you have a lit bowl there and this is the one. team you want to go with ‘and then the same in Adelaide.
When he comes out thinking he’s going to come in with five closers, they say ‘no, no, this is the flattest pitch, this is where you need your spinner,’ so you’re actually helping him. Same thing when you’ve got Ben Stokes bowling gorillas for a session or whatever, or they’re bowling too short, come in at lunchtime, or a message comes out: “ turn it up a notch. ”
Or on the morning of the second day, you can ask “Who do you start with, Joe?” And he says so and so and so and so, he can say ‘no, Robinson is the man you go with, he’s been your best bowler, that’s the best way to do it.’
Nasser Hussain: That was the problem, I think we all said, when they changed the procedure and named Silverwood as the head coach. In terms of accountability, before that, you could give in to the head selector if there was a problem and that takes you a little out of the limelight, keeps you out of the pressure cooker of mistakes and making mistakes.
But also, secondly, when you’re in that bubble with your bowlers around you and you’re trying to back them up and listen to Broad, Anderson, and Woakes, trying to show faith in them, sometimes you need someone on the outside, to go in and don’t say ‘you know what this looks like?
Just get out there and look from above, you’re going to Adelaide on a flat, dry, hot field and you’re going to come in with five equal bowlers. Every decision you make will have repercussions and, since you have entered with five equal players, who will be your executor?
Every now and then you need someone who can take your tone out of the equation. With whom did they go as their executor? The boy who could break at any time in Ben Stokes, who is coming back from injury, has played the least cricket of them all and struggled with a knee injury in the last game.
He was thrown to the ground and I tell you that Ben Stokes’ efforts at bowling were affecting his hitting, he could barely move at times. So I think the decision to make Silverwood the head selector has repercussions and you don’t have that outside voice.
MOTHER: (Confusing selection) can be due to many factors, the pressure can be one, the story can be another. We talked about the decision in the draw in Brisbane and the weight of the story with Nasser and all that kind of stuff. Perhaps the lack of awareness of Australian conditions is another, although Root is on his third tour, Anderson on his fifth, Broad fourth (not sure how much the two great bowlers can say) and obviously Collingwood and Thorpe. They have had a lot of experience here.
I was wondering if it would be worth bringing someone in as a consultant for the tour. I was thinking of someone like Mark Taylor, for example, who knows Australian conditions from the inside out and isn’t going to put on a tracksuit, but every now and then, he’s the kind of person who might say ‘this is what you need’ . in Adelaide ‘or’ this is how you play bowling under these conditions’.
You’d think that kind of knowledge would be there, but given what has happened so far… that has been the most disappointing thing so far, I can assume that England is being beaten by a better side; I played so many defeats against Australia, they were a better team than us, and we certainly made a lot of mistakes too. But I think England’s selection, decision-making and strategy in the nine days of this tour so far have been more than bad.
RK: You’re right and it’s not only been nine days, it’s been going a bit more than that, through India and I know we’ve had Covid and all of that. I completely agree with someone like Mark Taylor, but aren’t these decisions the head coach should be aware of? As a gamer, even if you’re as good as Joe Root, you don’t know everything.
But that’s why you have a coach, not to tell you how to cover drive or tell you what time the bus leaves, he is there to tell you and help you make the right decisions as captain. All these things we’ve mentioned, hiring a consultant, there are enough coaches there, shouldn’t they be the ones who know this?
N.H: Just to play devil’s advocate, I go back to something I asked Ath last week about cricket decisions. They depend heavily on statistics. If someone from the back room staff were here now, to back up, they would say ‘You know we struggle with the finger twist in Australia? You know Moeen Ali has no windows, Jack Leach is under attack, so why do we shut out Broad, Anderson, Woakes or any of our closers for a roulette wheel?
They know they explain it by the fact that spinning the fingers, apart from Lyon, doesn’t work very well with the Kookaburra ball. My point is that there are reasons for them to do so, so my question is: do you go to history or look at Leach or Bess and say this pitch says play a roulette, so are we going to play one? Don’t give up on finger twisting in Australia, this tone says play one so let’s play one.
MOTHER: I am not saying for a minute that the outcome would have been different if England had played roulette, it is just the thought process behind the selection that worries me a bit because there are very few decisions that England have made so far. this tour that have been good. That is a concern.
