As England head towards another new era following their humiliating exit at the World Cup, their assistant coach Paul Farbrace has signaled the need for new recruits, calling for county cricketers to fight for their places in the team
George Dobell12-Mar-2015You are never far from another new era in England cricket. Just over a year since England left Sydney licking their wounds and promising a new start after an Ashes thrashing, many of the same words and sentiments are being used.It is time for fresh starts, new guards and looking to the future. Again. It is time to build a team for the 2017 Champions Trophy and the 2019 World Cup. All of which means that, unless the pattern is changed, England will build for three-and-a-half years, then alter their plans at the last moment.It seems inevitable that this match against Afghanistan will feature the final ODI appearance of several of England’s best known players. James Anderson, the highest wicket-taker in their ODI history, is likely to be one casualty; Ian Bell, the highest run-scorer, is likely to be another. Ravi Bopara and, to a lesser extent, Eoin Morgan and Stuart Broad may also be at their end of the road.None of them can complain. Bell has played 160 ODIs and scored four centuries. Nobody doubts his talent and his average remains admirable. But his real role has been to win games and he has not done that often enough. A future as a Test specialist awaits.Anderson, too, has now participated in four World Cups and failed to deliver as hoped. That is plenty of opportunity. It is time to move on.It is too early to write off Broad. Despite an international career that already stretches back almost a decade, he is still only 28. He could come again. On current form, though – as a tailender with an aversion to quick bowling and a fast-medium seamer without the pace or skills to thrive at this level – he is of limited use to England.England go for data protection
Paul Farbrace has defended England’s use of statistics despite criticism that the team’s obsession with numbers had left the players with cluttered minds.
Peter Moores, the head coach, was ridiculed after England’s defeat against Bangladesh when he stated that he would “have to look at the data” before making any conclusions.
But Farbrace, England’s assistant coach, insisted that the squad used such analysis far less than the Sri Lanka team when he coached them to the World T20 trophy about a year ago.
“We’re not spending hours and hours in front of a white board,” Farbrace said. “We’re not spending hours chewing over stats and numbers.
“With the Sri Lanka team we had more team meetings and we looked at stats more than the England team currently do. We had a team of six people working for us during the World Twenty20 last year with the Sri Lanka team, who were providing us with data straight after a game. Then, the next morning, we used it to prepare for the next game. That’s what won us the final.
“Our preparation from fantastic statistics helped us to bowl in the right places for the last four overs and win that final. With Sri Lanka we used more footage, more analysis than we have done in this series with this England team.
“We’re not spending hours and hours talking in team meetings about stats and numbers. We’re not having team meetings. We don’t do that. We allow people to look at footage. It is up to them if they want to look at it.”
The problem for England is that there are no obvious replacements for them in county cricket. While Ben Stokes will clearly win a recall in the coming months, the absence of left-arm bowlers – spin or pace – is a major area of weakness. The likes of Jason Roy will, no doubt, win opportunities, but there are going to be no quick fixes to the problem this time.It was a point made by England’s assistant coach, Paul Farbrace, on Thursday. In between providing a heartfelt defence of Peter Moores – “He hasn’t cost England the chance of progressing to the next stage of the World Cup,” he said, “We’re all in this together” – he gave a rallying call to those young players in county cricket who might make up future England sides.”There’s a fantastic opportunity now for players in county cricket to stick their hands up and say there are spaces in that England team and I’m going to take my opportunity,” he said. “There has never been a better time, if we’re honest.”There is now a fantastic opportunity for county cricketers to say ‘This is my chance to make myself into a brilliant one-day cricketer’.They can really use the next couple of years to give themselves the best chance to be a fantastic death bowler, to bowl brilliant yorkers, to be brilliant with the slower balls and for batters to make sure they’ve got a power game.”But while Farbrace accepted the need for new recruits, he was not convinced that anyone currently involved in county cricket could have helped them during this tournament.”I’ve thought about this for the past few days and I’m not sure there are players in county cricket at the moment who could be here,” he said. “I still think we’ve got the right 15 here.”Stokes is a fantastic, exciting talent, we all know that. And yes, Ben is probably unfortunate that he batted eight and bowled in Sri Lanka, but we were so desperate that we were trying to find a way to keep him in the team.”His run of low scores meant that he got to the stage where he was left out of the squad and you could argue there might have been one or two batters that could have been here, but that comes down to personal opinion.”There have been some glimpses of hope. Chris Jordan delivered the best death over – albeit one containing a wide – England have seen for several years in the defeat against Bangladesh, Joe Root is emerging into a class act and Jos Buttler has relished the fight. And if Moeen Ali has failed to fire with the bat, his bowling has been impressive. His possible absence from the tour of West Indies – it will be touch and go whether he has recovered in time – is a real worry. Never have England had such a dearth of quality spin bowlers.The team has cut a dejected sight – “subdued” was Farbrace’s description – at training over the last couple of days. Whatever criticism there has been of them, nobody should doubt their care or commitment. They have let themselves down and they know it.”The boys are still hurting,” Farbrace said. “We can have no complaints about some of the stick that we’ve taken because it hasn’t been good enough.”I’m not sure we’ve recovered from the first two games of the tournament. We got blown away in those two games and I don’t think we’ve really recovered. There’s been a lot said about our nervousness and tension we are playing with and I think it’s hard to argue against that. That’s been the biggest disappointment: thinking about what might have been.”There could be worse to come. England know that defeat to a dangerous Afghanistan side would heap fresh litres of humiliation on to their embarrassment.As Farbrace put it: “If losing the game to Bangladesh was terrible we couldn’t possibly imagine what it will be like if this game goes against us. That would be horrendous.”Horrendous might be an apt summation of England’s brief appearance at this tournament.