can be said of Colin Bateman, a real dyed-in-the-wool reporter, with the Daily Express. That pair are no fuss but extremely good journalists. David Hopps, of the Guardian, is plenty of fuss but a real hoot, nonetheless. Then there are the former-cricketers-turned-journalists who get accepted after a qualification period of scorn. They don’t get an easy ride to start with; nor should they. People like Steve James, Derek Pringle, Michael Atherton and Angus Fraser have followed another former England international, the Guardian correspondent Mike Selvey.
There is a fantastic cross-section of folk peering at matches from over their laptop screens. Between them they can write in any style you like. They are passionate about English cricket and during the course of their jobs they sometimes have to give it a bit of rattle, which more often than not actually amounts to little more than telling it exactly as it is. When I was coach I would not necessarily see it that way, but now I am on the other side it is blindingly obvious. As a player and a coach I always wanted to believe journalists had the game at heart, but sometimes I didn’t understand why they always had to be so critical. I confess that I may have been too sensitive because, in actual fact, they aren’t very often. They are only critical by and large when you deserve it. If you are not playing well you are going to get a lot of it. That goes with the territory.
In my short column for the Daily Mail, I try to be as honest as possible on the pressing issues and always try to have a bit of fun as well. Paul Newman, the Mail’s cricket correspondent, rounds up the week and I have my say on what made me smile and what made me frown over the previous seven days. Paul is another with a great enthusiasm for cricket – a lifelong friendship with Nasser Hussain failing to drum it out of him, surprisingly – and latterly for greyhound racing.
One night in South Africa, I met up with Paul and Wisden editor Scyld Berry for a curry. I was early, and so, as it happened, was Paul, phone in hand and looking agitated. He was waiting for his mother to ring with news of his dog Droopys Kelda’s race at Romford. ‘It’s bang on,’ he said, excitedly. ‘Couldn’t be better prepared. She’ll absolutely fly in tonight.’ Right on cue the phone rang. ‘How’s it gone, Mum?’ Last.
It reminded me of another of my pals back home, Irish Tony, who had a dog which was running at a flapping track at Bolton. For those not au fait with flapping tracks, they are not registered venues and therefore the owners of the mutts bet against each other. Well, Tony, just like Paul, was feeling very good about his chances one evening and so had a bob or two more than usual on it and went and stood on the first bend to offer encouragement. The hare started running, the traps went up and the dogs burst forth. ‘Come on, come on!’ yells Irish Tony. Well, the silly four-legged beggar only ran straight to his master and licked him from shin to chin.
There are some pretty astute thinkers among our band, although if you had seen Berry running the wrong way up an escalator in Sandton shopping mall in a panic, attempting to get to the curry house on this particular night, you might contest that. They have seen some cricket over the years, understand the environment in which international teams operate, and are known to the England set-up in a professional capacity. They are pretty well qualified to make judgements on issues arising within our sport – they might not always be correct, but they have earned the right to observe and criticise.
All this brings me on to Piers Morgan. For those of you not familiar, isn’t he the chap off Come Dancing? Now I am not sure what qualifications he has to assess the goings-on of the England cricket team, so I was astounded when he waded in over the treatment of his ‘good friend’ Kevin Pietersen in losing the captaincy. In Piers’s Mail on Sunday column, poor old Peter Moores – still uncertain what he did wrong in the whole fiasco, by the way – got both barrels, as did Andrew Strauss. He reasoned that the ‘buffoons at Lord’s’ wanted a steady hand in charge and not a rough, tough customer in the mould of Ricky Ponting or Graeme Smith.
Now, leaving KP out of this, I can give you a pretty decent character assessment of Andrew Strauss. Piers revealed that he had once had a round of golf with Strauss and found him ‘funny and charming’ and could imagine him ‘in a plummy voice’ remarking: ‘I say, old chap, hope we have a fine game of cricket today.’ Well, I was on hand, Piers, pal, to witness Strauss’s twin hundreds in Chennai, innings which came in dramatic, morbid and emotional circumstances, so soon after the Mumbai attacks. Situations don’t come much tougher than that, I can assure you. Captaining in an Ashes series brings its own pressure, but you would never have guessed it from the way Strauss batted in 2009. He has got real nerve but just happens to be eloquent too. That was not a crime last time I checked.
I have only been around professional cricket for forty-odd years, so what would I know? A little bit, I would hope. Now I am not saying you cannot have an opinion from outside, but when a TV personality with absolutely no knowledge of the work of the individual or coach in the team environment wades in with hearsay as evidence it gets my goat. Peter Moores was lambasted by a bloke famous in his own lunchtime. He did not know Moores from Adam, nor had he first-hand knowledge of his work as a coach. All this was disgraceful in my estimation. In his piece, he asked: ‘Would you not rather have a Pietersen saying: “I am going to smash you lot up, Ricky lad, just like in 2005”?’ For what it’s worth, no. My feeling is that Pietersen is far better placed to do just that as the gunslinger, not the sheriff.
I love KP, let me make that clear. You will not find anyone who practises harder or is more dedicated to playing for England. And if there was an award for politeness in international cricket, he would monopolise it. However, he was never captaincy material for me. The star player in a team never is, and you cannot argue against Pietersen being England’s star player. I have a military friend, Richard Hakes, who insists that the great, the maverick, the ego is never the leader because when the shit hits the fan they cannot empathise with others of lesser ability. It is always everyone else’s fault. Being the star brings its own expectations, and there is no need to be dragged down by peripheral agendas, or the political side of the day-to-day job, whether it be running a platoon or a team.
Quite simply, some players don’t need the politics of captaincy, they just need to get on and play. I am not sure Kevin was suited to hot-footing from nets to press conferences, to meetings with umpires, or talks with the ECB and the ICC. He probably didn’t see it that way when he lost the position in January 2009, he may not see it that way for the rest of his days, but some things are for the best. If you look at this historically, the elite players do not make good captains. Ian Botham captained England twelve times in Test cricket and didn’t win a match. There were always questions about Brian Lara when he was in charge of West Indies, while Sachin Tendulkar also had a go at it for India, without much success. They just don’t fit the role.
The best cricketer in the team often wants to take charge, and it’s a natural career goal, but it is not necessarily natural from a cricket perspective. Part of captaincy is to understand the strengths, weaknesses and limitations of your team. One of the best captains England ever had, some will argue the very best, is Mike Brearley, and he still receives unbelievable respect for what he did. He would never in a million years say he was the best player in England. He wasn’t, but he was the most astute.
Andrew Strauss has shown that his performances are not affected by the responsibility, in fact his return with the bat actually improves with it. He should have been appointed long before January 2009, in my opinion. For example, when the captaincy for the 2006–7 Ashes became a big issue owing to Michael Vaughan’s injury absence, I thought they should have just let Andrew Flintoff be Freddie. Let him be the people’s man. It was a dangerous move to burden him with the leadership, because he had enough on his plate already with bat and ball. People inevitably blame captains when things go wrong and I worried that a poor series would undermine Freddie as the darling of the crowd.
I also have to declare a liking for Jeremy Clarkson while I am on the warpath, particularly for giving that bloke Piers a slap. Sadly, it was not a seeing-to, but I am sure others will willingly follow his lead when the opportunity presents itself. Clarkson is very comfortable in his
