England coach Chris Silverwood’s excuses for shoddy show against New Zealand are lame
England’s Dom Sibley is caught by New Zealand’s Daryl Mitchell during the second Test at Edgbaston in Birmingham recently. Pic/Getty Images
First, there was American guitar legend Jimi Hendrix and his band The Experience. Now we have England cricket coach and selector Chris Silverwood and his inexperienced group.
Silverwood’s rationale for England’s abysmal batting displays against New Zealand was the inexperience of the players involved. This assessment, especially considering Silverwood chose those batsmen, doesn’t bear much scrutiny.
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A glance at the opposition line-up immediately peels back the layers of credibility surrounding Silverwood’s excuse. New Zealand opener Devon Conway made a double century on debut at Lord’s—it didn’t take him long to acclimatise.
Conway is one of seven players to make a double century on Test debut and he’s not even the first Kiwi, as Matthew Sinclair achieved the feat against the West Indies in 1999.
Chris Silverwood
Will Young, New Zealand’s No. 3 at Edgbaston, made an accomplished 82 in only his third Test innings, when he was drafted in to replace injured skipper Kane Williamson.
Williamson is another century-maker on debut; he did it against India in 2010 and currently has 24 Test hundreds overall.
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No guarantees
Making a century on debut doesn’t necessarily lead to a long and successful career. In 1973, New Zealand’s Rodney Redmond made 107 and 56 on debut against Pakistan but inexplicably was never chosen again.
Nevertheless, there have been some outstanding debuts that have led to glittering careers. Australia’s Doug Walters and India’s Mohammed Azharuddin are two prime examples. Walters made 155 on debut at the Gabba against England and followed it with another century in the next Test at the Melbourne Cricket Ground. He scored 15 Test centuries in all, three of them coming in a session.
Azharuddin, in the parlance of Walters’s favourite card-playing pastime went, see you and raise you one. Azhar scored centuries in his first three Tests and then amassed a further 19.
Coming back to Silverwood’s claim. If you leave aside Joe Root, the one top-class Test batsman in England’s line-up, how inexperienced are the rest?
Rory Burns has three Test centuries in 46 innings, including one in the first Test against New Zealand. Fellow opener Dom Sibley has two Test centuries in 35 innings. Both Ollie Pope and Zak Crawley have scored a Test century in their short careers, with the latter’s being a double.
That leaves only Dan Lawrence among the top-order without a Test century. He was denied the chance of one in the first innings at Edgbaston when the lower order left him stranded on 81 not out.
Generally, the completion of a first Test century is not only a relief but also provides a batsman with the belief he’s good enough to compete at the highest level. Not always but often this then leads to a successful career.
Rather than resorting to the lame excuse of inexperience, Silverwood ought to look at the system that produces these batsmen and some of the ludicrous theories that are evolving from that environment.
Of the four leading Test nations—India, New Zealand, England and Australia—the county competition is the one that suffers most from the escalation of short-form cricket and the convoluted scheduling that produces. This is often cited as the reason for some over-ambitious strokeplay from young English batsmen. I’d counter by saying if you’ve scored a Test century then you should have a rough idea how to construct an innings.
Some of the English batting techniques defy logic; their performance in India recently is the worst I’ve seen against spin bowling. The tendency for taking off-stump guard as standard procedure is a recipe for failure as it’s designed to avoid dismissal rather than what batting should be about-finding a method to score runs.
Porous defence
Short-form cricket may be to blame for some of the England batsmen’s lack of discipline at Test level, but so to is a porous defence which often leads to panic-stricken shot selection.
In 1967, Hendrix released an album titled! Are You Experienced. The answer for a batsman who has scored a Test century—reasonably.
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