Any major sporting event is the perfect excuse for any writer to self-indulge and offer up their editor the perfect excuse for not coming up with two separate ideas for a couple of articles; the two parter. Here at the Comment Bureau we are no different and over the next two articles I’ll be looking at the key performers for England, the men on whom the Ashes will be secured or lost. In Part 1, I’ll be looking at the batsmen.
Without a single batsman in the top twenty of the ICC rankings you would have thought the Aussies had little to fear from the England top six. However, no matter how weak one’s perception of the opposition batting unit is, there is always a lynchpin whom you feel is both the physical and mental key to dominating your opponent. Get under their skin, get them out cheaply and the rest will suffer for it, far more so than the dismissal of any other team mate. Think Lara, Tendulkar, Ponting; the players with the ability to set the tone not only of their own innings, but of the side’s.
Trying to find this individual in an England batting lineup which is as inconsistent as it is talented is a more difficult proposition. All of the top six have the potential to score hundreds but Prior often fails to push on towards three figures (3 centuries to 15 fifties), Cooke currently finds himself in the worst form of his career and Collingwood and Bell have both repeatedly been in the last chance saloon. Indeed were it not for Collingwood’s mental determination to pull an innings out the bag he may well have joined Bell as something of an Hokey-Cokey cricketer; as much out of the team as he is in it.
Despite Trott having the top ranking, in truth there are only two players in the current lineup with any real claim to this position; captain and predecessor. Ashes winner Michael Vaughan believes that it is the level headed Strauss (England’s outstanding performer for the last two calender years) who will fulfill the role in this series. Vaughan said earlier this week that if Strauss could average around fifty he will lead his side on the first victorious tour of Australia in twenty years, while if he fell closer to the 25 mark Ponting would reclaim the urn.
Despite his undoubted ability to lead from the front, and the validity of Vaughan’s claims, I would suggest that he is ill suited for the role. Strauss is a captain and batsman who commands a huge amount of respect from fellow and opposition players, but there is only one man in the England team that the Aussies truly fear. Think of the man who repeatedly sent Warne into the stands in 2005, the man who had the audacity the switch hit Murali and the man who can’t stay off the back pages even when he can’t buy a run.
The last two years have been a tough time for Kevin Pietersen. After coming back injured from the IPL he was sidelined for the majority of the last Ashes campaign before enjoying a stunning ICC World T20 and being rightly crowned the Player of the Tournament. Despite those performances in the Caribbean the last six months have seen him dropped from the ODI side, have a public fallout with his county club and struggle against weaker bowling units in Bangladesh and Pakistan.
With no Test century since March this year Pietersen’s mental state has repeatedly been called into question.As with Ian Bell there has never been any doubt of the man’s ability, but both have mental weaknesses that have consistently been their undoing. For Bell it has been a perceived lack of maturity and grit in the middle, but for Pietersen it has been a far less forgivable arrogance. Some of his dismissals, often at key times when he could have set a platform for his team have had the air of man who was more concerned with imposing himself at all costs than one who would do anything to cement his team in a strong position. Imagine what a cricketer we would have if one could combine Pietersen’s flair and talent with Collingwood’s mental strength.
Fortunately for England, Pietersen’s preparation for the 2009/10 Ashes could not have been more meticulous. Although a return to South Africa yielded little in terms of runs, it showed a determination to get himself ready mentally that has been lacking in recent times. His half century in the opening tour warm up game provided further indication that although he is still far from his best, the trend is at least an upwards one. Make no mistake, this focus has not gone un-noticed in Australia, with former Somerset captain Peter Roebuck writing in the Sydney Morning Herald that his preparation will ensure that KP finds his form on this tour. In an online poll 71% of Australians agreed.
If he can get back to something approaching his best then there is no doubt that England’s chances greatly improve, however there is something to what both Roebuck and Vaughan say. In a line up packed with inconsistency, Strauss and Pietersen are the two stand out men with the capability of making high contributions, regularly and at the key moments in the series. As a result of this I would have to disagree with Vaughan. It is not about whether Strauss averages fifty that will determine whether England will be victorious. To my mind, if Strauss and Pietersen average between 90 and 100 between them something else will have to go spectacularly wrong for the Ashes not to be in English hands after the five Tests. If you are desperate for the key metaphor to be extended just think of this as being a multi-lock door, because I believe that without both hitting some form England will fall short.
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