Some tinkering around the edges of county cricket plus the introduction of an academy and the addition of some hard heads in Duncan Fletcher and Rod Marsh has seen a concerted attempt to get the vehicle roadworthy once again. Seven straight Test wins suggests that they have even added some off-road tyres, given it a grease and oil change and painted on a couple of racing stripes for good measure.
Cycles can take a long time to come around if you sit back and wait and I got the impression that there was more than a touch of arrogance in the thinking that let English cricket languish for so long. As much good as he has done at the academy, I think Rod Marsh’s presence on the England selection panel has been as important a contribution and has hurried the generational change that has taken place in the last few years.
No doubt, Duncan Fletcher has enjoyed working with a young group that appears to be hungrier than some of their predecessors and he will head off on the tour to South Africa later this year with the best-balanced side England has boasted for nearly two decades. Players like Strauss, Key, Flintoff and Harmison should become the engine room of England’s climb back toward the top over the next few years. The series with South Africa will be another important step on the often-rocky road toward what has become, for English cricket, the equivalent of the Holy Grail—an Ashes series win.
In the heady aftermath of their latest thrashing of the West Indies, even the most pessimistic of England supporters has been suggesting that the Australians might just be shaking in their boots as they prepare for an Ashes series next northern summer. Personally, I doubt the Australians have even given it much thought as yet, other than to be pleased that they might get a contest for a change in the battle for the oldest of cricket’s trophies.
Not since they lost the Ashes to Allan Border’s team in 1989 has England been given even an outside chance of upsetting the Australian juggernaut as it has rolled mercilessly on its crusade to obliterate the memories of its own dark years of the 1980s. Only time will tell whether this English side has the talent, and the will, to man the barricades against the antipodeans.
It is one thing to run over the top of an undermanned and dispirited team but it will be a much sterner test against Ricky Ponting’s match-hardened band of merry men. It may be one Ashes series too soon for Michael Vaughan and his emerging team but at least the English wagon is pointed in the right direction for a change.
As India showed last southern summer, the Australians are no longer invincible but it will need the England players to withstand much more than the marshmallows that the West Indies offered up recently. One or two good balls an over is nowhere near as demanding as good spell after good spell from the Aussie bowlers is going to be. And a batting line-up that fights out the hard times will be a much sterner test for England’s emerging pace attack.
India had the benefit of catching Australia without the two lynchpins of their attack, Glenn McGrath and Shane Warne. Both are back now and will be keen to have one last hurrah in an Ashes series in England. Warne will still be a force to be reckoned with even if a little short of his best. Only time will tell whether McGrath can be the force he has been for so long.
It will be interesting to watch at the coming Champions Trophy if England and Australia meet up. The Australian squad will have heard the positive talk emanating from many quarters in and around the England team and might just want to make a statement of their own to leave them to cogitate upon for the next few months. One-day internationals are not the same as Test cricket but that won’t worry the Australians. They won’t want to be giving up the bragging rights to England in the shadow of the bigger clash next year.
The good news about the success of teams like England and India in recent times is that we might be seeing some competitiveness coming back into the Test cricket arena following one of the most lopsided periods of Test cricket for the best part of a decade. The Australians have been the equivalent of a heavyweight fighting in the middleweight division for some time and it hasn’t been good for cricket.
At a time when the one-day game lords it over the Test match as the breadwinner of international cricket in most parts of the world, it might well be time for the codger of the game to fight back. India and Australia will be playing Test matches only when Australia visits in October, so maybe the empire is striking back.
Test cricket might be seen in some quarters as an anachronism in this age of instant gratification but for the long-term health of the game it needs to be strong. It is the parent that spawned the 50-over game and now the grandchild—twenty/20—is clamouring for its time in the sun. All these versions have their part to play in the future of the game for different reasons but I think the game will ignore the requirement for Test cricket to be strong at its peril.
