Date-stamped : 23 Mar94 - 18:23 With a fine captain and decent squad, what could go wrong? "Every- thing," writes Matthew Engel on a dispirited England. It is of course possible that England will save the Test match today. There is a tropical capriciousness about the Georgetown climate and it might bucket down all day. It is possible that Alec Stewart and Graham Thorpe will bat their way into history like Willie Watson and Trevor Bailey, who saved the Test at Lord's in 1953, the Dunkirk of English cricket. Pos- sible but not probable. And if England should save this Test, then there is the next one. And the one after that. And another a dozen more, against various opponents, in the next 11 months. England have been losing cricket matches for years, serially, ha- bitually. There have been periods of remission, such as the tri- umphs in the Ashes series of the early and mid-eighties and the three marvellous Test match wins over the West Indies in the ear- ly nineties when Graham Gooch was captain. These successes have always been followed rapidly by some previ- ously undreamed-of failure, such as the terrible defeat, a year ago this week, against Sri Lanka. In the past, however, there has usually been a little something that might explain it all away. Once or twice in the early eighties there was the suspicion that one or two players might have been too stoned or hung over to care. Very often it appeared that, like the England football team, the cricket team performed nothing like as well as the sum of its parts. When a tour is go- ing badly, demoralisation can be total. Often the captaincy was inadequate, and sometimes incompetent. Usually it was possible to argue that the selectors had got it all wrong, anyway. In Guyana this week it is possible to detect a change of tone into something unprecedented: a sense of despair. No one suggests that this young, indeed rather colourless, England team has spent too much time roistering to perform properly. There is universal admiration for the captain, Mike Atherton. Except at the margin, there has not even been much argument about selection: no one be- lieves any worldbeaters were erroneously left behind. The press party that follows England on these tours has now grown to extraordinary size. Ten years ago, there were sometimes only eight or 10 writers following the team to the more obscure corners, especially in the subcontinent. Here there are up to 80, including all the TV people, many of them precisely those players, now retired and paid to pontificate, who took part in past English disasters. None of them can offer a coherent expla- nation for what is going wrong. On Sunday, while the West Indies batsmen were taking their score past 550 on what was quite obviously a difficult wicket, a feel- ing of utter hopelessness took hold. The best bowlers England could get on the field were doing the best they possibly cou ld, bucketing sweat in the clammy Georgetown air, against a West In- dies team that seems far weaker than its immediate predecessors. But England were nowhere near good enough, nor ever likely to be good enough. Today England are long odds-on to go down to their 11th defeat in 13 Test matches. Everyone knows that something is wrong. No one knows quite what, though there are four groups of explanations. The first is the very particular, relating to the England team. Even if something miraculous occurs in the remaining weeks of this tour, there are going to be changes. Earlier this month the chairmen of the first-class counties, the legislators of English cricket, kicked hard and declined to elect the perceived Estab- lishment choice Mike (MJK) Smith (Oxford University) to succeed the much-reviled Ted Dexter as chairman of selectors, picking in- stead Ray Illingworth (Wesley Street School, Farsley and Univ of Hard Knocks). Officially, the distinction between amateurs and professionals in cricket was abolished in 1963. But this is Eng- land. It was, in part, revenge for events four years ago when Dexter was, as the chairmen saw it, foisted on them. But whereas Smith (currently the overall tour manager in West Indies, though he has little to do with selection) was seen as bland, Illingworth comes across as a forceful ideas man. He has already made it clear that he intends to chair selection meetings roughly as Margaret Thatcher chaired cabinet meetings. Effectively, he intends to manage the team, which is supposedly the job of Keith Fletcher. Though Fletcher has a contract until 1997, it is now assumed that from this summer his authority will be heavily curtailed. Every- one likes Fletch, an unpretentious man with a reputation for a rat-catcher's sort of guile, which is one reason why he has avoided the tabloid-press slagging that Dexter suffered last sum- mer. However, the record since he took over (played 11 before the current Test, won 1, drawn 1, lost 9) is truly awful. He is starting to look like cricket's Graham Taylor, an excellent club man without the vision to succeed on the world stage. But Illing- worth has failed before as a manager. He became so exasperated trying to run Yorkshire from the pavilion that he came back as a 50-year-old to lead the team himself, an option unlikely to be open to a 61-year-old in charge of a Test side. And his initial responses do not suggest that he has any blinding flashes of inspiration. He believes in cricket practice rather than athletic fitness for its own sake, a reversion already oc- curring since Gooch's resignation. And he wants to encourage the development of all-rounders and would like Graeme Hick to bowl more. Well, wowee. The second group of explanations concern the structure of the En- glish game. For years most of the ex-players now in power in cricket believed the national team would benefit if County Cham- pionship matches were played over four days (ie close to Test match length) rather than three. Current players were in favour too. The chairmen resisted the move on commercial grounds before succumbing in 1992. If this is the answer to everything, its ef- fects are not yet obvious. The new wisdom is that the County Championship needs to be split into two divisions so that the standard at the top level im- proves. The Championship has 18 teams, almost as many as the equivalent competitions in Australia, West Indies and South Afri- ca put together. Illingworth himself has expressed enthusiasm for this idea. On 1993 form, this would mean Yorkshire, Lancashire and Essex - the most successful county of the past 15 years - all going into the Second Division (though they would probably call the Leagues the Premiership and the First Division to make everyone feel better). If promotion and relegation were involved, it would make some end-of-season county matches more competitive. It would also des- troy the base of support that sustains the professional game over huge swaths of the country, with possibly fatal consequences. One of the charms of cricket is that everyone has their own ab- surd theories. Personally, I go along with the idea that one-day cricket is mostly to blame. In other countries, the international fixture list is heavily-laden with these hit-and-giggle games (the great Australian bowler Bill O'Reilly's phrase) but domestic cricket is comparatively free of them. In England the reverse applies, forcing young players who are still developing their batting and bowling techniques to switch constantly between utterly different modes of play. In this year's Wisden the former Australian captain Ian Chappell considers this idea and dismisses it as "codswallop". "If young players are taught properly," he says, "the smarter ones learn to adapt their thinking." And so the arguments go on: about what constitutes teaching prop- erly, about who should coach the coaches, whether pitches should be left uncovered against the rain, whether heavy bats should be banned or the seam of the ball be altered. Cricket matches and tours go on a long time, and it passes the time. The third lot of explanations cuts deeper. Micky Stewart, the former England manager, is now trying to find ways of improving standards outside the professional game. In places like Aus- tralia, only people with a flair for cricket tend to play as adults. In England an awful lot of often ageing incompetents en- joy playing for fun. Stewart sees this as both a strength and a weakness. He wants to see a London League, for instance, that would be as hard-nosed as Australian grade cricket. The major leagues that do exist are already at the mercy of itinerant Aus- sies, not necessarily anywhere near professional standards, who come over and outclass the locals. In Somerset they have now brought in laws to restrict foreign players. There are probably also thousands of potential worldbeaters in England who never get near the game. Earlier this month, the Guardian focused on the collapse of team games in state schools. This has hit cricket harder than anything else. In its traditional form, it is a notoriously difficult sport for kids. It requires good facilities, competent organisation and ex- pensive equipment just to get started. Then at any given time, only four children, including the wicket-keeper, will be central- ly involved, with nine others standing round the field and nine more probably smoking behind the pav. Summer terms are getting shorter (this particular problem is in danger of killing the game at the provincial universities). It usually rains. And that damn ball hurts like hell. A lot of work has gone in to developing more exuberant and child-friendly versions of cricket. But it is harder now even to play in the streets, what with the endless traffic and parental terror of funny men with sweets. It is much less worrying when the kids are inside watching Sky or playing computer games. In this situation one is inclined to rush headlong for the fourth set of answers, which have nothing to do with cricket and tie in with our sense of national inferiority at every level. The educa- tional system seems suspicious of, and biased against, individual excellence. Anyone who achieves anything merely sets himself up to be abused or exposed by our malevolent newspapers. In the un- likely event of a genius appearing, in cricket or any other field of endeavour, the confederacy of dunces is waiting to pounce on him. This line of thinking is too deep for this piece and had better wait, in case England lose the series 5-0. Anyway, there is no sign of a genius coming to the rescue of English cricket. Graeme Hick, the Zimbabwean who looked for years like a modern version of Don Bradman, has been reduced to something close to hopeless- ness ever since he crawled under the wire of the qualification rules and started playing for England. Andrew Caddick, the New Zealand-born fast bowler, has looked even worse. Last year, Michael Slater, the young Australian batsman, made a brilliant century at Lord's and kissed the Australian badge on his helmet. Everyone in this England team would love to play an innings like that, but the gesture would seem absurd both within the context of the team and the country. One suspects they are not so much patriots, as for me. If England do save the game to- day, most of them would probably be more inclined to kiss the sponsors' logo than anything else. English cricket has never been in an endless tunnel. It travels along something akin to the Circle Line, occasionally breaking out of the dark into a shaft of sunlight. Maybe one of the sunny periods will come today, or next week in Trinidad, or next summer against New Zealand or South Africa, or next winter in Australia. Maybe. But how do we stop going round in circles and head for open country? The answer seems further away than ever. (Thanks :: The Guardian) Contributed by Vicky (VIGNESWA@*umass.edu)