Making_Splinters wrote:Again a rather irrational responce, made all the stranger because it contradicts itself. How should England select these 11 players? What are they going to be looking for? What performances are they going to use as indicators? That's a plan. To say, we're going to pick aggressive batsmen, we're going to look at players scoring quickly in limited overs cricket, that is planning. England need to go one step further and say we're going to build up a pool of players who have international experiance. Essentially anything other than selecting players at random is planning, which makes your stand point all the more bizarre as you consistantly have said that England need to change their approach on these forums.
I was referring to planning in a wider gambit, the extent at which every decision is micro managed to the Nth degree and is structured, not to a very narrow and strict interpretation that all decisions made that have consequence can be constructed as forming part of a plan. After all, it maybe a paradox and self-contradictory, but planning not to have a plan is by its very nature a plan, the fact it is a contradiction does not make that untrue, and it can be made either consciously or by chance. Deciding to select players out of a hat is also a plan, so if your point is that every decision is a form of planning, then surely pointing out the requirement that we need to plan for future has no relevance? By the very nature, all decisions will be created from a plan of sorts using such a narrow definition?
What is being ignored here is that England had a plan after 2011. They targeted the 2013 Champions Trophy and failed to win it at home, sticking to their bowl tight, chase low strategy.... yet that plan 2 years later seems so old fashioned its unrecognisable, in two years the game has changed beyond recognition to the point that now even considering bowling teams to below 300 on a regular enough basis for it to be worthwhile was foolhardy, 2 years it was 250-275!! But England never changed the strategy at the other end, they stuck rigidly to a strategy that left them outgunned. Was it the lack of a plan, or the lack of a GOOD plan that was our problem?
The end game has always been winning the world cup or any given series or match preceding this, I don't think its anything new to suggest we plan to win games, we are always working towards winning regardless of how poorly we do it. For a 4 year period in between world cups, what other targets do you set? At what point do you pull away or adapt the strategy for the end game if it doesn't work? What happens when your target to win a series interferes with your target to win a tournament in the next 4 years?
Let me explain this with an example. Say we decide to breed a team for 2019 with the relevant experience levels you are calling for. We lose 4 series in a row while guys get experience and it isn't working, what do you do, drop the team or show faith? What happens if a similar pattern occurs right up to 2018-19? At what point do you accept that experience is not quality, that the players have been given enough time but not work, that quality doesn't need experience, and how much do you pay homage towards form? At what point is your team set even if its not good enough?
Experience cores are not the answer if you building you house on the sand!!! Morgan has bags of experience but couldn't hit the ball off square this tournament, and experience is no substitute for capability. You cant plan for the unforeseen, for the fact that what you tries fails, and if you insist that time is a factor, then whos to say you don't dogmatically waste time on players that don't deserve it.
Setting some form of cricketing constitution for the next world cup is too rigid. I know English cricket loves a grand initiative or loves a long report or investigation into simple matters, but one is not needed here. Its time to do away with all these overblown nonsense and stick to something more organic and reactive. Cricket in itself has change in the last 4 years, guys with Buttler and Maxwell's SR didn't exist 4 years ago, tactics have changed and will change again, rules have even changed.
Pick teams based on the opposition you are facing. Don't send a team with an average par score of 250 against a team who average 320, you wont win, they have more firepower. Pick players who can win those matches, pick them on form and capability in comparison to those they are facing, be reactive to other players outside the squad and judge on a case by case basis when a player needs the drop.
Most importantly, the tactic should be to play naturally, to pick players with a natural inclination to play ODI cricket and let them play naturally....no more data, no more batting plans, no more coaches, diet manuals....
