Strauss and England's Selection and Development Policies

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Strauss and England's Selection and Development Policies

Postby sussexpob » Thu Jul 21, 2016 12:31 pm

As Pakistan romped to victory at Lords this week, one could not fail to notice an emerging panic running through the various fan and media outputs related to English cricket. After some time of recent improvements built largely on bowling performance and sporadic batting contributions, the fragile confidence of England’s fan base has clearly been shaken by the continuation of problems largely buried by improving results. There is nothing like an unexpected loss to throw the cat among the pigeons.

While panic might be too strong a word, there is certainly a concern about England’s lack of batting stability slowly shifting from a short term problem, breezing past the midterm, and now into the longer term. If we were to rate England’s runs in financial terms, then one could be forgiven for proclaiming the arrival of a recession. The England batting has been based on some key members retaining form, but at the moment a short term lapse in form from Joe Root and Jonny Bairstow could bring about a cricketing “black Tuesday” for England.

The key to England’s woes has been the unsuccessful attempts to integrate new batting blood into the system. England just haven’t been able to find players to fill the holes, and very few players have been successful. This has led to serious critique of selection policies, critique that the coach does not spend enough time assessing new blood, and critique as to the quality of selectors in place. The seemingly chosen path from Andrew Strauss is to sack the current selection committee, and to install himself coach/captain and “superscout” Andy Flower into a new committee to oversee selection.

Assuming this is true, this would be an incredibly radical development in English cricket’s long term strategic vision. And while Strauss has been applauded for these suggestions, and the press have talked up his decisive and strong attitude in forcing change, I am very dubious myself that this is anything but the final cornerstone in the original strategic vision of the Downton/Flower era.

Andrew Strauss is responsible for essentially putting in place the correct models to identify talent for the national team, and responsible for their continued development. In this capacity, at current he has Whitaker/Fraser and Newell watching players in county cricket to identify where the talent is, and Andy Flower at Loughborough working with those developing teams to improve them as players. The England coach and captain retain selection powers but see very little cricket in the counties, and their only real judgements can lie with those players provided to them through the various channels that filter in from selectors or Loughborough who they have chance to work with. Strauss’ job role leaves no time to leave “the office”. This does leave a rather important question; if the only people watching county cricket are being sacked, then who is actually watching county cricket?

I have often made my feeling well known on how I see the selection process. Stats can tell you a lot about a player, after all, a player with a perfect technique who is not scoring runs must have other problems, and a player with dubious technique but scoring bucket loads has other invisible qualities that are positive. Such a suggestion to rid the selection panel would potentially serve my overall opinion that selection is an overtly complex process well. Throw in the middle of table a stats book, add some context to the figures, and that’s all you need. Job done! Of course, I do not from a literal sense advocate selection should be that simplistic. Players can have workable weaknesses, be subject to bad luck or bad conditions, or thrive in different situations; it is therefore important that there are neutral observers looking at players constantly to see the more innate qualities a player may have that isn’t translated in stats.

This is where the longer term strategy blurs. If no one is making any base level assessments of players, then what is the intended selection structure going to base its assessments on? Is my previous humorous suggestion of the stats book in the middle of the table to become a reality?

Much can be gleaned from the people involved and their previous agenda’s. On announcement of Strauss’ appointment, it was highlighted that one of his main roles to consider was the “Player Pathway”. Currently, the official policy for player pathway available from the ECB was written by Downton with large input from Andy Flower and his ideas. And the suggestion that Flower would become the “superscout” for England seems only to validate the previous drawn up policy. Rather than enact his own distinct change, it would appear that Strauss is in fact going back to the ideas of the management structure that overseen him as England captain. This is not new at all, and it is not really his idea.

Taking one step back, when we discuss player pathway, we are focused on the development structures that players go through on their journey to the national team. A simplistic “player pathway” could be for a footballer to play Sunday league football, get signed to a professional team, rise through the reserve team (for adults) or development junior teams (for Under 21’s to schoolkids), and eventually find themselves in the first team where they can stand out. Strauss’ job is to map that out for cricket, and to map out those structures in place that centrally assist with these developments.

Downton’s pathway currently in place is called “Under 8 to England Great. Become the next England superstar”. Written for junior cricketers, it sets out to “help you (the young reader) to realise your dream of playing for the England mens team… and set out(what) you need to do to realise this”. There are four main stages of development suggested to identify young cricketers.

The first is the County Talent Programme. This is focused towards getting players from the age of 8 upwards to standout at school and junior level cricket. The plan is to then divide the best players in each geographical area into district or regional teams, with the best then filtered into a county team where their skills are showcased against other counties. Those that standout are then entered to the Emerging Talent Program past the age of 13 where they are again assessed and filtered at Under 16 level to the the third level, the England Development Programme (EDP) if they pass a “talent test” designed to assess all areas of talent and fitness.

The EDP only includes 10 scouted players per year according to this plan. The idea is that the “best v best” mentality accelerates the development of players in their late teens. Anyone who does not pass the 12 month assessment is released from the programme. Those that pass this stage are then passed to Loughborough and Flower’s team as members of the England Performance Programme, which is the last stage before the England Lions. At Loughborough it is Andy Flower and his staff who directly work with the team. There is very little mention about match performances in these documents. In fact, the whole process seems to be based on producing laboratory rats who excel in skill based assessments around coaches. There are some rather unsavoury requirements in the later development squads too; a requirement to excel academically, a requirement to be a certain level of speed or power, or have dedicated parents.

A few things are clear with this “player pathway”; mainly, that there is very little room for a certain type of people. England’s most capped outfield football player is a man famous for his lack of intelligence, and their most successful goal scorer apparently left school without any GCSE’s. Would these players have come through the academic requirements to have an education, even though they would be better than their peers? Would a chubby little under 16 year old version of Inzamam-Ul-Haq be cast off even though he had the touch and power game that all but a handful of his contemporaries have managed to match? What would become of the Jamie Vardy’s style players who suddenly come from nowhere in their late 20’s? The model assumes all people are born the same, develop at the same rates, and that all idiosyncrasies in personality and sporting technique are crushed out of people or seen as a negative.

You might think what does this have with England’s current selection policy, but I believe the point is obvious. The previous Flower regime was very keen to promote the idea of young cricketers with the right attitude and technique being molly coddled by the setup and given preferential treatment based on the fact that this stages of development both accelerate their skills, and enhance them in comparison to others that had not gone through the same development. In short, anyone who wasn’t good enough to pass the test at 13 is not worthy to escalate to the national team at 23.

To extend the point, when we also talk of the selectors now not being able to “see” players or know anything about them, it has little relevance. The truth is, the main drivers of selections in this suggested new system included only those with direct relevance to the team management and its official development sides. And with the official development policy in place having little regard to creating international cricketers in an organic way driven by county performance, one can only conclude that the selectors will “see” and “know” everything about every player they will pick…. Because those that are picked will solely be players who have gone through the subsequent performance testing at Loughborough. This is the only conclusion that I can draw, simply because the suggested setup has no other justification on rating players. The only point of contact between the national team and its selection poll is through Loughborough, should Strauss sack all of the selectors and take over their role with captain/coach.

This is worrying for the aforementioned reasons of sectioning away anyone who had previously not satisfied the criteria to be set apart at a younger age. It also is worrying as to what this does for the county game, as performances have the potential to be less relevant, and this could have knock on effects on motivation of those not picked as the “chosen ones”. Its worth noting that Vince was heavily favoured under the performance measures in place. He and Ball had disastrous tours with the Lions team last year, but that was ignored based on their attitude and apparent ability in “testing” environments. Vince has been battered this summer, and Ball returned 1/88 on test debut in a low scoring game.

There are obvious problems with making sweeping statements about players who have played little international cricket as they may come good eventually, but this method previously under Flower also had limited successes, and the knock on effect has been felt for a long time. Flower’s “babes” replacing his previous team that was almost wholly escalated to international cricket by previous coaches, have arguably failed. Bairstow and Root, at current England’s best batting operators, both were left after Flower’s era considered to be damaged goods and having large technical issues…. Since he left, both have looked different players.

Flower had his strengths. He was able to make players better for a temporary period, but the harshness of his regime and the little room for player expression and individualism, combined with his inability to spot new talent, meant he had a shelf life, and that already ended. I personally find it worrying that most England fan’s cannot separate the responsibility and failures that his system brought about in the middle to longer term, and that these performance models are now being enshrined into the system for the future, even though they are dubious. I for one cannot support any system that does not have selector representation for the 100’s of players in county cricket that have slipped through the net.

It seems is Strauss does enact this policy of no professional selectors, all he is doing is handing the true power of selection to an old friend; Andy Flower.... who himself would be returning to a position of influence. The only other way a player could be considered is through the stats book... there is no one else to make an informed assessment.
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Re: Strauss and England's Selection and Development Policies

Postby Arthur Crabtree » Thu Jul 21, 2016 6:47 pm

The ECB has been making known this policy of 'making' England players for a few years. The management code of Flower and his associates seems like an ideology, and as such, risks being damagingly inflexible. And a further problem is that coaches and players who are not comfortable within the rigidity of the system get sidelined.

A journalist close to Andy Flower has been saying that James Hildreth lacks the necessary 'ambition' to be an England player. Could it not be that he lacks the 'ambition' to be part of a system that has damaged quite a few. Might a coach of the calibre of Rod Marsh, who did so much to bring through the 2005 Ashes team, have wanted to work with such a curriculum.
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Re: Strauss and England's Selection and Development Policies

Postby Arthur Crabtree » Thu Jul 21, 2016 6:49 pm

I have doubts about the kind of people Strauss and Flower are. They seem pretty ruthless, joyless heavies. This is cricket, not national security.
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Re: Strauss and England's Selection and Development Policies

Postby Dr Cricket » Thu Jul 21, 2016 9:19 pm

You can add cook to the list as well really.

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Re: Strauss and England's Selection and Development Policies

Postby Arthur Crabtree » Thu Jul 21, 2016 9:42 pm

I meant to say Marsh might not have wanted to be straitjacketed by a process, but I didn't quite say that. Or many coaches of imagination and individuality.
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Re: Strauss and England's Selection and Development Policies

Postby bigfluffylemon » Fri Jul 22, 2016 3:20 am

Interesting post, sussex. I'm not sure quite why so many people appear to have been surprised by England's loss, but you're right, it does appear to have crysallised the issues facing the team. The selection process and more so the development process is clearly lacking in England at the moment. So many promising players seem to go backwards after being picked for England. Ok, there is a clear step up from the CC to international level, but that can't explain all of it. Of all England's batsmen to come into the team since Collingwood left and we had a stable top seven, only Root can be considered a success, and he's having a pretty poor summer so far.

Oh, for that brief period 2009-2010 where the only selection issue was the fourth bowler.
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Re: Strauss and England's Selection and Development Policies

Postby Dr Cricket » Fri Jul 22, 2016 10:18 am

Cook is also a *modded*, considering he loves to whine and moan a lot but would be quiet if england does the things he moans about.
Pakistan have said they won't do the press up celebration now since they don't want to offend Cook what a joke really.

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Re: Strauss and England's Selection and Development Policies

Postby sussexpob » Fri Jul 22, 2016 11:27 am

bigfluffylemon wrote:Interesting post, sussex. I'm not sure quite why so many people appear to have been surprised by England's loss, but you're right, it does appear to have crysallised the issues facing the team. The selection process and more so the development process is clearly lacking in England at the moment. So many promising players seem to go backwards after being picked for England. Ok, there is a clear step up from the CC to international level, but that can't explain all of it. Of all England's batsmen to come into the team since Collingwood left and we had a stable top seven, only Root can be considered a success, and he's having a pretty poor summer so far


I think the problem is that when you have a policy to "make" international cricketers, as Arthur has correctly identified, when you get players come through outside that policy that have justified selection with county form, they are almost treated with a sort of suspicion that skews with the normal journey that any new cap is given to prove himself.

To illustrate the example, James Taylor was clearly not really a player that Flower had much time for. Before England's bigger batting problems developed, for a while the number 6 slot was the one that created a problem, and England tried Taylor after others had failed, but he was given two tests. It was a lot like England were picking him expecting him not to be good enough, and that the only way he had a future was to smash instant 100's on debut to prove their suspicions on him wrong. When it didnt happen, he was released from the squad and the usual press pack gathered round the decision to back it up, with tales of his personality rubbing others up the wrong way, or tales of him not fitting in with team ethos, etc. I guess the aforementioned Hildreth example also holds true.

In contrast, someone like Stuart Broad was decided to be a test cricketer at 19 or 20, and they wouldnt drop him until he produced. Here is where you see the problem. Broad after 20-25 tests was still averaging 40 per wicket, it wasnt really until that flurry of wickets at the Oval in 2009 that he had remotely looked tes quality. But he was given a role and very little pressure to improve over a quick time, and it worked for him.

Some might claim that Broad is a person that proves the rule that it was a great decision to stick with him. But then again, you could also argue that giving 25 tests to someone of any level of quality might produce a positive result. Taking it further, can any player of a good FC level move on to test class given an almost infinite time? Jonny Bairstow is probably the biggest argument, he looked rubbish but after 20 tests he now looks far more solid. So is it the pre-identification of talent and "making a cricketer" that is doing it for Broad, or is it simply a guy learning from experience that anyone with a half decent amount of skill can achieve when you take away the pressure off him to make an instant impact? I personally believe that its more the second.
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Re: Strauss and England's Selection and Development Policies

Postby sussexpob » Fri Jul 22, 2016 11:37 am

The devil really is in the detail for this though. Taking a list of cricketers from the Flower era, you can see it.

Carberry - Average just under 30 in 6 tests. Considering that he was dropped after one start in 2010, and then I believe had the top scoring average in a disaster tour, was he displaced too early? If he was in the team now, would his average improve?

Steve Finn - Flower placed so much faith in him, he was bowling at cardboard cutouts on his last tour with Flower and was utterly ruined as a cricketer. Even on a tour of epic disaster proportions, he was deemed unpickable.

James Tredwell - Averages under 30 with the ball in tests and has an econ rate under 5 in ODIs..... in most teams he would never have been jettisonned so easily, especially when a batsman is the sole spinner.

Eoin Morgan - Flower thought he could create a test batsman from a good ODI player.... failure

Ajmal Shehzad - Played one test in 2010 and has a test average of 15 per wicket. Never picked again. I actually watched him bowl gloriously in Australia away in 10/11, but he disintegrated as it was clear regardless of how he played, Flower didnt rate him. The snub wrecked his career.

Samit Patel - Thought they could turn him into a spinner. One of the worst ideas I can remember.

Bairstow/Root - Never developed under Flower. Became solid players as soon as they were picked without him.

Compton - Unfairly jettisoned one test after scoring back to back hundreds.

Kerrigan - Got less than 10 overs to prove himself on a batsman friendly pitch

Woakes - Clearly wasnt rated. Making that look like a major mistake

Ballance/Borthwick/Rankin - Only played one test each under Flower before being dropped.

Onions - Has a test average under 30 and was taking bucket loads of wickets in counties....... Flower made no attempt to encourage him he had a career after some injuries, and was left to rot despite looking the part.

Amjd Khan..... one failed test, never seen again

Tim Bresnan... dropped after looking very good with the ball. As soon as he had a few bad games, it was the end for him.

This is an exhaustive list by the way. All the players Flower picked..... and none can be classed as a long term success.

He gave Eoin Morgan, who was the most left field pick the most time out of all of them, even though in relative terms he was no doubt the worst First Class player!

I left out Jon Trott actually, but in this case he was Flower's only success.... even though it was Moores that identified his talent in 2008 and brought him into the setup ready for his debut before Moores was fired.
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Re: Strauss and England's Selection and Development Policies

Postby Dr Cricket » Fri Jul 22, 2016 12:12 pm

Bit harsh on bresnan considering flower liked him, he got dropped because injuries affected his bowling and he wasn't the same bowler and changes needed to happen considering England were losing 4 or 5 test series in 18 months.

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Re: Strauss and England's Selection and Development Policies

Postby Dr Cricket » Fri Jul 22, 2016 5:15 pm

TBH whenever a journalist says the guy face doesn't fit, or doesn't have the attitude to be successful, is the biggest prove you can get that ECB does control the media.

Considering the journalist only knows this because the ECB/Selectors or players have told them and then agrees with it because they said so.
Not sure how the journalist can even say the guy face doesn't fit or attitude is wrong if they barely know the guy.

Not even sure what the face doesn't fit even mean or the attitude stuff or how that stops people from scoring runs and performing for england.

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Re: Strauss and England's Selection and Development Policies

Postby Slipstream » Fri Jul 29, 2016 2:59 am

After 20 Tests Broad's average 40.21 but during that time his ODI cricket bowling was about 26.00. Don't you think that kept him in the Test team and also the notion that he could bat and was going to be an all rounder. His batting after 20 Tests was 30.33. He was 6'5 and could bowl at 90mph. You don't come across those two things very often. So a mixure of reasons.

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Re: Strauss and England's Selection and Development Policies

Postby sussexpob » Fri Jul 29, 2016 10:56 am

I think the "6ft'5 and bowling 90mph" is maybe the crux of my point. No one sat there and said here is a 20 year old lad smashing county sides apart, they said here is a young lad with exciting attributes, we are going to keep picking him until he delivers. Ok, he was averaging I believe in the low 30's in counties and very young at the time, so naturally he would raise eyebrows, but it was the attributes and not the actual performance that afforded him time.

If someone is 5ft'8 and bowls 75 mph, yet is taking wickets 70 wickets a county season at 19, he would get two test matches to produce a world class experience, and then they would dump them. If we gave infinite chances to any player with a level of quality, encourage them to improve under low amounts of time pressure, gave them the best coaches and pampered them...... you surely would notice an improvement in most players.

At the moment its the chosen few who get time, and they are chosen on someone's perception as to their ability and not their performance. If we gave all players 20-25 tests to play into form, you might find a high percentage of people come through. But those players not judged to have these invisible natural qualities rarely get that.

Just as a marker, I checked players to have batted at least 40 innings (or 20 complete tests) for England in the last 20 years. The only person who notable does improve in that period after a bad start is Graeme Hick..... of those that are lower average players or had bad starts, Butcher/Atherton/Bell/Crawley and Ramprakash all improved notably.
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Re: Strauss and England's Selection and Development Policies

Postby Slipstream » Fri Jul 29, 2016 4:36 pm

sussexpob wrote:I think the "6ft'5 and bowling 90mph" is maybe the crux of my point. No one sat there and said here is a 20 year old lad smashing county sides apart, they said here is a young lad with exciting attributes, we are going to keep picking him until he delivers. Ok, he was averaging I believe in the low 30's in counties and very young at the time, so naturally he would raise eyebrows, but it was the attributes and not the actual performance that afforded him time.

If someone is 5ft'8 and bowls 75 mph, yet is taking wickets 70 wickets a county season at 19, he would get two test matches to produce a world class experience, and then they would dump them. If we gave infinite chances to any player with a level of quality, encourage them to improve under low amounts of time pressure, gave them the best coaches and pampered them...... you surely would notice an improvement in most players.

At the moment its the chosen few who get time, and they are chosen on someone's perception as to their ability and not their performance. If we gave all players 20-25 tests to play into form, you might find a high percentage of people come through. But those players not judged to have these invisible natural qualities rarely get that.

Just as a marker, I checked players to have batted at least 40 innings (or 20 complete tests) for England in the last 20 years. The only person who notable does improve in that period after a bad start is Graeme Hick..... of those that are lower average players or had bad starts, Butcher/Atherton/Bell/Crawley and Ramprakash all improved notably.


I don't think anyone 5'8 and bowls 75mph would be even looked at. I think the minimum is 85mph. Looking at our bowlers many of them have been injury replacements and many have had injuries when their next chance came up. Anderson was one of those injury replacements with a game here and two there but his good ODI bowling kept him in the mix. At 20/21/23 the bowlers are a long way from the finished article but if you choose someone at 28/29 who knows what they are doing, they probably aren't going to have those speeds.

Stuart Clark made his debut at 30. 24 Tests 94 wickets 23.86. Dropped in India 08 for 23 year old Siddle debut. After 61 Tests average 30. Why not continue with Clark?

Age at Debut - Bowler- Tests
20 - Anderson (117), Plunkett (13), Finn (32)
21 - Broad (96)
22 - Jones (18), Kabir Ali (1)
23 - Hoggard (67), Harmison (63), Sidebottom (22)
24 - Ormond (2), Mahmood (8), Shahzad (1), Woakes (10)
25 - Tremlett (12), Wood (8), Jordan (8)
26 - Onions (9)
28 - Johnson (3), Kirtley (4), Pattinson (1), Khan (1)
29 - Rankin (1)
30 - Lewis (1)
31 - Saggers (3)
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Re: Strauss and England's Selection and Development Policies

Postby Dr Cricket » Fri Jul 29, 2016 6:50 pm

For one reason Clark was actually crap in flat condition and would probably struggled.
Remember him struggling in his last year of international cricket.

siddle did take an 5fer or some wickets in the shield final remember watching the highlight at the time.
Believe he had a fantastic shied season.
Imho averaging 30 these days isn't bad for a seam bowler and it is likely Clark would have averaged the same or more than Siddle if he did carry on.

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