Arthur Crabtree wrote: Where England have really floundered is in identifying talent. The spinner/all rounder predeterminism, the continued opener whirlwind, the flawed identification of middle order talent. Too many players are being found out. The A team worked in a period when England were doing well, as a means of finely filtering the best players. The spinners in India should have been pre-tested in A team cricket. England, as in the nineties, are finding out about their players when it is too late.
I dont agree that they are finding out about them too late. That is the short term result of long term mismanagement. I think the truth is, England have scythed through a international generation of available talent by mismanagement, and that now there are no stocks of undamaged players available, are having to turn to reactionary selections based on very small samples of displayed talent. The best county players have been tried and failed. So you keep going down levels. It doesnt make sense.
So Duckett found his way into the team as a matter of desperation, but only because Hales/Ballance/Vince/Taylor/Lyth etc all were poorly managed. Bairstow is only back in because he kept wicket and it gave the team an extra dimension and excuse to pick him, without the gloves he was dead like the others. Yet, in 2012 had we not dumped James Taylor (health issues aside) after two tests, or had we not infact dumped Bairstow after 4 tests and an average of about 35, we might have found these players were made better. Yet the opinion at the time was they didnt suit, they were just not "test mark". Taylor was a weak minded player. Bairstow was dropped because he couldnt play a short ball.
The whole system, far from being about finding players late, is finding them as early as possible. Vince's path was pre-determined all the way to the top, as are others. Yet he goes on an A tour and is ripped apart, and gets a test cap out of it. Far from the information not being available, its simply ignored. Vince scores 17 runs in 5 innnings on a tour and is told hes a test player. Its beyond belief. And what has Vince's failure lead to? Well, if the whole warm up tours and little skills camps are wrong, then f*ck it, pick Duckett!!! He scored a 100 last week.
I think personally there is a wrestling between ideologies going on here. On one side we have a coach who seems to like to pick on instinct, on black and white performance. On the other, we have a back room staff and development system that is geared to engineering cricketers completely in the opposite of results. And the result is, you get two main ideologies forming the basis of the squad.
The first type means players either sink or swin, after which they are quickly dropped. The second means that the player is meant to be and is given more opportunties. When the first fails, its over for them. Bad pick. Bye bye, dont come back. When the second fails, there is no crisis with them, they are good players, they just got unlucky or this and that. Going back to the drawing board with the second type doesnt happen, because to acknowledge major technical errors is to acknowledge the weakness in their own coaching system.
So both are seemingly thrown back to counties and not really given follow up feedback. The first is damaged anyway, the second is perfectly fine and just need to play themselves into form for a second dig at tests, after which they become type one if they fail.
