I’m starting to get bored of this cricket catenaccio

Catenaccio – the obsessively defensive football strategy that almost squeezed the life out of the beautiful game in the 1960s.

This morning, I was convinced something different would happen. I felt it in my bones. It almost did. But then, in the end, it didn’t quite come off.

I really believed that at some point during the meaningless ODI between England and Australia, Alastair Cook would make a decision of his own.

But he didn’t.

He continued to bowl Ben Stokes at James Faulkner. Who continued to hit the dross Stokes was delivering out of the ground. As a result, England lost the match, and find themselves two down with three to play. If Australia have their way, they’ll soon win this series 5-0. And England will be in a proper mess, in all forms of the game.

This can’t all be Kevin Pietersen’s fault. Like the poor and the banking crisis, he’s being put in the frame for a crime he didn’t commit.

It all comes down to Andy Flower, Ashley Giles, and poor old Alastair Cook.

(You’re all going to tell me that Flower’s not in charge of the one day team.) But the King of Spain is clearly following the Flower method. Amass a total, bowl to defend it. Stick to your plans. And if those plans mean that someone who is going for 7 and a bit runs an over carries on bowling at the death rather than someone who is bowling at five and a bit runs an over, then so be it.

To be fair, it’s a methodology that worked for England for a while. Particularly in England. And particularly against Australia. But it is essentially defensive. Which is fine when it works. But hopeless when it doesn’t.

It only just succeeded on very slow pitches in England in the summer. It has completely failed on slightly quicker pitches in Australia. And it’s not just a failure to ‘execute skills’, as the coaches would have it. It’s a failure of captaincy.

We know that this Australia side bat deep. And we know that the more a batsman can get into a rhythm, the more quickly he can score big runs. That’s one of the key lessons of Twenty20: never let anyone settle.

But watching England play at the moment is like watching a poor county side play Sunday league cricket in the 80s. The first pair of bowlers come on (normally one young tearaway plucked from a Caribbean beach or a south London council estate, and a skinny young lad who drives a fork lift truck around a warehouse all winter.)  and bowl half of their overs. Then they’re replaced by one slightly overweight slow bowler who is due a benefit next year and a former public schoolboy who used to open the batting for Oxford or Cambridge and who sends down a diet of unrelieved military medium as unimaginative as his choice of bedtime reading. Unless things go horribly wrong, these two bowl all their overs, and then are replaced by the opening pair, who finish things off with all the verve and joie de vivre associated with missionary position sex at the end of a forty-year marriage.

Stokes was getting smacked. Cook went and talked to him. Stokes got smacked some more. Bresnan ran in from the other end and got smacked. Meanwhile Ravi Bopara failed to bowl all his overs.

Cook could see the plan wasn’t working. So why didn’t he try something else? He’s played a lot of cricket. And there are a lot of men out there who could have given him some tips. They all waited for something to happen, rather than trying to make something happen. And that is the whole problem with England cricket right now.

I sat for a whole day at the Oval the summer before last watching Hashim Amla utterly destroy the England attack. But instead of anyone trying anything new, the bowlers just kept running in, bowling to the plans that so obviously weren’t working, like row after row of Tommies passively following each other over the top in 1916. Graeme Swann was the most toothless that day, but the others weren’t much better. And no one did anything to change the situation.

Cook wasn’t captain that series, but the method was the same, and it didn’t work. When faced with genuinely aggressive intent, England crumble time and time again. Dale Steyn, Morne Morkel and Vernon Philander comfortably outbowled England’s Ashes-winning attack in that series, while Amla, Graeme Smith, AB de Villiers and Jacques Kallis put our less aggressive bowlers to the sword.

That’s what just happened to England in Australia, and what is still happening now, isn’t it? Yes, the pitches were a bit quicker, but they were the same for both sides, and they didn’t seem to trouble the Australian batsmen too much. They played with brio and aggression, while their English counterparts played with fear and caution, followed by what looked like mindless folly.

And while this was going wrong, the captain appeared a passive observer, watching what was happening rather than trying to bend it to his will.

It’s difficult to imagine a Brearley, a Boycott or a Botham allowing himself to behave in so powerless a way. Brearley would have spent his time in the slips working out a plan of his own and then how best to communicate it to the men who were charged with delivering it. Boycott would have worked out a plan and then how to deliver it entirely on his own without telling anyone else what he was was doing, least of all his own team. And Botham would have gathered all his strength and raged in of his long run, defying reality to resist the power of his desire. All of them may have failed, but they would all have failed more actively than England are failing at the moment.

Cricket is a game of defence and attack, and only a fool would deny it. But England at the moment are playing a version of cricket catenaccio, where all attacking intent is crushed out of the game in deference to an obsessively cautious plan. And when they need to find a way to attack, they lack the confidence and the personnel to do it successfully.

And the reason for this defensiveness? A lack of attacking pitches as much as a lack of attacking players. Surely with less lifeless surfaces Steve Finn wouldn’t have been remodelled in a vain attempt to give him an outswinger, and Stuart Broad would bowl more often at his maximum pace. More young bowlers would be tempted to run in hard, and more young batsmen would get the chance to play fast bowling effectively and with a sound technique (which only Ian Bell has looked like doing for England.)

But at the moment, what we need is a new plan. And a new captain to deliver it. Alastair Cook and Kevin Pietersen are two vital batsmen for England; two of the finest we have ever had, as the figures prove. England need them both batting. Captaining the side is an exhausting business, even without the added responsibility of opening the batting. Cook is one of the finest England openers ever. He is not – nor will he ever be – one of the finest captains. We should just let him get on with what he does best. Under a new, more aggressive regime.

Friday’s Trivial Trivia quiz

The offending article. A white Kookaburra ball of the kind that won’t be swinging on Sunday. But that may then reverse later in the game. Or possibly not.

As the rain pours down and we wait anxiously for England to notch up their latest failure in the ‘wrong’ form of the game, today’s Trivial Trivia quiz features a topical question:

Why doesn’t the white Kookaburra ball swing conventionally?

As usual, we will share the best answers on Monday. And by then we’ll know whether England have made it reverse swing, by dint of a) tireless ball care, and some rough old pitches b) some very sharp practice indeed. If they don’t get either kind of swing, then they won’t win. Which is why I think Tim Bresnan will play, provided he can drag himself away from the newborn Max Geoffrey Bresnan.

(My original question was going to be ‘which side doesn’t have the best attack in world cricket?’ based on Mickey Arthur’s strange rant the other day about how the Baggy Greens have the best bowlers ‘in depth’. Then I decided I might scare off sensitive young Mitchell Johnson. Frankly, I’m not sure what he means, but I think South Africa probably have the best attack in world cricket when everyone is fit, closely followed by England. Dale Steyn pips Jimmy Anderson, Vernon Philander pips Stuart Broad, Morne Morkel pips Stephen Finn, Jacques Kallis pips Ravi Bopara. The only edge England would have is in the spin department, and I spent a day at the Oval last summer seeing how much that scared Hashim Amla.)