It is all slipping away, and fast. England’s reign as world champions in Twenty20 cricket is on the precipice of an ignominious end.
It is a commonly held opinion that England misread conditions in Colombo against India and had not figured the pitch would be friendlier to spin than pace bowling. Evidence suggests the contrary. In Andy Flower, England have a coach who, during his career, was one of the world’s best players of spin-bowling and that too in an era of Shane Warne, Muttiah Muralitharan, Saqlain Mushtaq and Anil Kumble — all great spinners, all very different. If there’s a cricketer who can spot a turning wicket, it’s Flower.
No, what England did against India was to operate on the notion that their fast-bowlers would bang it in short and India would cower or crumble. And this is likely not a result of underestimating India’s batting, but of being delusional about their own abilities.
England collapsing to spin bowling is nothing new — it happens even when their best batsmen are in the team. It stands to reason that if an England team with Alastair Cook, Jonathan Trott, Ian Bell and the mighty Kevin Pietersen can struggle against spin, then the likes of Jonny Bairstow and Jos Buttler won’t get too far. Of the team sent to defend England’s World Twenty20 title, Eoin Morgan stands out as the best batsman by some distance and in such a brittle-looking batting line-up, he’ll need to move up the order to number four, instead of coming in at a point in the game where the situation is too desperate to salvage. The rest will attempt to hit their way out of trouble which will be fun to watch, but will ultimately not result in a successful title defence.
England are missing two key elements from the side that won the World Twenty20 two years ago. The first one is obvious: Kevin Pietersen. His differences with team-mates, coach and cricket board are of sufficient severity that England would rather take the field with a weakened team, then go into battle with him in the ranks. Pietersen hadn’t gambled that it could come to this and when England eventually bow out of this tournament, there will only be losers. This is a shame.
The second missing piece is that England, in their last campaign, were led by the tough, gritty and hard-working Paul Collingwood. Then, England looked like a side willing to put in the hard yards and make the most of their luck. Now, England appear prissy and stubborn, rather than eager and flexible — and it is difficult not to pin the blame for this on the current captain Stuart Broad.
Catapulted into being the leader of the Twenty20 team for no discernible cricketing reason, Broad is the golden-boy of English cricket and immune from any serious scrutiny. The dynamic nature of Twenty20 cricket is such that there are only a handful of players in the world who can take their spot for granted, and deserving or not, Stuart Broad is one of those players. When you’re that bulletproof, you may as well be captain. The problem is that Broad has a petulant streak, and it is unseemly that it was a friend of Broad’s who was behind a parody Kevin Pietersen Twitter account that further drove a wedge between Pietersen and the England team. Broad’s behaviour and temperament may play well with his clique, but this is not the stuff England captains are usually made of — one can’t picture new Test captain Alastair Cook doing the kinds of things Broad does and gets away with.
Despite being walloped by the West Indies, England are not done in this competition yet. New Zealand presents a team with a par batting-line up, but inferior bowling attack. This is a winnable game for England, but a sterner test awaits in the form of Sri Lanka and another trial by spin. England are fortunate to be in the weaker of the two Super 8 groups and failure to progress from here in a title defence will be an unmitigated disaster. KP as England’s T20 captain anyone?