Section:GDN 1N PaGe:44 Edition Date:190815 Edition:01 Zone: Sent at 14/8/2019 19:59 cYanmaGentaYellowb
- The Guardian Thursday 15 Aug ust 2019
(^44) Sport
Cricket Second Ashes Test
Strauss has Hundred
reasons for concern
Ali Martin
Lord’s
Andrew Strauss has expressed con-
cerns over a lack of English head
coaches in the Hundred, fearing it
could have a knock-on eff ect for the
national teams down the line.
The former director of England
cricket, who hopes to turn Lord’s red
today in a bid to raise money for the
cancer foundation set up in memory
of his late wife, Ruth, appointed Trevor
Bayliss as England coach in 2015 and
the Australian overs aw the World Cup
win this summer.
Looking at the landscape from next
summer onwards, when the contro-
versial 100-ball tournament begins,
Strauss appears uneasy that English
coaches have been overlooked for the
six positions already confi rmed.
“ I think that was a great opportu-
nity for some English coaches to be
appointed,” Strauss said. “Some of
those teams will have their reasons for
appointing an experienced coach who
has coach ed in T20 cricket elsewhere
in the world. You can completely
understand that. [But] there is a bit of
England off er
hint to Denly
during brief
break from rain
Some summer’s day was this. After
six hours of rain play was abandoned
for the day at 4.15pm. There was not
so much as a coin toss, let alone a
ball bowled.
There was a brief let-up after lunch,
a lull between showers, when every-
one got out on the fi eld and pretended
they had not seen the forecast for the
rest of the afternoon. It lasted just
long enough for Chris Jordan to pre-
sent Jofra Archer with his England cap.
Then it started raining again. There
was a hint, too, for those watching
closely, that England plan to stick with
Joe Denly rather than pick Sam Curran,
who was fi elding at slip while the other
bowlers got busy warming up.
Australia confi rmed their own team
changes. They have brought in Josh
Hazlewood for James Pattinson, which
means that Mitchell Starc has been
rested again. Justin Langer said it was
all to do with their bowling strategy.
“He hits a great length and he’s usu-
ally pretty miserly with his economy
rate,” Langer said. “That’s what gives
him the edge in this game.”
If Australia have brought in Hazle-
wood to try to bore out England’s
batsmen, England have brought in
Archer to try to blast out Australia’s.
But then, given Steve Smith’s appetite
for batting, they are never going to beat
him in a game of patience.
Over at the bookies’ tent at the back
of the Nursery Ground they were run-
ning a special on whether and when
England will be able to get Smith out
again, with Archer the 3-1 favourite
to take his wicket in the fi rst innings.
England had not even confi rmed he
was playing when they wrote those
odds up on the whiteboard. It is a lot
to load on to a 24-year-old who is play-
ing his fi rst Test after three years of
fi rst-class cricket. But no more, per-
haps, than Archer expects of himself.
The story goes that he was so sure he
would make his debut here that he
asked the management to arrange for
Jordan to be here too.
The two of them are best friends.
“Apart from receiving my fi rst England
cap, this is easily one of my proudest
moments,” Jordan told Archer in the
huddle. “Every single challenge that’s
presented itself to you so far, you’ve
found a way of rising to it, and I don’t
see Test cricket being any diff erent.
“You’ve had a taste in the shorter
formats, been in the World Cup,
travel led the world in various leagues
and dominated, but I know this is
the pinnacle for you. One of the fi rst
things you said to me when you came
over to England was that you wanted
to play Test cricket for England and
that time has come. You’ve crossed
that line.”
Earlier in the afternoon they ran
the highlights of the World Cup fi nal
on the big screens and the empty
stands echoed with the commenta-
tors’ screams and shouts during that
wild fi nal over Archer bowled. It was
exactly a month ago and it seems both
so long ago and yet no time at all.
It is an open secret that the World
Cup has taken a lot out of some of the
players in this England team, that
the turnaround was too quick for
the players to be at their best in that
fi rst Test at Edgbaston. The man-
agement are hoping it will work the
other way for Archer, that freshened
by a short break he will be coming into
this series fl ush with confi dence, in the
form of his young life.
The highlights were better than any-
thing else there was to watch. Some
of the old hands in the crowd beat an
early retreat to St John’s Wood High
Street, reckoning, rightly, that the best
way to spend the day was to hole up
somewhere and have a long lunch.
Thousands more milled around the
ground, huddled up in the lower tiers,
or under umbrellas or the lee of the
stands, waiting on announcements
over the PA or watching the ground-
staff hokey-cokey the covers.
There should be more to see today ,
at least. This is a four-day Test now,
which means the follow-on has been
cut to 150 runs but, as Langer said, it
should not make too much diff erence.
“There’s plenty of time,” he said. And
plenty of intrigue, too.
Outfi eld warm-up suggests
batsman may be given
the nod ahead of Curran
Andy Bull
Lord’s
a chicken-and-egg situation: unless
English coaches get the opportunity,
how can they get the experience?
“We’ve always got to look for oppor-
tunities for our English coaches to
get more experience than just doing
county coaching gigs. They need to
do more than that .”
The Australians Shane Warne,
Simon Katich and Andrew McDonald
have been hired for the Lord’s , Old
Traff ord and Edgbaston teams respec-
tively, and the South African Gary
Kirsten will be in charge at Cardiff.
The Australians Matthew Mott and
Lisa Keightley have also taken on the
equivalent head coach roles for the
women’s teams at Cardiff and Lord’s.
Darren Lehmann, the former Aus-
tralia head coach, is tipped to take on
the Headingley men’s team and his
fellow countryman Tom Moody is in
line at the Oval. The New Zealander
Stephen Fleming and the Sri Lankan
Mahela Jayawardene are favourites
for the respective positions at Trent
Bridge and the Ageas Bowl, too.
County coaches are expected to be
seconded to the various backroom
set-ups in assistant roles. But one
chief executive told the Guardian that
teams are essentially being forced to
look abroad for the top jobs as the
leading domestic candidates would
be stymied by the draft system that is
being used to sign players (unless they
left their current positions).
Strauss stepped down from running
the England men’s team last summer
to care for his wife in the fi nal stages
of her battle with a rare form of lung
cancer. He has since set up the Ruth
Strauss Foundation which raises
money for research and support net-
works, with “red” the dress code for
day two of the Lord’s Test.
His replacement, Ashley Giles, is
looking for a new England head coach
and has said his preference would be
for a local appointment; Chris Silver-
wood, who oversees the bowlers, is
among the front-runners after leading
Essex to the Division One title in 2017.
W hile England’s Test fortunes fl uc-
tuated during Strauss’s four-year ten-
ure, the former captain believes the
issues are more systemic than down
to the head coach or captain, Joe Root.
Strauss said: “It’s a refl ection more
than anything of our top-order batting
and our ability to take 20 wickets away
from home. [The batting] is a long-
standing issue looking back fi ve or six
years ago, when we last had a solid,
stable top order. That’s got to be a pri-
ority and not just to identify batsmen
but for batsmen to take their chance.
“ It was great to see Rory Burns make
his maiden Test century last week and
hopefully others will follow his lead.”
Justin Langer
On the bowler Josh Hazlewood (above)
‘[Hazlewood] hits
a great length and
he’s usually pretty
miserly with his
economy rate’
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