62 Wednesday April 13 2022 | the times
SportCricket
Nothing summed up the shambolic
state at the top of English cricket — no
chairman, no managing director, no
head coach, no selector, a chief execu-
tive soon to leave and a Test captain
under huge pressure — more succinct-
ly than the sad words of James Ander-
son on Monday.
“I would have loved a sit-down face to
face,” he said. “I would have loved more
than a five-minute phone call.”
This was England’s greatest ever
bowler, with 640 Test wickets in his
bank account, talking about his omis-
sion, along with his long-time partnerAfter a winter spent touring the globe
with England squads, Matt Parkinson
says there should be a change in
mindset in the county game to help spin
bowlers — and that will come only if
there are better pitches.
“It is a topic I feel strongly about,” the
Lancashire leg spinner said. “There are
spinners coming through and they are
all at clubs where they should be play-
ing every game. I don’t care how much
it has rained, you can produce wickets
that are both good and spin. These
bowlers all need to consistently play
now. Then, in two or three years’ time,
we’ll have a crop of spinners that have
all played 60 or 70 games, all taken
wickets consistently, and there won’t be
Parkinson: County pitches holding back spinners
this discussion all the time of where the
spinners are coming from.
“There are lots of spinners. The prob-
lem with the pitches in a lot of places,
especially in Division Two — and if
teams need results — is they panic and
don’t go down the spin route, they go
down the green seamer route.
“You’ve got 23-year-old seamers and
they have played 60 or 70 games — I
am almost 26 and I have played 35
games — and you’ve got generic
seamers who have played 70 games
because they play in a four-man seam
attack. You are never going to improve
if you aren’t playing. “
While the issue of producing spin-
ners is a continual discussion within the
English game, top-class leg spinners are
the rarest of breeds. Only four specialistleg spinners have played for England in
the past 50 years, in a combined total of
24 Tests.
Between Ian Salisbury’s last Test
match in 2000 and Scott Borthwick’s
only cap in 2014, English leg spin in
Tests totalled 18 wicketless overs from
Chris Schofield. Since then, England
have used Adil Rashid in 19 Tests, the
last of which was in early 2019. Mason
Crane played a solitary Test in Sydney
in 2018.
“Everyone wants a Shane Warne or
Stuart MacGill,” Parkinson said before
Lancashire’s first County Champion-
ship match of the new season, which
begins tomorrow. “They struggle to fit a
leg spinner in who doesn’t bat or field,
which is my issue. It is up to me to
improve on those — either I improvemy batting and fielding or I take my
bowling to another level.”
Parkinson was part of England’s 16-
man squad for the recent tour to West
Indies but is still waiting for his first cap.
He had been hopeful of featuring in the
third Test but those hopes were dashed
when the squad arrived in Grenada to
see a grass-covered pitch that made
picking two spinners highly unlikely.
It meant yet another tour where he
was confined to carrying the drinks, but
Parkinson is admirably sanguine. “For
the first time [with] England I actually
felt like I warranted a place,” he said.
“Coming off the back of a good season
for Lancashire and then to be named in
the squad was nice. I am comfortable in
my own skin and know that I am good
enough — it’s up to them now.”Elizabeth Ammon
Anderson has
Steve James
Commentboard meetings and is the most senior
decision-maker at the governing body.
It is understood that there is a
shortlist of five candidates — with
two from inside the game, likely to be
county chairmen — and three from
business and finance. Richard
Thompson, the Surrey chairman, was
pushed by the other counties to apply
and may still be in the running.
The final round of interviews took
place yesterday and the preferred
candidate will not be announced until
their appointment has been ratified
by the counties at the ECB’s annual
meeting on May 12.
The new managing director, a role
that Strauss is filling in an interim
capacity, will be responsible for all
aspects of England men’s
international cricket. They will
appoint coaches and make key
decisions about personnel and central
contracts, as well as liaising with
counties, talent scouts and medical
departments.
Rob Key, the Sky Sports pundit and
a former Kent captain, is the
favourite. Mark Nicholas, a fellow
broadcaster and a former Hampshire
captain, is also thought to have been
interviewed. Marcus North, the
director of cricket at Durham, had
been linked with the role but is
understood to be out of the running.Open minds, outsiders and top
With the Test side in free fall, the county game stained by racism scandals and vacancies in key roles,
Elizabeth Ammon looks at how Strauss’s review can help fix the rudderless mess that is English cricket
when will sir andrew strauss’s
review into english game begin?
A panel of six or seven people,
chaired by Strauss, the former
England captain, is likely to meet
early next month once a permanent
managing director has been
appointed in the next fortnight.
The panel is expected to meet for
two days to look at the future of the
first-class and county structure, talent
identification and pathway
development of those players, central
contracts, pitches and schedules in
the domestic game, the future of
the performance academy at
Loughborough and the coaching
set-up.
The panel will come up with initial
proposals and a firm of consultants
will then assess the findings. A period
of consultation will follow. A panel of
six county chairmen will “sense
check” the proposals for the domestic
game, while areas outside its remit
will be discussed within the ECB and
elsewhere in the game.
Recommendations will be put
forward in September to be voted on.
who is on the review panel?
High-performance experts from
outside cricket are expected to make
up the panel. Dave Brailsford, the
former head of British Cycling, and
Dan Ashworth, who oversaw the
creation of St George’s Park while at
the FA, are understood to be on the
panel, along with a representative
from the Professional Cricketers’
Association.
The new managing director of
England men’s cricket will also be on
the panel. Strauss is believed to have
sounded out various figures, several of
whom declined his approach. A final
list is yet to be completed.
how will their findings be
implemented?
Anything that relates to changes in
the county game will need to be
approved by 12 of the 18 first-class
chairmen. It is here where there may
be a stumbling block. Anything that
proposes a reduction in the number
of counties or a restructure that is
detrimental to their finances is highly
unlikely to pass a vote.
That is why there will be an initial
consultation with the counties to
avoid the embarrassment of the
proposals being rejected at a vote.
There is, however, an acceptance
within the ECB and the counties that
the present structure is not serving
anyone well. Tom Harrison, the ECB
chief executive, spoke to the chief
executives of the counties recently
and urged them to have open minds
and to embrace change.when can we expect to see an
improvement in the test team?
They should fare a bit better at home
this summer than in Australia and the
West Indies, but they have seven
Tests against tough opponents. The
three-match series against No 1-
ranked New Zealand will be
particularly tricky in conditions that
suit both teams. A change of coach
and maybe even captain — it will be
up to the new managing director and
coach to decide whether to stick with
Joe Root — could bring about some
immediate improvements but it will
probably take years for most of the
structural changes to have any effect.how is the search progressing for
the roles of ecb chairman,
managing director and england
head coach?
The new chairman, who will earn an
annual salary of £250,000 for working
three days a week, will head the board
of directors and is responsible for
holding Harrison and other senior
executives to account. The chairman
is also the ECB’s representative at ICCIt is expected that the managing
director will reinstate a panel of
selectors for the Test team, with a
head selector. James Taylor, a
present selector and a former
England batsman, could be in the
frame for promotion.
Paul Collingwood was put in charge
of the Test team for the recent tour
to the West Indies after the sacking
of Chris Silverwood as head coach
in January.
It is expected that separate Test
and limited-overs coaches will be
appointed but, because the new
managing director will lead the
process, any decision is unlikely to be
made for at least two months.
The ECB is willing to pull out all
the stops to find the best coaches and
is willing to pay a bumper salary of up
to £1 million. It is also understood that
the new coaches will have greater
flexibility in terms of time off,
workloads and accepting coaching
roles in T20 franchise tournaments so
long as they do not clash with
England matches.
High on the ECB’s list will be Justin
Langer, the former Australia head
coach, and Ricky Ponting, the former
Australia captain. Other names in the
frame for either Test or limited-overs
coaching jobs are Gary Kirsten,
Mahela Jayawardene, Vikram Solanki
and Kumar Sangakkara.
With its enormous pressure, the
Test job will not be attractive to some
of the biggest names given that they
can earn almost as much with a
lighter workload elsewhere. The lack
of English candidates will also be of
concern to the ECB.
If the appointments have not been
made by the start of England’s
summer in June then it is likely that
both teams will be managed by
Collingwood or Marcus Trescothick.who is in charge of the
recruitment process?
The ECB chairman will be appointed
by its nominations committee, headed
by Ron Kalifa, a director on the ECB
and former chief executive of
Worldplay.
The managing director process is
being overseen by Strauss, with
Harrison and a member of the ECB
board also part of the process.
The head coaches will be appointed
by the new managing director, who
will be given responsibility for
appointing his coaching team,
including head coaches, assistant
coaches and selector.announcement within the next two
weeks. The two frontrunners were
North, the Durham director of
cricket, and Key, the former Kent
captain and now a Sky pundit, but it
is understood that North is no
longer a contender, leaving Key as
the most likely to be appointed.
Key, 42, played 15 Tests, five one-
day internationals and 299 first-
class matches. Since retiring in 2016
he has been a commentator and
pundit with Sky.
If appointed it will be for him to
select new head coaches for the Test
team — and the limited-overs team
if he decides to split the role — and
to make a decision about reinstating
a panel of selectors chaired by a
head selector. Giles disbanded the
selection committee last year and
gave full responsibility for allKey wants national selector
selection matters to Chris
Silverwood, the head coach, who
also lost his job after the Ashes, but
it is likely that Key will return to the
system of having a panel chaired by
a national selector, which would
include the head coaches.
It is expected that whoever is
appointed will be given flexibility to
shape the remit of the managing
director position in whichever way
they see fit. The role will also be a
key part of Andrew Strauss’s
forthcoming high-performance
review of English cricket.
After a dismal 18 months for the
Test team, there was a feeling within
the ECB that the cricket department
needed an overhaul, which led to
the sackings of Giles and
Silverwood this year, and led to
Strauss and Tom Harrison, the ECB
chief executive, speaking of the
need for a “red-ball reset”.Can England
afford to snub
duo with 1,177
Test wickets?
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