In the build up to England’s World Cup match against Scotland the other day, Nasser Hussain made a very interesting point. He spoke of the many young England players who have been picked for a dozen or so matches in the One Day team, in which they most have been reasonably successful, before being found out technically by the opponents and discarded for the next rising star, who then restarts the cycle.
Do Young England Players Have Enough Time to Develop?
This was a bold statement to make, but he did have plenty of statistics to back up his point. As his examples he used a vast number of the current ODI squad as well as others left out. Alex Hales, who once scored a magnificent unbeaten hundred against eventual champions Sri Lanka in the world T20, was left out of the starting XI in the ODI squad after he was found out to be weak against an in-swinging ball bowled by Mohammed Shami when India toured England in the late summer of 2014. He did endure a hard time in his seven ODI caps, averaging a measly 18, but does have the capability of taking the game away from other teams as shown already.
Another man who was ‘ditched’ by England is Ben Stokes. Stokes burst onto the scene in the ‘forgettable ashes series’ of 2013-2014 when he made a stunning hundred in harsh conditions to put his name in lights. Since then though, Stokes has seriously struggled to find form with both bat and ball, resulting in his being omitted from the Cricket World Cup squad. Quite like Hales, Stokes only averages 15.66 in ODIs: not something to make his case to tie down a place in the England team. His saving grace is that he can perform with the ball as well, but he leaves much to be desired there as welll; he only has twenty ODI wickets at an average of 35.65, but stats don’t tell the whole story for Stokes as he has had some very classy moments in an England shirt.
Both these men are class players, there’s no doubting that, and it seems that Peter Moores and his staff are giving neither enough time to develop. This doesn’t account for every player; Joe Root was backed by the staff at the time of his drop in form, and has stayed in the team to this day. Everyone sees Root as a future test captain and believes that he is most definitely a crucial part of the squad, but only because people stuck by him and backed him through tough tours and rough batting patches, crafting him into the player he is.
Going back 25 years or so, we can look at the early days of Michael Atherton batting career. ‘Athers’ will be remembered in history as a phenomenal batsman, who on his day could change a game. In his first proper summer of test cricket (1990) he averaged 51.13 in eight tests. Due to this early success he had looked to have cemented a place in the side for the future. Unfortunately for him he had a rotten three-year streak in which he made a solitary hundred in 38 innings and his average never rose out of the thirties. His place in the side was lost midway through 1992, but he still received support thanks to his great talent, came through this dreadful spell of form and came of age in 1994. He finished that year with four centuries, going at an average of 49.38, the highest it had been at that point in his career, and his lack of form a thing of the past.
The moral of the story is that if you select a talented player to represent your country and he explodes onto the scene, even when the inevitable drop inform comes you must stick by him in some shape or form. If the player must be dropped but is still obviously talented, the national team as well as the county in particular must back him, because that break from International cricket may be the spark they need to ignite the second part of their career and repeat the feat of Atherton and become an England legend. Although the example of Atherton focuses on test cricket and was at a time when One Day cricket didn’t really compare to what it is now, it remains just as important to support players whose talents are yet to come to full fruition.
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