The Botham Report. Ian Botham

Чтение книги онлайн.

СКАЧАТЬ against New Zealand, who were, without doubt, one of the poorest international sides I’ve ever seen.

      Mike Atherton’s team could and should have won the series 3–0. The fact is, however, that the resilience of Danny Morrison and Nathan Astle in the first Test in Auckland and New Zealand’s improved bowling in the third Test in Christchurch meant that without the captain’s batting in that final Test, England may well have finished the Test series having drawn 1 –1. Against a team comfortably the worst-rated in world cricket, that would have been a disaster. As Atherton explained after the series was over, had England not won that three-Test series in New Zealand, he would have resigned, and rightly so.

      I say that not because I think Atherton was a poor captain or an unworthy leader. He’s an exceptional player and his batting performances have dug England out of holes of their own creation more often than he, or they, would care to recall. No one who witnessed his magnificent 185 not out to save the second Test against South Africa at the Wanderers Ground in Johannesburg will ever have reason to doubt Atherton’s commitment, determination, professionalism and sheer batting skill, nor his courage. But there comes a time in the career of a captain when no matter what he does, what plan he puts into operation, what words he imparts to his team, nothing works.

      Having said that, Atherton has been on a hiding to nothing ever since he took over the captaincy from Graham Gooch in 1993. So was Gooch before him, so was David Gower before him, so was Mike Gatting before him. The reason? – the lack of world class talent produced by a domestic system that belongs in ancient history.

      And I believe that fact was borne out by events during the summer of 1997. After starting in such breathtaking style, winning the Texaco Trophy series and the first Ashes Test England were finally exposed and outclassed against the unofficial world champions. Their efforts were laudable and brave and all the rest, but in the end they were just not good enough to win. By the time the Ashes were surrendered Atherton was looking and playing as though he had had a gutful.

      In the end, after having reached a decision to quit, Atherton was persuaded to carry on by the selectors against his better judgement. Victory in the final Test at The Oval and the prospect of better things in the Caribbean would have been his motivation – fear over the alternative choices would have been in the minds of the selectors. And when he returned from the 1998 winter tour attached to a scoreline that read West Indies 3 England 1, the man who established a record for the highest number of Tests as captain – 52 – had finally decided enough was enough. And this time the selectors left it at that.

      The new enthusiasm originally injected into proceedings by MacLaurin and Lamb at the start of the summer of 1997 had had an immediate affect. Glory be, England thrashed Australia in the Texaco Trophy series and then won handsomely in the first Ashes Test at Edgbaston. ‘Crisis, what crisis?’ came the cry from the counties once more.

      As England slumped to yet another Test series defeat at the hands of Brian Lara’s eminently beatable Windies, then the sense of well-being surrounding Adam Holliaoke’s one-day wonder in the Champions Cup in Sharjah was unceremoniously burst by their defeat in the one-day series thereafter. The crisis was still there staring in the face of blind men.

      There are those who will react to the question ‘What’s wrong with English cricket’ by saying ‘nothing’. They will claim that fortunes in Test cricket are cyclical, and things will come right if we just wait long enough and leave them well enough alone. That is dangerous nonsense. I am not the only one who believes that either. Just ask MacLaurin.

      MacLaurin, to whom the counties turned at the end of 1996 as Chairman of the TCCB, soon to become the England and Wales Cricket Board, is the man who turned Tesco from a family-run business making £12 million worth of profits in 1976 into Britain’s premier food retailer with a profit of £750 million for the financial year to April 1997. In 1976, by now managing director of the company he’d joined as a trainee in 1959, he took on and won a boardroom battle that changed the course of British retailing history. His principal opponent was no Tom, Dick or Harry, but Sir Jack Cohen, the chairman of Tesco, the business he had co-founded in 1926. And the bone of contention just happened to be the brainchild of Cohen and the cornerstone of Tesco’s success for many years, Green Shield Stamps.

      MacLaurin had done his homework and discovered that the stamps had become an unwanted anachronism. As he said, ‘Stamps had been an integral part of Tesco’s success, but it was very apparent to me visiting the stores, that the customers didn’t want them anymore. They were costing us, Tesco’s, £20 million per year to produce, and the customers were handing them back.’ Certain that he was right and that the company needed to shed its ‘pile ‘em high, sell ‘em cheap’ image and be repositioned upmarket, MacLaurin would not be shaken off. It took five bitter recounts for him to win the boardroom vote 5–4 and earn the right to pursue his plans to transform the company.

      He said, ‘Before I attempted to turn Tesco around and into a world class act, people told me I was crazy. They said it simply couldn’t be done. I heard the same things about taking on English cricket. But there is an awful lot to be done.

      ‘I don’t want to criticise what has gone on in the past, but we cannot shy away from the fact that England’s Test team have not been in the top echelon of international cricket for some time.

      ‘There are those who persist in claiming that success in cricket is cyclical, that if you wait long enough it’ll all come right of its own accord. I simply don’t believe that is true.

      ‘You wouldn’t last very long in my business if you just said “everything is cyclical”. Just imagine if you went to the shareholders and told them, ‘I’m terribly sorry that we’ve lost all this money this year, but I’m sure if you hang on and keep investing your cash, perhaps in a few years time we might make a profit.’ We have to be realistic. If nothing is done to turn things round, the most pessimistic scenario is that the game will wither on the vine.’ MacLaurin has a clear view of the alternative to decisive action. It goes like this: ‘If we continue to do badly at international level and end up getting beaten by the Isle of Dogs, people will simply not pay to come and watch, and neither will the television companies whose money along with Test match receipts subsidises the first-class game. Then the counties will be in dire financial straits and the kids will ask, ‘what was cricket?’

      When MacLaurin and Lamb set about preparing their blueprint for the future structure of English cricket the illusion of progress created by England’s victory in the 1997 Texaco Trophy series against Australia then the win in the first Ashes Test at Edgbaston enabled the more reactionary county chairmen to stick their heads back in the sand and say: “I told you so.”

      Mindful of this MacLaurin and Lamb knew they had little or no chance of pushing through their preferred option for change – two divisions and promotion and relegation. Instead they fudged the issue, concocted a totally baffling alternative known as the three conference system and when that was laughed out of court, the barely-believable compromise of the radical status quo. Do me a very large favour.

      Under this scheme the top eight sides in the 1998 county championship will go forward to play a one-day tournament known as the Super Cup in 1999. Quite what relevance such a competition will have to the business of making England better at Test cricket is anybody’s guess.

      There are moves afoot to blow this out of the water. The Professional Cricketers Association came out heavily in favour of two divisions towards the end of the 1997 season. At their meeting on May 11, 1998 they warned that should their voice be ignored again steps might be taken to coerce certain clubs into seeing the error of their ways. Whisper them, but the words ‘strike action’ have been heard. To those who fear for the future of their own clubs should this scheme be implemented I say: shouldn’t the players be allowed to decide?

      For those СКАЧАТЬ