Maturity and Inexperience Required
Posted by: AM on: August 21, 2009
England’s selectors are a mysterious bunch. In this age of democracy, accountability and transparency they remain a backroom cabal, whose deliberations can only be inferred from gossip, body language, rumour, and over-interpretation of pronouncements that a player is ‘in good nick for his county’, or is the ‘next cab off the rank’. Fans wait on tenterhooks for the merest hint of the direction of the selectors’ judgements, journalists trade on inside dope or a practised ability to read the runes. What goes on in those meetings? It’s hard to say. What counts as a good reason? What is the rationale for the selections? Did Ashley Giles, in a flagrant conflict of interest, promote his Warwickshire batsmen over other candidates? We’ll probably never know. We might as well read tea leaves as second guess the reasoning of the selectors.
Having said that, two features of selection over the last few years have been continuity, and a preference for youth over experience. Yet England have now developed a curiously ineffective combination of youth and test-match experience, and they are crying out for some maturity and craft. The team needs to be refreshed by some old faces.
The investment in youth is probably due in no small part to England’s obsession with building teams in four-year cycles for the home series against Australia. When Matthew Hoggard was dropped in New Zealand early in 2008 after another dismal display of top order batting, it was clear that the selectors had decided that the Ashes in 2009 was too much for the under-rated Yorkshire swinger, and that his long-term replacement, James Anderson, should be given a few years in the side to learn his trade.
Continuity and a fondness for youth is perhaps most striking, however, in the batting line-up. Alastair Cook’s century on debut on a Nagpur featherbed in 2006 saw him inked into the side for the next decade, his clean looks and public school education marking him out as a future captain almost from his first test. Ian Bell was introduced at the age of 22 and was immediately penciled in for 8000 test runs. Talent, potential and hope were the watchwords.
And when persistent failure to fulfill those hopes led to Bell being dropped, Owais Shah and Robert Key, mature players with a taste of international cricket, the former one of our top one-day batsmen, the latter having scored a test-match double hundred, were passed over in favour of Ravi Bopara: young, talented, precocious, young and young. Following Bopara’s failure in Sri Lanka, Shah did get his turn in the West Indies, but you could tell the selectors’ hearts weren’t in it – he was given very little rope indeed. He scored a promising fifty, and twice selflessly risked his wicket in pursuit of quick runs for a declaration, but he scored no hundreds, was apparently not ‘good in the dressing room’, held his bat too tight, and most importantly, had no youth with which to nourish the selectors’ hopes for the future.
The irony now is that several of England’s batsmen have both youth and experience, yet remain callow and fragile. Bell has 49 tests under his belt, Cook 48, and yet neither routinely produce match-changing performances, and both still trade heavily on the hope that their best years are ahead of them. For Australia, by contrast, Shane Watson and Michael Clarke are the only batsmen not yet in their thirties, and their top six, including the 30 year-old new boy Marcus North, has trounced England’s in this series by seven centuries to one.
Among the England batsmen ‘knocking on the door’, in that tedious selectorial cliche, the newly promoted Trott and the perennially overlooked Key have maturity but relatively little test-match practice. Yet maturity is precisely what England need.
However, should England fail to beat Australia this week, and fail again in South Africa this winter, I confidently expect the selectors to reach again for youth, to ‘invest’ in talent for the future (probably for the Ashes in 2013). Key and Shah, to England’s cost as well as their own, will be passed over again for the next youthful hope, maybe Joe Denly or James Hildreth.
Strange as it may sound, England’s best hope for rejuvenation may be to reach for maturity and inexperience.
Australia’s Aura, England’s Miasma
Posted by: AM on: August 11, 2009
On the eve of the third ashes test at Edgbaston, the England captain Andrew Strauss gave what in retrospect seems a hubristic hostage to fortune: Australia, he said, had lost their aura.
“The aura came from guys like Warne, McGrath, Hayden and Gilchrist”, Strauss smiled, toasting the success of the fifteen-year English strategy of waiting for Warne and company to retire. “A lot of their players are just starting their Test careers and it feels like you are playing against any other Test team.”
How right he was. Australia are a shadow of the team of even two years ago. They really are not markedly better than any of the other top four Test teams. This, however, is a double-edged sword: England have not beaten any of the top four Test teams, Australia, India, South Africa or Sri Lanka, home or away, for four years. And after their performance at Headingley, they may have to wait a little longer to earn a place at the top table of Test match cricket.
Forget about radiating an aura; England were enveloped by a miasma at Headingley, a soupy pall clouded their minds and they were overtaken by a directionless panic. Within an hour of the start of play, the bristling confidence we were led to expect had melted away. Shoulders slumped. Movements became tentative. Under pressure, the bowlers could not play their game. Justin Langer’s withering assessment of the team’s individual and collective mental fragility had a ring of truth about it.
However, I don’t really buy the idea that there’s something in the air, a peculiar and mysterious force that acts on English players like kryptonite on superman. We don’t need supernatural explanations. It’s simple. Too few of the players have the temperament to hold on to their technique in the fire of competition.
And here I would put the finger on something like English values, for our cricket culture is captivated by the notion of the gifted amateur, and our selectors consistently value talent over toughness.
Because giftedness is supposed to be apparent to the expert eye at an early age, anybody who is deemed to not have ‘it’ can expect a long and lonely exclusion from team England. When faith in the gifted finally gives way to recognition of modest achievement in reality (I’m looking at you, Ian Bell), attention turns to the new anointed ones.
Those who were blooded at test level, and who then worked, improved, developed their technique, grew in stature and responsibility, are denigrated as the ‘next cab off the rank’ – a phrase that implies privileging seniority over talent – are inevitably passed over in favour of whichever county talent has just scored a hundred.
Thus, when Vaughan made way, the selectors jumped over the two most experienced and able candidates (Shah and Key), who were branded some time ago as either difficult personalities or not having the necessary gifts, and went straight to Bopara, who is widely deemed a special talent. The problem is not with Bopara, but with a process that values giftedness over perseverance, commitment, and skill, as developed through hard work.
If England put more effort into finding the most dogged self-improvers rather than the most gifted ball-timers, we would, I dare to say, have a team who can trouble the best and who could, perhaps, develop an aura of their own.
Keep WADA Out of Cricket – For the Good of the Game
Posted by: AM on: August 6, 2009
Our beautiful game is in grave danger. In the name of the global war on drugs, a zealous bureaucracy fitted to the very different world of athletics threatens to seize control of cricket. We will ultimately pay for it with the loss of great players for procedural improprieties – WADA, remember, wanted Shane Warne banned for life. If there is a drug problem in cricket, then WADA’s cure is worse than the disease.
Since the BCCI last week rejected the World Anti-Doping Agency’s advances, drugs have been on the mind of cricketers and fans worldwide, and sage commentators like Peter Roebuck and Mike Atherton have weighed in on the side of WADA. What’s the harm, they said, in submitting to international best practice on drug use in sport? Surely the innocent have nothing to fear?
However, I think the innocent have everything to fear. We need to take a step back and ask ourselves, we lovers of cricket: What exactly is the problem? And is the solution going to cause more harm?
By all accounts, drug use is not a major problem in cricket. There are at least three main uses for drugs in cricket. The first is to recover more quickly from injuries. There are a lot of entirely legal techniques and chemical crutches to keep players fit for a punishing international schedule. At this very moment Andrew Flintoff’s veins are coursing with steroids, specifically 17-hydroxy-11-dehydrocorticosterone, better known as cortisone. Mohammed Asif, on the other hand, was banned for using non-permitted drugs to help him recover from injury. I’ll put my cards on the table here: I think players ought to be allowed to use drugs that help them recover from injury. In itself, using cortisone (or whatever) to play through pain doesn’t introduce an unfair advantage, except in as much as it’s unfair for Philip Hughes to have to face Flintoff from around the wicket.
A second kind of drug use is more familiar outside the world of elite sport. I’m talking about recreational drugs, like alcohol, cocaine and marijuana. Ed Giddens, a middling English bowler, got in trouble for taking cocaine. He said someone must have spiked his drink, though of course in some parts of the world it would have been the alcohol that landed him in hot water. Phil Tufnell and Ian Botham actually admitted to smoking pot. In many countries this is against the law, but it couldn’t possibly be described as performance enhancing, unless by ‘performance’ we mean the ability to taste the colour in Pink Floyd. Recreational drugs have brought pleasure to some and destroyed the lives of others, but they aren’t a problem special to cricket.
‘Performance enhancement’ is the third, and, we would assume, most important, use of drugs. It might be confused with the first – masking pain can surely improve performance – but it is usually associated with a different purpose, namely, to build up one’s body in order to run faster, jump higher and lift greater weight. In sports like swimming, cycling, running and other athletic events this is a massive problem because triumph is decided by a stopwatch or a yardstick and the difference between glory and failure can be a millimeter or one hundredth of a second. Twitchier muscles or more highly oxygenated blood confer a clear advantage for the users of certain drugs, who are rightly called cheats. Yet such drugs are utterly irrelevant to the enhancement of cricket performance.
In none of the salient dimensions of the game of cricket – bowling, batting, catching – do medicines enhance performance. The fact that Inzamam-ul-Haq, one of the greatest batsmen ever, couldn’t beat an asthmatic schoolgirl in a bleep test suggests the relative unimportance of muscle mass and oxygenation to the art of batting. No amount of steroids would have made Steve Harmison hit the cut strip on that fateful Brisbane morning in November 2006. It’s not for want of pseudoephedrine that Alistair Cook plays across his front pad. And a pill has yet to be invented that can lend Graeme Smith the effortless beauty of Mahela Jayawardene’s cover drive.
So much for the disease. What about the cure? WADA developed stringent and zealous procedures in the context of athletics, and rightly so. But one size does not fit all. To apply to cricket rules designed for athletics is disproportionate and potentially destructive. The ‘whereabouts’ clause, to which the BCCI objected, means that violations of the procedure of testing become grounds for a ban. That is, by not giving your whereabouts correctly you will be treated as though you have taken banned substances. A great player like Kumar Sangakkara could, in principle, be given a life ban for incorrectly submitting to testing procedures.
A word of warning. If WADA had their way, Shane Warne would have been struck from the game. Think about that. Because an unapproved chemical was found in Warne’s bloodstream, one of the all time great players would have been kept from the stage forever. There was never any suggestion he gained an unfair competitive advantage. He just broke a rule. If you think about it, he broke a lot of rules, and that’s one reason he’ll always be my favourite. But it never was, and could never have been, the case that drugs made him great. If you imagine a 1920s international sports council populated entirely by pious American prohibitionists trying to ban Jack Hobbs for drinking a beer, you might get a sense of what is at stake.
Cricket is our game, and it should be us, not athletics administrators, who make the rules. While the BCCI’s motives may be murky, if they can keep WADA out of cricket, they will be doing the game a great service.
Pasta with Lentils
Posted by: AM on: July 30, 2009
- In: Pasta| Pulses| Recipes
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Oddly for a vegetarian, W is not keen on pasta. It’s nutritionally indistinguishable from white bread, she complains. She is bemused by the way it’s embraced by people who would look down their noses at a supermarket shopping basket full of processed white bread. But this is just a little pasta (vermicelli to be precise), and it’s in a lentil sauce. And to appeal to me, it’s all cooked in one pot.
The recipe is from NPR’s Splendid Table, repeated here translated into weights and measures that people outside God’s own America can understand. SI units, people. The French finally got something right. Just kidding. But not really. The metric system means we don’t have use different measures in each of our little villages – or at least it would if the USA would finally grow up and, as you people like to say, play ball.
Pasta with Lentils
600ml water
100g lentils
2 large cloves garlic, crushed
3 tbsp extra-virgin olive oil
200g chopped canned plum tomatoes, with some juice
2 tsp salt
1/4 tsp hot red pepper flakes
200g vermicelli
2 tbsp finely chopped parsley
Method
Bring the water to a boil, then turn head down to medium, add lentils, and cook covered for about 20 minutes, or until nearly (but not entirely) tender – al dente.
Add the garlic, olive oil, tomatoes, salt, pepper and chilli flakes. Cover and continue to simmer briskly for another 10 minutes, or until the lentils are fully tender.
Break the vermicelli into 2-inch pieces and add to the lentils. Cook, covered, at a steady simmer until the pasta is just done, stirring and scraping the bottom of the pan as you go – there will be pot-sticking. If that puts you off, you could cook the pasta separately and add it to the lentils.
When the pasta is done take the pot from the heat, stir in the parsley, cover and let stand for about 5 minutes. Then serve.
Broad Bean, Spring Onion, Lemon and Feta Salad
Posted by: AM on: July 26, 2009
- In: Recipes| Salads
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This salad recipe was in the Guardian recently, and the only thing I did differently, in typical middle class foodie fashion, was buy the broad beans fresh from my gal Caroline at Cork’s Saturday farmer’s market. W shelled them while she watched the Tour de France. We also didn’t bother blanching the beans, but were we to do so I would give them just a minute in boiling water and then plunge into cold water to stop them cooking. There’s barely a dressing to speak of, just half a lemon and a little oil. It’s a very fresh, clean salad, perfect for a warm summer day. Of course, if people in Cork only ate salads on sunny days, they’d barely see a fresh vegetable from one year to the next, so I can report that it is also a perfect salad for a warm, blustery, showery day in mid-July.
Broad Bean, Spring Onion, Lemon and Feta Salad
A few good handfuls of broad beans
4 spring onions, finely sliced
Juice of half a lemon
50g Feta, crumbled
1 tbsp Olive oil
A small bunch of fresh chopped parsley
Method
Just put the beans, sliced spring onions, feta and parsley in a bowl, add the lemon and oil (separately or already mixed – I added them separately because I couldn’t see the point in messing up a jam jar with dressing), season to taste with salt and pepper.
Bittman Salads to Try
Posted by: AM on: July 26, 2009
- In: Recipes| Salads
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Same story with the salad recipes from here. I’ll never remember to look for them when they’re buried in a list of a hundred, so here are the ones that caught my eye.
37. Cube smoked tofu, then brush it with a mixture of honey and orange juice; broil until browned. Toss with chopped cucumbers, radishes and peas or pea shoots; drizzle with soy sauce and lime juice.
41. Halve avocados and scoop out some but not all of their flesh. Roughly chop and toss with black beans, queso fresco, cilantro, chopped tomatillos and lime juice. Serve in the meaty avocado shells.
27. Cook whole, unpeeled eggplant in a dry, hot skillet or on a grill, turning occasionally, until completely collapsed and soft. Chop and toss with toasted pita, toasted pine nuts, cooked white beans and halved cherry tomatoes. Dress with olive oil, lemon juice and lots of black pepper. Or a (non-vegan) yogurt dressing is good, especially one laced with tahini.
43. Grate raw beets (use the food processor to avoid ruining everything within spattering distance) and toss with watercress or arugula. Top with sherry vinaigrette and a little goat cheese. Especially obvious, perhaps, but also especially popular.
54. Slice roasted red peppers (if you must use canned, try to find piquillos) and fresh mozzarella. Toss with cooked white beans, olive oil, red wine vinegar, a chopped shallot and fresh rosemary or parsley.
67. Bread salad for anchovy lovers: Chop together many anchovies, a few capers, lemon juice and olive oil (or anchovy oil). Toss with cubes of toasted bread and chopped tomatoes or halved cherry or grape tomatoes.
Guardian Recipes to Try
Posted by: AM on: July 26, 2009
It’s very nice of them to give away the best 100 recipes ever (or whatever), but it’s not much use in one long document. And I’m beyond paper, so I’ll use this space to list the recipes that catch my eye. One day I might even eat them.
2. Slow Roasted Tomatoes
Heat the oven to the lowest setting and halve the tomatoes. Arrange them, cut-side up, on a lightly oiled roasting tray and scatter over some chopped garlic, shallots and thyme leaves. Drizzle generously with olive oil and a sprinkling of sea salt and freshly ground pepper. Gently roast for an hour until tender.
OK, this one I tried. I followed Gordon Ramsay’s instructions to use ‘the lowest setting’ on the oven. I halved the tomatoes and all the rest. One hour later a had a tray of hot tomato halves. They weren’t remotely like the semi-sun-dried tomatoes I was expecting. A disappointment. Maybe my oven was the wrong temperature, but then maybe the recipe should have been more specific.
22. Best crab cakes
In a frying pan, sweat a spoonful of a finely chopped shallot in a little butter. Add a minced jalapeño pepper until soft and add into 300g of carefully picked-through fresh lump crab meat. Add freshly chopped dill and enough of a well-beaten egg white so it holds together, then a little cornflour so it stiffens. Season with sea salt, form into a thick patty, roll in breadcrumbs, and fry in a little hot olive oil. (Serve with corn on the cob and green salad, above.)
41. Penne with asparagus
Boil three handfuls of penne rigate. Meanwhile trim a bunch of the freshest asparagus you can get and cut it into cross sections that match the size of the pasta shapes. Throw them into the same water for the pasta’s last minute. Separate two eggs, keeping only the yolks. Grate a fistful of parmesan and pick a bunch of basil. Drain the pasta and asparagus, and return it to the pot, off the heat. Add a tablespoon of butter, the egg yolks, the basil and the cheese. Fold together quickly, season to your liking and eat. When asparagus goes out of season you can make the same dish with peas straight from the pod.
45. Fettucine with roasted mushrooms
Roast four large field mushrooms with a generous slug of olive oil and a pinch of sea salt. They will take about 15 or 20 minutes. Once they are done, slice them roughly and toss them with two tablespoons of olive oil, a chopped clove of garlic, a small bunch of chopped parsley, the grated zest and the squeezed juice of half a lemon. Boil enough fettuccine or tagliatelle for two people and, once it is cooked and drained, toss it with the marinated mushrooms. Season to your liking and serve garnished with plenty of grated parmesan.
70. Home-made hummus
Truly one of the great culinary inventions. Mix four parts well-cooked or canned chickpeas with one part tahini, along with some of its oil, in a food processor. Add garlic, cumin or pimentón and purée, adding as much olive oil as needed. Stir in lemon juice, salt and pepper to taste; garnish with olive oil and pimentón.
75. Prawn and parsley pesto
Make parsley pesto (parsley, garlic, oil, lemon juice) in a food processor. Sauté whole prawns or small pieces of fish in oil. Arrange fish on small beds of the pesto. You can put this on bread and forget the plates.
85. Bisque
Heat prawn, lobster, fish or chicken broth with minced onion and chopped tomato for five minutes. Add chopped shrimp or lobster to the simmering stock, and cook for another two minutes. Purée, then add double cream or half-and-half, along with salt and pepper. Serve in small cups garnished, if you like, with a piece of cooked prawn or lobster.
Roasted Ratatouille
Posted by: AM on: July 18, 2009
For a long time I’ve avoided ratatouille for a number of reasons. Firstly, I was never sure how to spell it, and I don’t like to eat things I can’t spell – you could call me a lexivore. More importantly, I thought of it as a rather wet vegetable stew, a mushy, tomatoey concoction. Only recently have I realised that ratatouille does not have to be this way, and today we had a courgette, onions and a slightly wrinkly bell pepper lying around, and aubergine and tomatoes were cheap at the market, so I thought I’d give it a chance.
I read a few recipes on the web that gave an authentic method of browning each ingredient separately, bringing them together with some stock and stewing slowly in copious amounts of olive oil. Takes about 2 hours, and messes up about half a dozen different pots and bowls. Surely there’s an easier way? There certainly is: Just cut up the veg, season, cover in a few glugs of oil and roast for 30-40 minutes at about 220 C (450 F). If I hand any thyme or rosemary I would probably have thrown that in the roasting tray as well. One important note: Use two roasting trays if possible, so that the vegetables all have space to caramelise – if they’re all piled up in one tray you risk a little of the wetness I’m trying to avoid.
This method produces the kind of ratatouille I like: The vegetables retain their shape and individuality; they pick up a rich sweetness from the roasting process; they stay dry – the aubergine takes on colour and even a little crispness in the exposed edges, but has the creamiest centre. The flavours stay distinct, but their moisture condenses into a slightly sticky, richly flavoured, oily sauce. We had it with bulgar wheat, boiled until tender and mixed with a mustard vinaigrette. And it was delicious.
Roasted Ratatouille
1 aubergine (US: eggplant)
1 courgette (US: zucchini)
3 red onions
6 small tomatoes
6 cloves of garlic
1 red pepper (US: bell pepper)
A few glugs of olive oil (US: EVOO)
Method
Cut the vegetables into chunks of about an inch or less. Quarter the tomatoes. Spread evenly between two roasting dishes, season with salt and pepper. Add the olive oil, mix well.
Place in a hot over for 30-40 minutes, checking on it half way through and maybe giving the vegetables a gentle stir, to stop some burning while others don’t get a chance to take on colour.
Place in a serving bowl, and eat, warm or cold. As I said, we had this with bulgar, but I bet it would go well with something like monkfish, or just with some crusty bread.
Ready, Freddy, Go…?
Posted by: AM on: July 17, 2009
A few years back England had the makings of a great side. Then it all went wrong.
There were injuries, selectorial confusion, and since then England have been unbalanced and weak. But I’m not talking about 2005, and the subsequent loss of Jones, Vaughan and Flintoff. I’m talking about the destruction of team of the summer of 2006.
Flintoff wasn’t part of what I regard as the best England cricket team since 2005. Coincidence? I think not. The reason is that England that summer had a beautiful balance. As the all-rounder, Flintoff is always supposed to balance the team, but his presence has precisely the opposite effect. And I think I know why – he’s not quite good enough as a batsman or a bowler.
What? I hear you cry. He’s our best bowler! Indeed, but because he is so injury prone and so unlikely to run through a side, England would be reluctant to play him in a four-man attack. So he’s always employed as part of a five man attack, while occupying one of the chief batting slots.
Which brings us to his batting. He clearly isn’t good enough to be a number six. England have recently taken to playing Prior at six and Flintoff at seven. But with Flintoff unable to really command a place as a top six batsman or as part of a four-man attack, his inclusion always involves effectively being one batsman light. This creates massive (and well justified) anxieties about the batting unit, and creates huge pressure on wicketkeeper and bowlers to be able to make up for the frailties of the five-man top order. This in turn influences the selection of bowlers. If it weren’t for the fact that England with Flintoff always play one batsman light, Broad would probably not be quite so secure in the side. England’s need for tail-end runs distorts their judgement of bowling quality.
Which brings us to England’s team of the summer of 2006, their best post-2005 team, and the only team of recent vintage that filled me with optimism. No Flintoff, no Vaughan and no Jones, but England had six batsmen, the best wicketkeeper in the country, and a varied four-man bowling attack. It was a humdinger of a series against a very good Pakistan team – Mohammed Yousuf couldn’t stop scoring runs, and Younis Kahn and Inzamam weren’t bad either. It was 2-0 to England going into a close fought but ultimately farcical fourth test, which was awarded to England in controversial and wholly avoidable circumstances.
My impression is that England that summer were beautifully balanced, full of purpose and clear about their roles. Trescothick, Strauss, Cook, Pietersen, Colly and Bell (who actually looked good for a while at number six) all got in the runs. There was a good balance of passive and aggressive players, and with six batsmen it was clear that they were expected to come up with the runs – and that’s what they did. Read chipped in with a couple of fifties in the last two tests of the summer and kept beautifully, which was important because Panesar was bowling well and every ounce of guile was needed to get Yousuf, Younis and Inzamam back to the pavilion.
The bowlers too had pretty clear roles. Hoggard (the most underrated player of the last decade, and still worthy of a place in the attack) and Panesar kept control and bowled a lot of overs. They also took wickets. Harmison was in one of his better moods, erratic but hostile, and Mahmood (remember him?) was fast, determined and showed real promise.
Then it all went wrong. The retirement of Trescothick is a blow from which the team has still not recovered. Ever since then, apart from Vaughan’s brief returns to the top slot, the opening pair have ceded the initiative to the bowlers, even on the intermittent occasions when they’ve actually built a partnership. And then there was the return of Flintoff and the well-documented disaster of Australia, when the summer team was destroyed to make way for Jones, Giles and captain Fred. We all know how that turned out.
And now? Still today nobody seems to know their role. Vague exhortations to ‘take responsibility’, ‘put your hand up’ or ‘try your nuts off’ are no substitute for a balanced team with clear roles. But the roles of this current gang are incoherent. Cook should play anchor, but that’s Strauss’s job too. So Cook gets confused, thinks he has to play like Trescothick, and gets out to risky shots (Cook’s problems, we should note, started with Strauss’s return to the team). Flintoff is supposed to be the strike bowler, but he doesn’t strike enough. Broad should be told to be metronomic, bowl close to the stumps, wicket to wicket like a posh McGrath. But where else are the wickets going to come from? He (understandably) tries to ‘take responsibility’ by trying to take wickets, which perversely makes him less effective.
So there’s a chance that Flintoff’s probable absence from the second Ashes test at lords will force the team into a far healthier balance. Problems remain, however, and they’re not going to disappear by telling everyone to ‘put their hands up’. The trouble is that if the players were clear about their roles, it would become obvious that the team itself is unbalanced.
But if Flintoff’s absence teaches England that the eleven best players don’t necessarily make the best team, then there may be hope.
