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Cricket is a wonderful game, at least it is supposed to be. However, there has never been a more joyless bunch of cricketers than this current England team. There was a moment during the Sydney Test in the Ashes where it really struck me that I had never seen a team that looked less keen to play cricket than England’s Test side. The contrast with the Australian side was clear. The hosts were laughing and sharing private jokes as the anthems were played, looking to all the world as if they were thoroughly enjoying playing their favourite game for a living. This is how it should be for, after all, each and every one of these men would have grown up dreaming about doing exactly what they are doing, walking out on to a cricket field and being paid to play the sport they love.
At this point I can imagine you are thinking that this is going to be yet another article bashing England’s hapless cricketers. You know the sort of thing, the type of sentiments that you might read in the comments section of the Daily Mail website. Perhaps a few references to “back in my day” or “pampered, overpaid players”, maybe even mention of the word “snowflakes”
However, this is no such thing. In fact, I believe the England players have every reason to hate playing cricket. I had a lot of sympathy for Paul Collingwood’s sentiments when he said that, far from attracting criticism, England’s players should receive medals for enduring their recent Ashes tour.
This received the usual mockery from the sort of people who hang off Sir Geoffrey Boycott’s every word, but Collingwood has a valid point. England’s cricketers have been stretched to breaking point by bubble life and the insanity of a schedule that would have broken any sports team in the world. Of course, Australia’s players looked happy to be playing in the Ashes, it was their first Test series in 10 months. In that time England had played 12 Test matches, home and away.
I can already hear the carping from many fans that the players earn large sums of money for this and that the rest of us ordinary people would do anything to play sport for our country. I would wager, however, that most of the keyboard worriers who say this are able to go home to their partners and children at the end of the working day. I personally was able to work from home for the entirety of both major lockdowns, which enabled me to see my young son grow and develop each day. England’s cricketers, however, have been locked away in hotel rooms, unable to see their loved ones, relying on video calls and what’s app messages to keep in contact with their children and, for much of the time, unable to even share their hotel rooms with the teammates that they take the field with. In the military or in prison, solitary confinement is considered the ultimate punishment. To the ECB it is just another way to keep the money flowing in. Yes, the players have access to PlayStations, internet , s atellite TV and room service but a gilded cage is still a cage nonetheless.
It is also worth remembering that all of England’s Test players withdrew from the rescheduled IPL in September of last year to concentrate on being fresh for the Ashes, so the usual accusations of players being willing to endure bubble life to line their own pockets cannot even be thrown at them this time.
The core group of England’s cricketers have been living like this for two years and it is not sustainable. In fact, it is a miracle that more players have not suffered the mental health issues that have affected Ben Stokes. Perhaps they have but have just been suffering in silence. One hopes this is not true but fears it may well be.
On the back of this, they were then asked to undertake the toughest task in the international game, an away Ashes series, with absolutely no useful preparation. It is doubtful whether any of the great England teams of the past could have fared much better.
One has great sympathy for Chris Silverwood and Joe Root in these circumstances. It is an undeniable fact that both men made appalling decisions on and off the field. the non-selection of Stuart Broad and James Anderson in Brisbane is one of the most staggeringly bad tactical calls ever made by an international cricket team. However, the rest and rotation policy for which Silverwood has received so much flak was a simple necessity to safeguard the mental health of his players in the face of the impossible schedule that was foisted on him. It is easy to contrast him with Justin Langer and his more hard-line approach, but Langer’s Australia did not have to content with England’s fixture list. Given that the Australian coach was forced out of his job for being “too intense” with his players it will be interesting to see how he would cope with managing England’s far more crowded fixture list should he be offered the job by the ECB.
Now we have a three Test series against the West Indies, a series that surely England’s jaded players could do without. Yes, it is honourable to reciprocate the WICB for being willing to tour England at the height of the pandemic but sandwiching in another Test series on the back of the Ashes tour, before a full international summer seems a new level of insanity for even the ECB. It is worth remembering that this tour was scheduled, as a two Test series, even before the pandemic so the idea of showing gratitude to the Caribbean and its players had not arisen.
This summer England will play 3 Test matches against New Zealand before heading to the Netherlands for an ODI series. This will be followed by 3 ODI’s, 3 T20’s and a rescheduled Test against India and 3 Tests, 3 ODI’s and 3 T20’s against South Africa. After a short break the players will then head out to the T20 World Cup in Australia before staying Down Under for an unfathomable ODI and T20 series following the conclusion of the World Cup. After this they will head straight to Pakistan for a Test and ODI series before heading out to India for the 50 Over World Cup before coming home to do it all again in a home Ashes summer. Are you tired yet?
One hope Covid bubbles are a thing of the past by this winter or I fear for the mental state of our cricketers. England’s players are not mentally weak, they are mentally and physically exhausted. But until our game’s administrators begin to care more about the wellbeing of their players than the sound of their cash registers nothing will change.
Billy Crawford
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