The processes of Geoff Miller

Daniel Norcross has a talk to England’s Chairman of Selectors, Geoff Miller, about how the team is selected, Samit Patel, Darren Pattinson and how to become the next cab off the rank.

“At that moment there was no prouder man in England than Geoff Miller, sitting in his little house in Chesterfield”

“Players need to have technical ability, heart, mental toughness, and to have attained a minimum standard of fitness”

“When I rang the ECB switchboard to speak to Miller the receptionist had never heard of him. “Is that Geoff with a G or a J?” she said”

It’s midnight on Christmas Day in the Geoff Miller household. A largely family affair is drawing to a close. England’s National Selector is wilting. But duty calls. England are playing Australia in Melbourne, so Miller turns on the TV. With Australia at 60 for three, though, his resistance crumbles and before retiring to bed he sticks a tape in to record the action for him to watch in the morning.  “When I woke up I could see that Strauss and Cook were batting and thought ‘that’s good. Now just don’t lose a wicket before close of play.’” he recalls. “I couldn’t see the score at first but then it came up.” It was 146 for no wicket. “I thought ‘what? How long have they been batting?’ Then I saw that the Aussies had got 98 all out. I tell you, at that moment there was no prouder man in England than Geoff Miller, sitting in his little house in Chesterfield. I’ve had some fantastic moments in my career but to win the Ashes home and away as a player and a selector made me very proud.”

Indeed, other than Alec Bedser, Miller is the only Englishman to achieve that remarkable feat. So how is it that a man who confesses to being a limited Test-match performer, a joker in the dressing-room, and a regular on the after dinner circuit has managed to preside over the most settled regime in the post war history of English cricket?

After all, he played at a time of comparable riches at the top of the English game; a time when selectors could choose from Gooch, Gatting, Gower, Botham, Willis, Knott, Underwood, Randall, Hendrick and a whole host of worthy back-up players. Yet selectorial controversy was far away. Recall the endless debates about Gatting or Randall? The fiasco of Botham’s sacking (or was it resignation?) as England captain in 1981. The repeated knee-jerk reactions to intermittent failure that can so destabilise a team.

“We’re looking for players not to be looking over their shoulder the whole time so they can instead focus on the team ethic,” says Miller. “We give the players honesty. We give them a fair crack. We give them consistency and continuity. It’s no accident [that we have a settled side]. It’s done by meticulous method. When I was playing, far better players than me didn’t know if they’d be in the side from one game to the next.”

Consistency, continuity and method are Miller’s favourite watchwords and he returns to this theme repeatedly during the 80 minutes he spends with me.

“It’s not that I’m closing the shop. I’d never do that. There will always be opportunities for players to come in. After all, we are looking for strength in depth and the last thing we want is to find that we lose a whole load of players all at one time. We don’t want to find ourselves having to rebuild. Our job as selectors is to plan for today and for the future. And with there being so much international cricket today the players need a rest, which allows us to feed new players in to the side gradually. But it’s my job to explain to the players why they’ve been left out. It might be because they need a rest, some ‘chill time’ as the modern players say. It may be because they’re not performing. But if that’s the case we’ll be honest with them and in return I expect them to be honest with us.”

This is all such a far cry from the days when one Chairman of Selectors announced to the world the inclusion of “Malcolm Devon”, a player he’d never seen play. For Miller, unlike many of his predecessors, is a fabulous paradox. He talks with passion, and is thrillingly engaging about such mundane concepts as “process” and “analysis”. He and his team – Ashley Giles, James Whitaker and Andy Flower – have simplified what for every other English selection committee has been an almost impossibly complex task. After all, no other country has to wade through the competing claims of players from 18 first-class clubs, nor such a widely diverse media that has in the past trumpeted the claims of dozens of players simultaneously: remember the summer of five captains in 1988, or the confused debacle of 1989 that saw the selectors choose no fewer than 29 players? How many times in the 90s were Hick, Ramprakash and Crawley picked, then dropped? Under Miller, no matter the quality available at his disposal, you know that that will never happen. And while it makes the life of the jobbing journalist considerably harder, it is reaping dividends on the field.

When I suggest that he is perhaps fortunate to be presiding over a time of relative strength in the English game, Miller is quick to explain what he sees as the fundamental difference between now and earlier eras. “We’ve set up a rigorous performance programme and established the Lions squad,” he says. “Now players don’t just come straight up from the counties. They develop mentally and physically. It’s not accidental; it’s all been worked on because it’s a necessity.”

It is through the performance programme that inexperienced players understand the criteria they need to fulfil to make it into the full England team, and by playing for the Lions the selectors can assess how a player will respond to the increased pressure of being on the fringe of the senior side. “It is a step up. It allows us to find out whether a player can cope with the intensity, and the proof of the pudding was in the Ashes triumph, which had been in the planning for 18 months.”

Indeed, it is the lack of an established Lions programme to which he attributes the one strikingly anomalous selection of his entire reign, namely that of Darren Pattinson at Headingley in 2008. “We had to bring in cover for Jimmy [Anderson] because he had a slight side strain,” explains Miller. “Pattinson had out-bowled everybody else that season by a mile, and because we didn’t have the Lions and the performance programme up and running, we had to make a snap decision. It did open a few eyes because it went against the policy of consistency. But it was a decision taken with logic and after analysis. However, it didn’t go with the usual pattern of selections. Unfortunately [because the decision was taken so late in the day] I didn’t have a chance to talk to Darren beforehand. Then during the game the press, media, commentators and public put him under enormous pressure. It may not have worked as a selection but it was taken for the right reasons. It wouldn’t happen now with the Lions programme established. But he didn’t actually bowl any worse than anyone else in that game.”

And this is the key to Miller’s approach. The mistake with Pattinson wasn’t in the logic of the selection but rather that they hadn’t had the chance to see how he would perform on a bigger stage, they hadn’t had the opportunity to assess how mentally ready he was for international cricket. The upshot of this approach is that players will only be called up to the senior team after they’ve proved themselves consistently through the Lions and performance programme. You sense that Miller’s passionate advocacy of this approach is largely fostered by his own experiences as a player. Throughout our conversation he emphasises the collaborative approach between players and selectors. They must be honest with each other and expect the same standards of each other. If a player is not properly prepared for senior selection then it would be wrong of the selectors to pick him. How this approached may have benefited countless ruined careers in the past is anyone’s guess, but there is no possibility of a Mark Lathwell, Paul Terry or Andy Lloyd being thrown into a Test match with so little preparation again.

“Players need to have technical ability, heart, mental toughness, and to have attained a minimum standard of fitness,” he says. “There is no escape from the fitness factor. It is a big part of all international cricket.”

And as for Samit Patel, he says: “There is no room for unfit players and yes, there is a guideline. We made it plainly obvious to Samit and eventually the penny has dropped. He went away, he worked hard at it and got fit enough to be given the opportunity to find out whether he’s prepared to take his act that bit further. And he’ll know from looking around that changing-room that he has to buy into the fitness requirements and work ethic of all the captains and the management.”

When I suggest that this hardline approach would have ensured the likes of Colin Milburn would never have got in the side, he bristles slightly. “Colin Milburn would have found it absolutely impossible to play all aspects of Twenty20 these days. The fielding aspect is trying to save 20 or 30 runs. If you don’t save them, but instead give them away, you need to score 50 or 60 runs. It was acceptable in Colin’s day, and of course he was playing Test cricket, but it just isn’t acceptable today.”

And that’s not all that has changed according to Miller. I put it to him that cricketers today may have less fun than they did in his day. “It is more professional today,” he replies. “We played with passion and intensity [in my time]. We played very hard cricket. But we would socialize with our opponents.” He implies that today England’s team spirit is fostered almost entirely from within their own dressing-room and, unlike some of his contemporaries who frequently question the need for an ever expanding backroom team, he is adamant in his support of a strong infrastructure.

Indeed he credits umpires, county coaches and captains with feeding him and his selectors with the information they need. “Everyone is constantly monitored and watched,” he explains. “And they all now know what they need to do [to get selected]. We’re looking for consistent performance over a long period. That consistency is vital. We don’t want someone just turning it on occasionally for their counties or else they might do that for England.”

This passion for consistency explains the decision to pick Eoin Morgan over Ravi Bopara for the Test series against Sri Lanka despite many pundits thinking Bopara had got the nod. “Why wouldn’t we pick Morgan? He’d been selected for Australia and had done nothing wrong,” argues Miller. “To get in ahead of Morgan someone would have to have done something very special.”

It is often said of referees and umpires that the best ones are never noticed. When I rang the ECB switchboard to speak to Miller the receptionist had never heard of him. “Is that Geoff with a G or a J?” she said. When I put this to Miller he responds enthusiastically. “I’m not searching for notoriety or trumpets,” he stresses. “I’m interested in us being a successful side. There must be no egos [on the selection panel]. Everyone has to have England in mind not their own personal success”

And in his current committee he feels he has the perfect blend. “We have the ideal variety. We have me who is old enough to have an outside view. In Ashley I have a man who has recently finished playing. James [Whitaker] has got international experience and has been chief executive at Leicestershire. He sees cricket across the country. And Andy Flower, who knows the changing-room and can describe the sort of player he’s looking for. As far as I’m concerned it’s absolutely perfect.”

The aim, Miller states, is to become number one in the world in all three formats and you can feel his genuine pride at the success of the T20 team under Paul Collingwood in 2010; the Test side is coming along nicely and have a chance to get close to their aim with victory over the touring Indians this summer. But no one would pretend it is all plain sailing. Miller and his selection panel have yet to crack one-day internationals and perhaps it’s no coincidence that a consistent approach has yet to be found. While the Test side is habitually selected on the basis of six batsmen and four bowlers – “the statistics show that in the history of the game this has been the most successful balance”, says Miller – a similar certitude over the make up of England’s limited-overs side seems not yet to be forthcoming.

So, at least as far as Test matches go, what have we learnt? There is a “next cab off the rank” approach; the selectors are very much aware of the abilities and competing claims of every player in the country; there won’t be any surprises – if, like me, you are a county tragic urging Miller to fly your prodigiously talented 21-year-old paceman or young batting genius straight into the Test side, think again. If he isn’t in the Lions squad, if he’s only ever played county cricket and is perhaps just a little portly it isn’t going to happen.

It may make it less fun for armchair pundits; it may spoil the speculative fun we all used to have over a few pints in the pub. But you know what? If you want to see how England’s old chaotic approach would work now, you can always watch Australia.