Andrew Strauss: ‘We’d be mad to be satisfied by Ashes win’

Andrew Strauss puts the Ashes win in perspective in his interview in the special 2009 Review issue of SPIN, which is in shops from Friday November 27.

SPIN: You’re very feet-on-the-ground about the Ashes win, aren’t you?  There’s no triumphalism – you feel it was the start of something rather than the end-goal…

Andrew Strauss: It has to be. Look at our world ranking and look where Australia are. Anyone who thinks that we’ve achieved our life goal would be… mad. Quite frankly.

But it is the life goal of every English cricketer to win the Ashes…

Well, it is, but…

So it would be a reasonable reaction to think ‘job done’…

Exactly. It’s so important to our country: the history, the tradition, the rivalry. But in pure cricketing terms at the moment, there are bigger challenges for us. We may not have the same euphoria if we win in South Africa, but it’s a bigger challenge. I personally think it’s sad that the England team has never been the No 1 team in the world for any extended period of time, certainly in one- day cricket. And we’re going to be taking as many steps as we can to make sure we get somewhere near that.

To England fans, the 6-1 NatWest Series defeat to Australia after the Ashes may have looked similar to the 5-0 thrashing your side took against Sri Lanka in 2006. Has there been any progress at all? Did the two series feel any different to you?

Well, some of the traits were similar. At that time [2006] we had a pretty good Test side but we were experimenting with one-day players: Tim Bresnan and a couple of other players came in for that Sri Lanka series probably when they weren’t quite ready. This time, we are maybe a bit more settled as a side. But when you’re losing like that it makes you reassess what you’re doing as a side. Myself and Andy Flower have a number of areas that we feel we have to improve upon if we want to compete with some of these teams away from home as well as at home in the future. And the Australian defeat was really a catalyst for us to start putting some of those plans into action…

Writing in SPIN, Eoin Morgan said that defeat gave England a new carefree, nothing-to-lose  approach to their batting. He used the phrase ‘hell-for-leather’…

Well, there’s a number of things we’re looking to do, some of which we haven’t spoken to the players about yet, actually. But that attacking intent is a good one, away from home in particular. To live with the likes of India and some of these teams you have to play that way. But at the same time, you can’t use that as a crutch: ‘I got out but at least I played my shots’. We need to be more consistent as a batting unit, so we need to improve our skills. If we want to be more attacking and more consistent, our skills need to improve a lot. 

Andrew Strauss’ book, Testing Times – In Pursuit of the Ashes’ is published by Hodder and is in shops now. This is an extract from an interview in the Christmas issue of SPIN, also featuring Stuart Broad, Michael Vaughan, Garry Sobers, Viv Richards and the debut of Andy Caddick as our hard-hitting star columnist – as well as our now-traditional Top 50 countdown of the year.

Free 2009 Cricketers Who’s Who when you subscribe to Spin this month!

Yup - you get a free copy of the Who’s Who - worth £18.99 RRP – when you subscribe to SPIN right now.

The Cricketers Who’s Who is celebrating its 30th year of publication and features full profiles of every player likely to play first-class cricket in England in 2009.

As well as stats and career details, the 750-page tome also features player’s off-field opinions on the game as well as things like their favourite bands (generally this is Snow Patrol, though one player, oddly, chooses 80s MORists Mike and the Mechanics.)

So Chris Silverwood is a karate black belt; Liam Plunkett’s favourite band is (still) “r’n'b”; Rob Key called his daughter Aaliyah and, as a youth, played tennis for Kent; Stuart Broad played hockey for the county as a teenager and always bowls three warm-up balls before he begins a spell…

We could go on.

Suffice to say it’s full of hard fact and soft trivia and is pretty much indispensable - particularly if you’re getting it for free.

This year, it also features an intro by England skipper Andrew Strauss (4 A-levels, BA Hons (Economics), favourite band not listed but known to be friends with Keane.)

Subscribe to the next 10 issues of Spin for £30 and you get the magazine before it’s in the shops, make a massive saving on our £3.75 cover price AND get a free Who’s Who worth £18.99.

It’s obvious!

Andy Flower confirmed as England coach

Andy Flower will oversee England’s attempt to win back the Ashes, after the ECB confirmed his appointment as coach this afternoon.

Flower, who has been assistant coach since May 2007, takes the top job three months after the sacking of previous coach Peter Moores.

It is Flower’s first head coach role. “We have every belief that Andy has the potential to become a world-class coach,” said England MD Hugh Morris, in response  to questions about Flower’s lack of experience. “We believe we have the right man to do the best job for England.

“I am delighted that Andy has accepted the role.

“I had the privilege of seeing Andy work with the England team during the recent Caribbean tour and he impressed not only me but also the players, the backroom staff, management and the ECB officials who were out there.

“He is a man of great cricketing pedigree as well as a man of unquestionable integrity. He will provide the outstanding leadership that England require as we embark on this most exciting and challenging of years.”

Morris said that the ECB had received 30 applicants for the job, but would not confirm how many of them had been interviewed. 

Of his coaching philosophy, Flower, who is 40, said: “I think I’m honest and fairly open; I’d like to see an ethos of constant improvement in our side. As for any details on our strategy moving forward, I’ve obviously only just taken on the role, so those will have to wait.

“The relationship with the captain is very important. I respect Andrew Strauss. I think he’s a very good cricketer and a very good captain - so we’re starting on the right note.”

Having played 63 Tests for Zimbabwe, the last in 2002, Flower became assistant coach to then-England boss Peter Moores in 2007. He had already spent two winters working as a specialist batting coach with the ECB Academy. 

Under Moores, England lost their six-year unbeaten home record and lost four Test series out of seven. Flower took over as, effectively, a caretaker head coach for the recent West Indies series, after the January sacking of Moores. The 1-0 defeat in the Caribbean continued England’s poor run, though Flower and new skipper Andrew Strauss struck up a good working relationship that the ECB have decided offers the best way forward for the team. 

Cynics will say that the ECB’s hand has been forced: the head-hunting agency appointed to find the new coach has found the leading lights of world cricket less than keen to get involved with the England job. John Buchanan, Tom Moody and Graham Ford all opted out of the race while South Africa coach Mickey Arthur was apparently approached only belatedly, after he had signed a new contract with South Africa.

Flower, once ranked the world’s No 1 batsman, is highly rated as a specialist batting coach. Though he has never been head coach of a club or national team, he also brings the advantages of his recent experience as a top-flight player as well as his background with Zimbabwe, where an under-rated team punched above their weight to produce some outstanding results, after achieving Test status in the early 1990s.

Strauss misses Twenty20 squad

Chris Tremlett and Sajid Mahmood return to England colours in the 30-man T20 preliminary squad – while Test captain Andrew Strauss is ‘rested’.

In Strauss’ absence, the captain for the tournament will be named at a later date – though the inclusion of Strauss’ Middlesex colleague Shaun Udal, who skippered the county to the T20 Cup last year, is intriguing.

Alongside Hampshire skipper Dimitri Mascarenhas, Udal will be a prime candidate to lead the side.

At 40, Udal is the oldest member of the party – while Warwickshire seamer Chris Woakes, who only turned 20 in March, is the youngest.

Essex skipper James Foster finally returns as one of three keepers named in the party, while  Yorkshire seamer Tim Bresnan and  Worcestershire fast bowler Kabir Ali are also recalled for the first time since the disastrous ODI series with Sri Lanka in 2006.

New faces include Kent’s Joe Denly (alongside county skipper Rob Key) and Middlesex and Ireland’s Eoin Morgan (but not, as widely predicted, Dawid Malan).

Chairman of selectors Geoff Miller said: “Andrew Strauss had an outstanding tour of the West Indies during a difficult winter. Andrew and the selectors believe his game is better suited to Test and one-day international cricket and it is for that reason he has not been selected in the preliminary 30-man squad. Andrew is focused on the Test and ODI format of the game despite not being included in the 30-man Twenty20 squad.

“The selectors have decided against naming a captain for the ICC World Twenty20 at this stage because we feel it is important to comprehensively review the recent tour of the Caribbean and seek input from all relevant parties including the incoming England team director who is yet to be appointed. Once these processes have been achieved the selectors will name England’s Twenty20 captain in due course.”

Full squad Kabir Ali (Worcestershire); James Anderson (Lancashire); Gareth Batty (Worcestershire); Ian Bell (Warwickshire); Ravi Bopara (Essex); Timothy Bresnan (Yorkshire); Stuart Broad (Nottinghamshire); Paul Collingwood (Durham); Stephen Davies (Worcestershire); Joe Denly (Kent); James Foster (Essex); Andrew Flintoff (Lancashire); Stephen Harmison (Durham); Robert Key (Kent); Sajid Mahmood (Lancashire); Dimitri Mascarenhas (Hampshire); Eoin Morgan (Middlesex); Graham Napier (Essex); Samit Patel (Nottinghamshire); Kevin Pietersen (Hampshire); Liam Plunkett (Durham); Matthew Prior (Sussex); Adil Rashid (Yorkshire); Owais Shah (Middlesex); Ryan Sidebottom (Nottinghamshire); Graeme Swann (Nottinghamshire); Chris Tremlett (Hampshire); Shaun Udal (Middlesex); Chris Woakes (Warwickshire); Luke Wright (Sussex).

England fans: look away now

There’s been a lot of moaning over the last month from English cricket’s top brass. National selector Geoff Miller and England MD Hugh Morris believe that English counties should not employ Aussies in the lead-up to the Ashes as it is, basically, unpatriotic.

Kent have signed Stuart Clark; Hampshire Marcus North and Middlesex Phil Hughes. The argument goes that in giving these guys six weeks practice in English conditions, the counties are stabbing English cricket – and their own long-term interests – in the back.

They have a point.

England’s Ashes fortunes may well depend on Stuart Clark having six weeks build-up with Kent.

Then again, they may depend more on the fact that England currently have a team that could not give the Brondesbury Park Women’s Institute a proper game.

Maybe Miller and Morris and co should stop bleating about the opposition getting little 5 per cent advantages and wonder why, after 18 months in their respective jobs, England have failed to win a game all winter. (I’m not counting the West Indies’ off-field suicide in the first ODI Guyana.)

England were bowled out for 117 in the third ODI in Barbados on Friday. The Windies knocked the runs off in less than 15 overs.

Afterwards, Andrew Strauss said it was the worst performance for a long time. Presumably 48 days is a long time in cricket: it was only on February 7 that his side were bowled out for 51 to lose the Test at Jamaica.

Let’s not forget that West Indies have for a long time been the lowest-ranked major team in world cricket.

Miller and Morris want it all ways: if they really do believe that six weeks’ practice in local conditions gives Test teams an advantage, why does their own England team never - even after the 2006 Ashes ‘undercooked’ debacle and the Schofield report recommendations that followed – have more than six days’ match practice before an overseas Test series? Is it just a coincidence that England always lose the first Test in a series?

Ian Bell took the bullet for the 51 all out. Who will take the bullet if England now lose the ODI series?

I am sorely tempted to see the England team as more like a government. The team has failed, so let’s vote all of them out. After all, how much worse could England’s zero per cent win record be if they brought in 11 new players?

Perhaps instead of selecting England teams player by player, they should simply stand and fall together? Players say that scoring a century is meaningless if the team doesn’t win. Why not take that thinking a stage further?

Quite honestly, as captains always say in victory, it would be wrong to pick out individuals. You can’t drop KP and Flintoff, can you? James Anderson gives his all. We all argued for Owais Shah and Ravi Bopara to be given a go. Are there really two batsmen more deserving of their chance? Even Steve Harmison - who was absent on Friday but whose underachievement seems to sum up the whole squad’s – even Harmison: he can’t bowl 92 mph hostility with accuracy anymore. But who can? Saj Mahmood?  

There’s a case for keeping everyone.

Of course, before calling up the England Lions to take their place, we might want to bear in mind that Rob Key’s side didn’t win a single game on their recent tour of New Zealand. They drew two warm-up games, drew the two Tests, then lost both ODIs and a Twenty20.

So while the ’sack the lot of them’ route appeals, we may have to face the fact that the 15 players England have with them in the Caribbean are, roughly speaking, the best available. I’d like to see Adil Rashid get a game, certainly ahead of Gareth Batty. But there are no magic solutions.

England fans and media may just have to face the fact that the Ashes win of 2005 and the other minor successes since – ODIs series wins in Australia and Sri Lanka, that 4-0 thrashing of the Saffers last summer – were blips and the natural state of English cricket for the last 30-odd years has been marked by underachievement and wasted resources.

And – primarily – by an insane belief that we are still the greatest cricket nation in the world and that the last decades have just been some kind of bad dream.

England fans still, for some reason, like to think they’re Manchester United: well-resourced, well-led, a team for whom any defeat is a surprise. In fact they’re more like Newcastle United: great fans and plenty of them and massive expectations built on nothing more than blind hope.

There’s no sensible reason to expect England to turn things round suddenly and go on to win the Ashes 5-0; still less to hope that they won’t simply be embarrassed at the ICC World Twenty20.

England might, belatedly, turn things round in the Caribbean. A 3-2 win would be hailed as Ashes-winning momentum, when really it will be a case of too little too late.

It’s plainly too much to expect England to be world-beaters. But is it really too much to expect them to give the West Indies – officially the worst team in the world – a game that lasts beyond tea-time? 

Messrs Miller and Morris might want to address this question before bleating about the counties’ recruitment policies.

Because right now, the only legacy of 18 months of these fellas being in charge is a shambles of a team. 

That the Aussies think they might even need to prepare for six minutes - never mind six weeks - to take on England is, surely, an act of pure flattery rather than practical need.