Peter Moores, Kevin Pietersen and me – by Michael Vaughan

SPIN: One of the switches between Duncan Fletcher and Peter Moores was that Moores wanted to select players by measuring averages and stats, rather than on character…

Michael Vaughan: At the highest level I think it’s important to have guys who are very tough. When you start talking about averages you’re getting away from the processes of doing your day-to-day job. You’re looking too far ahead. 

The whole aspect of playing high-level sport is keeping yourself in the now: performing in that minute on that one ball. And the constant talk of averages and methods… I think it affected players. They were looking over their shoulders, thinking if they didn’t average ‘x’ they’d be back on the county treadmill. I’ve never known any player be too comfortable with being in the England team. The reason why players fail is usually because they feel under too much pressure either from themselves or people around them. I always felt my job as captain was trying to release that pressure.

[Peter Moores and I] obviously didn’t have a great professional relationship. Duncan had such a great reign, and I think [Moores] wanted to put his own stamp on it but I don’t think that there was necessarily the amount of change required that he was trying to implement. 

Me and him not having the chance to work with both teams – I resigned as ODI captain straight away after the 2007 World Cup– it wasn’t easy for him. But there’s no point in lying: I didn’t link with Peter Moores as well as I had done with Duncan Fletcher, and if you look back at all the successful reigns the captain-coach situation is such an important one and when it’s not right you can probably tell by the results on the pitch…

Were you consulted over Moores’ appointment?

No. 

That would surprise our readers…

I’d never met him… I’d heard he was doing a great job at Loughborough. At the time I was quite in favour of an English guy coming in. But for some reason it didn’t work. 

But, as the captain, you should have been consulted, shouldn’t you?

Well, I wasn’t consulted about very much. [Chairman of selectors] David Graveney was a guy I trusted and had a good relationship with and he got the axe without my having a phone call. When the Schofield report [into English cricket, post-2006/07 Ashes] came out – we had some very high-profile people on that report making some great suggestions but the most important one about the need for our players to play less cricket’s not even been looked at. So… was it a good report? You’d have to say no.

There seemed to be an overall sense that the team had too much power. But I’m not too sure about that. 

Kevin Pietersen didn’t think England could win the Ashes with Peter Moores as coach. Did you?

[Long pause] If him and Kevin had got on, yeah. But captain and coach not getting on? No chance.

So Moores’ approach was not so flawed that it brought the whole team down…

[slightly incredulous at the idea] Nah… Me and Peter didn’t click. That’s why I had to move over, because I thought someone else needed to take on the team and the new person needed to bond a new relationship with Peter and his new ideas. I don’t have an ego at all. I wasn’t so egotistical that I wanted to stay in the captaincy job as long as I possibly could, ’cos I probably could have done. I wanted to pass it on. And unfortunately Peter and Kevin didn’t get on.

 But in a funny way everything happens for a reason. Getting Andy Flower and Straussy together… it looks like a fantastic partnership. It looks very similar to  the one myself and Duncan had and that Nasser and Duncan had and it’s good to see the England team working in a smooth controlled way.

There’s a perception that you might have had an involvement in the process of  Kevin Pietersen trying to get rid of Peter Moores… Was there anything in that?

Absolute crap.

But you know that’s a perception? That idea that you were some kind of backstage Godfather of English cricket, always having a say even when you weren’t playing…

It’s absolute crap. Anyone who knows Kevin Pietersen knows that he makes his own decisions. Throughout my time I didn’t necessarily agree with a lot of Peter’s ideas, but once I’d gone, I’d gone. I had no input. 

Michael Vaughan’s Time to Declare is in shops now, published by Hodder. The full interview, from which this is extracted, is in the Christmas issue of SPIN, in shops now.

Why England must forget Michael Vaughan

Perhaps it’s the British way. With an uncertain future in front of us, the tendency to look back upon a remarkable history is understandable.

But it’s funny how selective memories can be, isn’t it? And the clamour to bring back several members of the 2005 Ashes-winning side is particularly hard to understand. While that was a glorious chapter in English cricket history, it is often overlooked that is was largely the same team that were thrashed 5-0 in the Ashes of 2006-2007. Nine of the 11 who played in the first Test in Brisbane had played in the Ashes of 2005.

Yet the media continue to push the claims of those players, somehow forgetting to mention the months of mediocrity that have elapsed since that series.

For a start there is Simon Jones. Jones did, it is true, produce some impressive performances for Worcestershire last year. But he also managed just nine games and, between spells of bowling, limped painfully around the field. He is, at the time of writing, recovering from another knee operation and supposedly a few weeks from resuming bowling. But isn’t he always?

Then there’s Steve Harmison. Since the start of 2007, he has a Test bowling average of 40 and has been tried again and again in the hope that he will recover something he lost many months ago. For the record, he only took nine wickets in the final four Tests of that 2005 series.

How about Andrew Flintoff? He is often characterised as the saviour of England cricket but he hasn’t taken a five-wicket haul or scored a century since 2005. So why is he still seen as a match-winner?

And then there’s Michael Vaughan. Vaughan’s case for a recall is perhaps the most puzzling of all, seeing as it is based on performances that came nearly seven years ago. That and his friendship with influential people in the media.

It’s worth reflecting on Vaughan’s record. He has one score over 50 in his last eight Tests and, since June last year, averages just nine.

Ravi Bopara, by contrast, scored a century in his last Test. And was dropped.

Vaughan’s record from 2005 is interesting, too. Take out his one significant score from that series – 166 – and he averaged less than 18. Nor has Vaughan impressed in county cricket. He hasn’t scored a first-class century for Yorkshire for six years and, in that period, has averaged about 30. Ian Bell, by contrast, has scored 10 centuries and averaged 50. And Vaughan’s a poor fielder.

There’s plenty of talent out there. But unless the England selectors – and the media – embrace it, we’ll continue to limp along with a series of faded stars suffering from dodgy knees, hips and eyesight. Really, if most of that Ashes side of 2005 were racehorses, they’d have been put out to stud years ago. It’s time to move on.

Alastair Cook: my 2008

“KP taking over was like a cold shower on a sticky day”
“Vaughany had been there for a long time and he was an unbelievable captain in terms of his achievement. But life moves on. That said, we should really have beaten South Africa at Edgbaston. It was only an unbelievable innings from Graeme Smith that condemned Vaughany. In terms of Test cricket, that innings was the best I’ve seen. It was 90/4 and South Africa managed to get 280/5. Smith played unbelievably well.
“You saw the emotion of Vaughany giving it up. You saw how hard it was. It shows the pressure he was under. The job just took its toll. And maybe sub-consciously we all felt that too. None of us was giving any less effort under Vaughany than we did under Kev. But sometimes it’s good to have a freshen up: if you’re hot and sticky and you have a cold shower… that’s kind of the feeling we had at the Brit Oval. We’d lost the series and Vaughany had gone, so we all decided it was a one-off Test, a new start and we had to win it. There was no point dwelling on what happened before. Under KP, it was new and it was exciting and it was different.”

“Getting picked for Stanford? Sometimes you get lucky.”
“Sometimes you get quite lucky in life. And you have to accept that. And the selectors have looked at the theory: last year England took a whole new side to the Twenty20 World Cup and it didn’t work. It’s about continuity. Sides take time to gel and the one-day squad had done so well against South Africa: everyone knew their roles and we were using Stanford as a warm-up for bigger things.
“Am I looking to develop my one-day game? It’s already happening. I was leading runscorer in the one-dayers in Sri Lanka last year and then again in New Zealand. The biggest challenge for me is to expand my game. It takes a while. You can’t just click your fingers and have one net and start smashing it everywhere and say, ‘Yeah, I’ve sorted it’. These are quite big things to try and change.” 


“You always feel you’re not far away from getting it right.”
“We were bowled out for 83 in Galle last December – but we did hold on for the draw, even if we were helped out by the rain. Then, getting bowled out for 110 and losing to New Zealand in our next Test in Hamilton in February… it was frustrating. You always feel you’re not far away from getting it right. The feeling after that Hamilton game was ‘Let’s prove them all wrong.’ And we won the next two Test matches and won the series. So there’s not much else you can say about that. In my opinion. It’s like a football team: if you lose one game and then win the next nine then it’s all okay.”


“KP is all about constant improvement”
“Experience helps you improve. I know my game has improved against spin. But then again I got 100 on my debut in India in 2006, so that improvement is quite hard to measure… It’s weird how you improve. It’s such a gradual thing. Take our batting coach Andy Flower – towards the end of his career he was probably playing his best cricket. But five years before that he had been No 1 in the world.
“And that’s Kev’s big thing as a captain. He’s like that as a player himself: keep improving, keep improving. There’s so many good batters out there waiting to take my place. And I don’t want that to happen. So you’re prepared to put in the extra hard yards. If I do get dropped, I’ll know it wasn’t because I went to a film premiere or whatever. I’d know I’d given it my all.”

“Winning in New Zealand was the highlight of the year”
“We proved people wrong after getting written off again. That night after winning the third Test in Napier was a very good night as a team. And then beating New Zealand at home too. Everyone will go, ‘Ah boring’ but there’s no better feeling than winning a Test series, after you’ve slogged your guts out for 15 or 20 days. It’s special, no matter who you beat. That’s the true feeling of success as a team.
“If you look at the statistics, not many sides win Test series in New Zealand. New Zealand have a very underrated attack. Yes, they didn’t have Shane Bond but they never gave you much to hit. We all found that. The only time we really broke that was in NZ when we were chasing and when we turned that Test round at Old Trafford. The NZ attack bowled very well at us: not relentless wicket-taking balls but they never gave you much to hit: Kyle Mills, Chris Martin and Jacob Oram – who has got the lowest economy rate in Test cricket – and obviously Vettori is an excellent spinner. So that was probably a surprise to me just how good they were.”

“We work like mad on our fielding”
“When I first started playing I dropped a few catches. But Peter Moores, being an ex-keeper, is an excellent catching coach. And I’ve made a massive effort. Our catching in the England side has improved a helluva lot. It’s one of Mooresy’s areas of expertise. Watch a warm-up and the amount of catching we do, not so much as a group but as individuals, especially now Richard Halsall has come in as our fielding coach. It’s just that little 0.1 per cent improvement every time you do something. Of course some catches stick just because it’s your day. But all that practice gives you the best chance of success.”

Alastair Cook’s autobiography, Starting Out: My Story So Far, published by Hodder and Stoughton, is in shops now

Catherine Zeta Jones, Michael Vaughan and me

Do you know how many times I’ve been asked to tell the tales of my cricketing life?

Episode 7: Female streakers and slide trumpets

 

  [29:26m]Play Now | Play in Popup |

The Third Umpire, Rob Smyth and Jono Russell discuss Michael Vaughan’s resignation, KP’s promotion and England’s 2-0 hiding at the hands of South Africa. Also: Colin the Janitor on slide trumpets and, last but not least, the Mark Butcher Band. Really.