Sir Clive Woodward

Sir Clive Woodward, the former England rugby union coach and manager, and now working with the British Olympic Association, is famed for taking ideas from the business world and seeking to apply them to sport. Some of them seem utterly counterintuitive at first, such as his assertion that after a loss the team should go out and get drunk, but after a win, the team should have an 8am meeting. But after a pause for thought, maybe they’re not so mad after all. What is worth analysing more: why something worked, or why it didn’t? A scientist may say both, but I know I would enjoy reviewing tape of a win more than tape of a loss, and I concentrate better when I’m having fun. So maybe Sir Clive’s not such a mad hatter after all.

Which leads one to conclude that maybe some of his other ideas might have some ballast. One of these was that by improving 100 things by 1%, a team could improve 100%. This one has stuck with me, and I’ve repeated it so often to the teams I have coached that I almost feel I have taken ownership of the phrase. Sir Clive might have something to say about that, but I do subscribe fully to the theory.

England’s cricketers, it would seem, do not. They’re always “working hard in the nets”, “hitting the ball well in practice” or “catching everything in training”, clearly ticking the bowling, batting and fielding boxes. But are they really focussing on the little things – the 1%-ers? I’m not so sure

Some examples: what were England doing sauntering between overs in the dying minutes of the final test in Trinidad? The equation was simple: at 5pm there were 8 overs left to bowl, and those would be bowled whatever. However, if those 8 overs were completed before 5.29pm, then England would keep getting more overs until that time. Now of course the West Indies would have done everything they could to waste time. There would have been more marking out of their guard, more mid-pitch chats, the odd “sorry, I’ve got a fly in my eye just as you reached your delivery stride”. Those are part of the game. But not even to push them, not to rush them, not to put them in a situation where Umpire Harper (who was showing a distinctly grizzly manner all day) just might have a word about time-wasting was madness. Another Sir Clive-ism is “always do what the opposition least want, whatever that is”. Well, on this occasion, the last thing the West Indies wanted was just one more over, but England made no effort to get it in.

And Andrew Strauss at silly point? The man is a talented batsman, amiably fellow and, probably, a decent captain. But he is not a silly point fielder. In fact, he’s terrible at it. From the day that England arrived back from India it must have been evident that the batsman most at risk was Ian Bell, and that his most likely replacement was Owais Shah. Consequently, Shah should have been despatched to the Academy in Loughborough, a specialist coach found (David Boon may have cost too much in booze, but Alec Stewart was extremely handy at silly point before he took the keeping gloves) and Shah should have been turned into the specialist, working on it two hours a day. One might think you can overrate the importance of a silly point, but the late Eknath Solkar (died 2005, aged 57, and surely ther greatest in the position) took 53 catches there in 27 matches – a ratio of 1.96 which compares rather favourably with Mark Waugh’s ratio in the slips of 1.41. England underestimate the small things at their peril.

Without addressing them in detail, one might also note the failure of the slips to come closer for slower balls (surely a signal is not that hard to invent) which cost England at least four catches in the series, the odd decision of Broad to bowl over-the-wicket to left handers when his natural angle and length makes it almost impossible to get lbw decisions, the huge number of no-balls conceded by Amjad Khan when a re-marked run-up would surely have helped, the wholly inappropriate decision of Matt Prior to depart to England after his son had been safely delivered, and the failure of the medical staff to get a handle on Shah’s cramps when the issue is already known.

They are all little things, but tot them up one day, and if you’re missing them all, you might find you’ve got 100% worse. Or slipped from 2nd in the world to 6th. Ah, that’ll be England cricket, then.