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England cricket Nick Compton is an Ashes columnist for Express Sport
Albert Einstein is supposed to have said that insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results. Almost every Test match in the Ashes has told the same story: England’s bowlers looked ineffective, the batsmen didn’t go on to get big hundreds and Australia’s did.
But it was hardly unpredictable. Even from my own perspective, there has hardly been a single mishap that I didn’t put in writing before it happened, whether it has been the lack of genuine pace in the bowling attack or James Vince’s unsuitability to batting at No 3 in a Test side.
Vince’s selection was a punt that his game would flourish in Australian conditions that didn’t pay off – but what else could we expect? He averaged 19 in his first Test stint and averaged 30 in county cricket.
Look at the selection policy over the last two or three years. England drop people too easily. England went to South Africa and won there. We came back and thrashed Sri Lanka. I played in those series but didn’t play well against Sri Lanka and got dropped. Vince didn’t play well and neither did Alex Hales so they got dropped too. Suddenly, you’re not really going anywhere and there doesn’t seem to be a selection plan. You start to wonder what they are looking for.
Sometimes it seems we are going round and round, hoping to find the next Joe Root or Alastair Cook and that is a risky form of selection.
Players have come and gone so often that it suggests selectors lack a belief in the players they are picking. If you pick someone and you know they’re a good player then an early struggle isn’t the end of the world.
When the selectors have that conviction in that a player, all the criticism bounces off because they’ve been backed and they’re going to play.
The constant criticism of some players could be very quickly shut down if they received more uncompromising backing from the ECB. We select as if we’ve got an embarrassment of riches – but we don’t.
It has been a difficult tour for Joe Root, leading England in Australia for the first time with the odds stacked against him. He didn’t get the big hundred people said he had to but I thought he played pretty well. He still led the averages for England (378 runs at 47.25) and contributed well. When you consider that only Alastair Cook went on for England and made that big score, Root did okay.
But the Yorkshireman will now know that a captain is only as good as the bowling attack he has and that comes back to selection. How Mark Wood didn’t get a game I just don’t know. Even if they were concerned about his injury problems, it would have been worth picking him just for 15 overs a day of genuine fast bowling: England had none of that in their side.
This tour highlighted England’s spin problem once again too. At Sydney, Mason Crane’s 1/193 off 48 overs represented the worst ever figures for an England debutant – but it’s not entirely his fault. I feel sorry for him.
He’s not ready. He hardly gets a game for Hampshire so how can he be expected to come into a huge Test match and rip through the Australian batting line-up that has been so prolific in this series?
He should have been bowling for the Lions, learning his trade, while England had someone like Jack Leach as their second spinner in the main squad.
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Mason Crane was given a baptism of fire by Australia in Sydney
Leach is criticised for only taking wickets because Somerset’s home ground is so conducive to spin. But the new toss rule in county cricket is designed to encourage pitches which favour spinners.
I’m in Sri Lanka at the moment where there are five spinners at every net session who would probably end up on the Ashes tour – yet when one of our own starts taking wickets we look for reasons to doubt him and he can’t get a game for England. If county cricket is not going to be the breeding ground for young talent, then it’s going to be a guessing game at international level.
Unless we make big changes in the way we look at the game in England, Einstein’s insanity will continue.
***Nick Compton is Ladbrokes’ Ashes ambassador. England are 3/1 to beat Australia in the ODI series, starting on January 14, with the home side 1/4.***
