CRICKET:IT IS a sign of England's rude health that the announcement yesterday of the Ashes squad was so free of surprises. For the selectors that predictability is a luxury, a symptom of the team's consistency over the past 18 months. For the pundits it is a curse. As was anticipated, the two spots in the 16 that were still the subject of debate, the reserve spinner and the fifth seamer, went to Monty Panesar and Chris Tremlett.
“It’s never easy,” selector Geoff Miller said of his task, “but it could have been a lot more difficult.”
At the press conference conversation soon turned back to other things, chiefly the fallout from the Pakistan series, described by the tourists’ one-day captain, Shahid Afridi, as “one of the most difficult tours of my 14-year career. It was difficult to even venture out of the hotel,” Afridi added. “There were people hooting at us and there was lot of pressure on the players.”
The England and Wales Cricket Board has sent a letter to Ijaz Butt, the chairman of its Pakistan counterpart, the PCB, demanding “a full and unreserved apology” for his allegation England players were involved in fixing the result of the third one-day international last Friday. If they do not get it, “legal proceedings will be commenced without further notice”.
“In terms of the issues that have come up recently we will be seeking some resolutions to that,” reiterated England’s manager of cricket, Hugh Morris. “We were extremely disappointed, we expect an apology. We have asked for that apology. As far as the players and the management team are concerned all of our attention is focused on Australia.”
Back on that topic, the closest anyone came to a raising an eyebrow was on hearing of Tim Bresnan’s inclusion ahead of Ajmal Shahzad. Even that decision was tempered by a qualification. Shahzad will fly to Australia with the squad to take part in the warm-up matches before joining the England Performance Programme group later in November.
That squad were also named yesterday. They will be based in Perth and Brisbane and are made up of a mix of promising young players and older hands, who will be first reserves for the main squad, including James Tredwell, Michael Carberry and Craig Kieswetter. Ravi Bopara was not among them, which seemed odd given he has also just been awarded an incremental central contract, but Miller said the management had agreed it would be better for Bopara to play first-class cricket in South Africa instead.
The other conspicuous absentee was leg-spinner Adil Rashid, omitted from the Test and the Performance squads despite taking more wickets than Panesar in the County Championship this season. “Adil has been around us for a couple of years now, and if he wasn’t going to get into the squad it was a necessity to give him a bit of a break,” Miller said. “So he is just going to have a break from bowling. We will reassess him after Christmas when the Lions go out to the West Indies. I think a break will do him good.”
Panesar, Miller said, has developed as a person as much as he has as a player since moving to Sussex from Northamptonshire this year. “It was up to him to go away and resurrect his career,” Miller said. “There were times we thought he was not thinking for himself. He has been given the onus to do that at Sussex. He has set his field and had conversations with his captain and coach.”
Tremlett is another who has benefited from the change of county, moving from Hampshire to Surrey. “Last season I did stop enjoying cricket a little bit and that’s why I felt I needed a fresh start at Surrey. Now my confidence is as high as it has ever been.” He admitted that at the start of the season he was not thinking of an England recall, but by the end of it he was. “It wasn’t really on my radar, until these last couple of months,” he said.
His inclusion is a clear sign England have concocted a strategy based on bounce rather than swing; rarely can such a tall trio of fast bowlers as Steve Finn, Stuart Broad and Tremlett ever have been gathered in one squad.
ENGLAND SQUAD: Andrew Strauss (capt), James Anderson, Ian Bell, Tim Bresnan, Stuart Broad, Paul Collingwood, Alastair Cook (vice-captain), Steven Davies, Steven Finn, Eoin Morgan, Monty Panesar, Kevin Pietersen, Matt Prior, Graeme Swann, Chris Tremlett, Jonathan Trott.
