Date-stamped : 03 Nov93 - 06:12 TALKING CRICKET: Is Test malaise down to lack of 'mental fibre'? BY Derek Pringle Thanks:The Daily Telegraph (June 21, 1993) So the malaise in English cricket continues unabated. Should heads roll? Or has the panic button been pressed a little prematurely? Many reckon the malaise has been widespread for donkey's years, subtly camouflaged by the efforts of great players like Botham, Gooch, Gower, Underwood, Snow and Willis. In addition, the rest of the world, particularly in the last 15 years, has caught up. Even Sri Lanka are a difficult proposition now they know the ropes and have sampled the big time. Just ask the Aussies. If there is a real problem - other than the natural cycle of form and fortune - is it possible really to pin down the underlying causes and then perhaps remedy them? According to Graham Gooch last week, today's players seem to lack what he calls "mental fibre" and that if things go badly they shrug it off with a casual c'est la vie. This is undoubtedly true to a certain extent in the county game, where a loss counts for the same as a draw on paper and most are forgotten within a week. Not so at Test level, where losing a match should theoretically only be allowed to happen over one's still warm carcass. One of the reasons why Keith Fletcher seems, at least from the outside, to be strangely subdued and negative over selection and tactics, is that losing a Test match assumes far more damaging baggage than say Essex would, by losing to Notts. Personally I've always felt there has never been long enough to prepare oneself mentally for a Test match. The two days England now have before every Test is certainly an improvement on a few years ago, but hardly long enough to engage yourself in order to face the Everest. Test matches have to represent a peak in the mind as well as in the diary. Unless players can bolster themselves mentally, or get gee'd up by their captain every time things don't go well - let's face it things have not been at all dandy for nearly a year now - is it really that surprising that having to haul themselves up from the floor time after time becomes so exhausting that any rational or patriotic thought is effectively jettisoned? The fact also, that these days any unsuccessful effort is pilloried and made personal by the press, does not make things any easier. Physically, as well, things get harder when a team are on the rack. There are only so many times under siege, that a player can call upon physical reserves and adrenalin before the body cries wolf and doesn't respond. Success is, of course, the only modern antidote, though at times whole sequences of events can hint upon which direction Dame Fortune happens to be smiling. See which way all the marginal lbws, as well as the toss, went at Lord's. Elsewhere, critics have claimed that England players lack motivation and are indecisive. If this is the case, then perhaps if the chasm between county and Test earnings wasn't so great, then players might not fear the price of failure and be a lot more positive knowing that a financial morass did not await them if they got it wrong. Certainly there will be people claiming that playing for one's country is surely motivation enough. Perhaps it still is, but with a team whose individual origins are as diverse as the contents of a vat of Heinz baked beans, unquestioning patriotism cannot be taken for granted. To do well as a team you have to be stable and largely egalitarian - captain excepted - with a collective as well as an individual sense of purpose. And crucially, to have experienced some success. It is interesting to learn that mobile phones have now been banned from the England dressing room. The fact that most are owned by batsmen, the recipients of far more off-the- field-booty than bowlers, is I'm sure, pure coincidence. But egalitarian it is not, and it represents just another factor that may help to erode the mental cohesion of a team. Having played for many years with Gooch at Essex and in spite of our successes, he remains the captain of the black and white school. There is no doubt that having your task simplified is a great help, but his methods have emasculated bowlers. Against players of good technique on flat Test pitches you have to create chances. England's pace attack are too predictable. They should try to complement rather than copy one another, though licence to experiment has rarely been a Gooch directive. When good batsmen know roughly where the ball is going to be bowled - down the channel - their foot movement and balance are predetermined, making choice and execution of shot easier. Just witness how Merv Hughes seems innocuous one moment and then has three important wickets to his name the next. To bowl as England bowl, the ball has to move about if sides are going to be dismissed and this has not happened. By making the batsman uncertain of where the ball is going to be, Hughes mucks up their footwork, which becomes tentative. When he does make one of his rare forays down the channel around off-stump, it becomes the awkward and potential wicket-taking delivery that England's bowlers have been promised will bring results. The batting failures are more perplexing. Both sides have talented line-ups, but only one seems to have done its homework properly. If a malaise does exist, it must be a self-imposed one. Talent abounds among the counties, it just needs to be focused and encouraged. But perhaps that is the problem in England. Too much talent, which should be an asset. At present it just seems to be a hindrance. posted by Vicky on r.s.c. Contributed by murari (venka@*me.utexas.edu)