If John Emburey, who will assist David Lloyd as coach of the senior England tour to Zimbabwe and New Zealand, were to succeed him as coach, he would no doubt need an assistant himself; presumably a batsman; possibly his old friend Gooch.
Well, it is important to have men who work well to- gether, so long as the cabal does not become too cosy and the best men are in the right positions. This will be Gooch's first experience of coaching, but it does not necessarily mean he will retire after his latest season of solid achievement for Essex.
Lloyd, Gooch and Graveney will join Ray Illingworth and Michael Atherton in Manchester this evening to dis- cuss England's team for the Oval in next week's third Test. As so often, the fulcrum of the debate will be Alec Stewart. Having just reestablished himself as an opening batsman, he is very reluctant to take the wicket-keeping gloves again and the selectors will be almost unanimous that he should not. I wish I could agree.
Jack Russell should, whatever happens, be assured that he will tour this winter, but the immediate require- ment is for England to give themselves the best possible chance of winning the Oval Test next week. Against Pakistan's best bowlers he has struggled and at Headingley, even on a true pitch, his work with the gloves reflected his con- fidence with the bat.
On the early stages of the tour of South Africa last winter Russell kept superbly and looked England's most re- liable batsman. Against India earlier this season he made a typically valuable hundred. At his best he would be capable of making another against Pakistan in the Test starting next Thursday, but since he is not at his best, for a game which England have to win to level the series, the Stewart solution seems the most realistic available.
Mark Ealham being unfit and Ronnie Irani not a suf- ficiently penetrative bowler to be more than a fourth seamer, Stewart remains the only Test-class all-rounder available and only by exploiting his versatility will England be able to retain the six batsmen who did so well at Leeds and play the five bowlers who will surely be required to win the game on a pitch which the Oval groundsman, Paul Brind, ex- pects to be hard and fast.
The declining effectiveness of finger spinners in Test cricket over the past decade has much to do with the fact that too often they have to operate as stop-gap bowlers rather than as potential match-winners operating in tandem with a complementary spin bowler.
By playing Irani and leaving out either Knight, who made his maiden Test hundred at Leeds, or Crawley, the only man to read Mushtaq Ahmed with conviction, England could have, as it were, 3.5 fast bowlers, two spinners and 5.5 bats- men. On balance, though, the preference should be for five bowling specialists and six batsmen in form.
England would have their best chance with a genuinely balanced attack: three fast and two slow bowlers, rather than four and one. The expected bounce should help spinners as well as fast bowlers and there is a strong case not only for bringing back Ian Salisbury but also for giving him the old fashioned luxury of a 'spin twin'. Logically it should be an off-spinner, either Peter Such (55 wickets this season) or Robert Croft (59).
The declining effectiveness of finger spinners in Test cricket over the past decade has much to do with the fact that too often they have to operate as stop-gap bowlers rather than as potential match-winners operating in tandem with a complementary spin bowler.
Phil Tufnell (10 wickets at 44 in his last series for England) and, to a lesser extent, Richard Illing- worth, have been the latest regular examples, though when Il- lingworth and Mike Watkinson played together in just one Test last season, they took seven of the 10 West Indies wickets in the first innings at Trent Bridge.
It is more likely, I fear, that England will again take the field unbalanced next Thursday, with four of the following possible fast bowlers: Cork, Mullally, Caddick, Lewis, Gough, Brown, Malcolm and Headley.
My eleven, with Nick Knight opening if Stewart has had a long time in the field, would be: *Atherton, -Stewart, Hussain, Thorpe, Crawley, Knight, Croft, Cork, Salisbury, Gough, Caddick.