Driving Ambition - My Autobiography

by Andrew Strauss

  Having said all that, I do think that Twenty20 cricket has helped players to develop their games. In Twenty20 cricket, regardless of the conditions, batsmen must be capable of either hitting the ball out of the park or playing unorthodox shots to manoeuvre the field. Bowlers are aware that ‘change-up’ balls, from slower balls to bouncers and even slow-ball bouncers, are a necessity. Innovation is crucial in the shortest form of the game.

  It is immensely reassuring to see the likes of Alex Hales and Jos Buttler making their way into the England ranks, alongside the obvious talents of Eoin Morgan and Kevin Pietersen. Players like these can win games for England in any conditions and also make it easier for more traditional players, such as Alastair Cook or Ian Bell, to make a telling contribution.

  Perhaps it is not a coincidence that the introduction of Twenty20 cricket in this country has seen a gradual but sustained improvement in England’s ODI performance. New players coming into the England side in recent years have generally had a reasonable level of experience in the Twenty20 game and have managed to expand their games accordingly. What remains a problem, though, is that players who are already part of the England set-up do not play a lot of domestic Twenty20 cricket, so ironically their skills do not continue to develop as much as might be the case. For me, it makes the opportunity for England players to compete in the IPL a really important issue.

  Going to India, surrounding yourself with the best players in the world and learning how to innovate and adapt in vastly different conditions must surely be of huge benefit to players (not to mention the obvious benefits to their bank accounts). Unfortunately, the IPL teams are reluctant to select England players, knowing that they will not be available for the whole tournament. In addition, the ECB is less than keen to see its best assets wandering off to a foreign domestic tournament when they should be getting invaluable rest. However, if England are serious about being a force in the shorter forms of the game, one thing the administrators have to look at is creating a window to allow our players to participate. The IPL is not going anywhere and we run the risk of slipping behind other teams in both ODI and Twenty20 cricket if our players don’t participate.

  By far the most common problem that we faced while I was involved in the England ODI set-up was fear. By that I mean fear of failure, fear of playing the wrong shot, fear of losing, fear of being dropped, fear of criticism. It was the elephant in the room in far too many of the ODIs in which I played. Fear is crippling in the shorter form of the game because you cannot hope to live with a confident, fearless team if you are not willing to unshackle yourself and go all out to put them under pressure.

  I think it is revealing that my average and strike rate in ODI cricket went from around 31.5 runs per innings and 75 runs per 100 hundred balls to nearly 40 and 86 after I was made captain. As captain, much of the fear that surrounds a player on a day-to-day basis leaves you. For starters, you do not fear for your place in the side, and you also know that it is your responsibility to show the way in terms of the type of cricket you are trying to play. If every player could get into a similar mindset, it would have a tremendous effect on the style and effectiveness of a one-day team.

  When looking back at the great ODI teams in the last twenty years, from Sri Lanka in the 1996 World Cup through to the great Australian team in the early 2000s, it is no surprise to see that the teams were settled, with confident players, assured of their places in the side. Clearly, this is one of those chicken-and-egg situations: it is impossible to feel confident and assured of your place in the side if you are not playing well, and vice versa.

  When we set out to revamp our ODI cricket in 2009, we wanted players to know that they would be judged on their willingness to play in the right style, rather than solely on their averages. Fear is something that needs to be looked firmly in the eye if it is to be overcome. The England management has to send out the right messages to the players if the effects of fear are to be minimised.

  I want to finish this chapter by mentioning very briefly my great optimism regarding England’s chances in the 2015 World Cup in Australia.

  Many of the problems I have mentioned will be either irrelevant or dealt with by the time the competition starts. The conditions over there are far more suited to England’s natural style of cricket and do not put batsmen under nearly so much pressure to score quickly off spin bowlers, another perennial difficulty for English players. In addition, the latest ODI rules, giving bowlers a new ball at each end, definitely give an advantage to teams with strong seam-bowling units. England, in that regard, are a match for anyone. The subcontinental sides, with their reliance on spin and reverse swing, are going to find life far more difficult in that competition if the current rules are retained.

  England are closer now to cracking the ODI conundrum than they have been at any stage over the last two decades. To me, it is the final piece in the jigsaw as far as the resurgence of English cricket is concerned. If we were somehow to win the 2015 World Cup, following the considerable feats of getting to number one in the world in Test cricket and winning a World Twenty20, then there are many people involved with English cricket who would deserve a well-earned pat on the back. The one-day riddle would finally have been solved.

  17

  NUMBER ONE

  It is the morning of 10 August 2011 and around me the world is going mad. I have spent most of the last few days watching harrowing scenes of thousands of people, young and old, marauding in the streets of London, smashing shop windows and looting on an unprecedented scale. I can’t believe this is happening in England. What started as a protest against the shooting of a Tottenham man by police has rapidly spread throughout the capital, with mobile phones and Twitter being used as rallying calls. Yesterday, I was spellbound as gangs of youths rampaged through Ealing, the London suburb where I lived for over eight years. We still have many friends living there and it felt uncomfortably close to home.

  Up here in Birmingham, I am far from unaffected by what is going on. The streets of the city have been ablaze with burning cars, and all night long I’ve heard the tell-tale sirens of dozens of police cars working to keep the civil unrest from spreading. It is definitely one of those moments when the game of cricket seems to hold no real importance at all.

  Somehow, however, the team will need to switch on to play a potentially huge Test match this morning. If we win, we will become the new number-one Test team in the world. This is what we have been working towards for the last two and a half years, and despite all the chaos around us, it is an opportunity we do not want to see slip through our fingers. We have worked too hard.

  I open my curtains, still a little unsure whether the game is going ahead today. Looking from the top floor of the Hyatt Hotel, I can see a couple of plumes of smoke in the distance, remnants of arson from the night before. Elsewhere, however, everything looks calm. The disturbances on the streets below have definitely come to a conclusion.

  I make my way to the bathroom and start getting myself ready, both physically and mentally, for the day ahead.

  The last few months had been full of incident. The summer of 2011 started with the adoption of a novel approach by the ECB of having three separate captains: me for Tests, Alastair Cook for ODIs and Stuart Broad for Twenty20s. Although, in an ideal world, I think that it is better to have only one captain, I didn’t believe that there were any strong reasons why this new method wouldn’t work. Cook, Broad and I all got on fine, and it allowed each captain to concentrate his attention on the form of the game he was responsible for. I saw it as having some real benefits.

  It had still been a difficult and sad decision for me to step down as ODI captain at the end of the World Cup and to retire from ODI cricket. My form had been really strong and during the competition I’d produced probably the best one-day innings of my international career, a score of 158 against India. However, the team’s performance had hit me hard. It was my one chance to lead England to World Cup glory, but it was not to be. Once we were
on the plane back to the UK, it was clear that it was in the best interests of the team and myself to move on. The end of the World Cup is the end of a cycle, a watershed moment if you like, and without the incentive of going on to play in another World Cup, I don’t think I would have been motivated enough to carry on playing ODIs.

  Of course, one problem with playing only one form of the game is that you only have one bite of the cherry. If you are playing both formats, a good performance in one can boost your confidence in the other, and also help ward off the vultures in the press, who are always on the lookout for a vulnerable target.

  During the first series of the summer against Sri Lanka I felt particularly exposed. Although I had been in good form for Middlesex, with a couple of hundreds, I found that my mind was increasingly unclear while I was in the middle. I was being distracted by the repercussions of the decision I had just made. I found myself under more pressure to perform and there were a few uncomfortable feelings in the back of my mind, questioning whether my career was beginning to wind down.

  Needless to say, it was not the right mental recipe for success, and I endured a particularly painful series, registering three single-figure scores in the four innings I played. Fortunately the rest of the team were in better nick than myself, and a miraculous victory in the rain-affected first Test in Cardiff, where we managed to bowl Sri Lanka out in twenty-five overs, was the difference between the two sides.

  It also meant that we had won seven out of our last eight Test series, with only the drawn series against South Africa away from home blotting our copybook. Any team that had enjoyed so much continuous success was entitled to feel very confident every time they walked on the field.

  By the start of the India series, which had gained further significance as the battle for the world’s best Test team, I had never seen the England cricket team looking and sounding so assured. We were not only extremely comfortable and sure of our methods, but also extremely hungry and motivated to knock the Indians off their perch as world number one.

  Thankfully, by that stage of the season I was in a far better place mentally to lead the team, having had a little time to come to terms with my decision to retire from ODI cricket. I had also picked up some useful form by playing a game for Somerset in July against the touring Indian team, scoring an unbeaten century.

  It was a one-off situation, in which a quirk in the cricketing calendar meant that Middlesex were without a first-class fixture in the month before the India series because of a glut of Twenty20 matches. However, it is hard to describe quite what a strange experience it was to turn up in Taunton, introduce myself to my team-mates, don my new uniform and then stride out to bat with Arul Suppiah, my opening partner against India.

  Despite my awkward feelings, I liked the fact that we had been proactive in trying to find a way for me to play, and I am indebted to Somerset for being so open to the suggestion. It is an excellent club, with some fantastic people at the helm, not least the captain, my old opening partner Marcus Trescothick.

  In one regard, the series against India was going to be different from all the series we had played over the previous two years: we were not going to be using the Decision Review System. Initially introduced by the ICC as a means of taking advantage of technology to help make sure that more correct decisions were made, the DRS had become an accepted part of the game in most cricket-playing countries.

  I have to admit that I’d had my concerns about the system when it first came in. I wasn’t thrilled by the fact that players could refer umpiring decisions to be adjudicated by the third umpire. I thought it had the potential to alter the relationship between the players and the officials, in effect allowing players far more power to question and thereby undermine the authority of the umpires. Yet I had always believed that technology should be used, as it seemed ludicrous that millions of viewers around the world could see that an umpire had made a terrible mistake, but the players still had to live by that mistake. It was far better, in my opinion, that the game should try to get as many decisions as possible right. I suppose in an ideal world I would have liked the umpires to use the technology on their own, without the input of players.

  Despite my initial reservations, the new system worked remarkably well. Once the umpires got over the fact that some of their decisions were likely to be reviewed by the players, they responded well to the system, almost seeing it as a back-up in case they didn’t get their decision right first time around. Also, in many cases, it actually enhanced the standing of umpires, as the best ones usually had the reviews of their decisions turned down.

  It did, however, put captains under increased pressure. In a sense, the captain of the team had to become a de facto umpire in his own right, trying to judge whether the umpire had got the original decision correct or not. With only two reviews per side, you could not afford to waste a review in a futile attempt to overrule an umpire, so you had to judge when to use your reviews very carefully. It was also important to understand the characters of your players when discussing whether to review a decision or not. Like many bowlers, Graeme Swann wasn’t always reliable in that regard. Any appeal that was turned down by an umpire was ‘absolutely definitely out’ in his opinion, and I was always grateful for the more measured and accurate responses from Matthew Prior, the wicketkeeper.

  Overall, it was close to irrefutable that more correct decisions were being made as a result of the system. No longer did a batsman, or bowler for that matter, with their international career on the line, have to worry about a shocking decision hammering the final nail in their coffin. It was particularly surprising, therefore, that the Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI) and its players were unwilling to use the system. I think they had concerns about the accuracy of the ball-tracking software, but it seemed strange to argue that the eyes of a middle-aged man standing behind the stumps were more likely to be accurate than a combination of high-speed cameras. To me, it didn’t make sense.

  Nonetheless, the BCCI had managed to ensure that no cricket match in which the Indian team played would have to use the DRS system. Quite what the umpires, who had grown accustomed to using the system at all other times, thought about the situation I don’t know, but those were the parameters within which we were forced to work.

  If anyone looked at the scorecards of the first two Test matches of the series, they would be forgiven for thinking that the Indian side were steamrollered by a rampant England team flourishing in home conditions. In fact, both games were far closer than first meets the eye. At Lord’s, we had to weather particularly difficult conditions early in the game after losing the toss, but the combination of a stupendous double hundred by Kevin Pietersen and an early injury to the fast bowler Zaheer Khan, who looked out of shape physically, swung the match in our favour.

  In Nottingham, it was the turn of Stuart Broad to come to the party with an inspired new-ball spell that completely changed the second Test. With India handily placed at 267–4, already 46 runs ahead of our first-innings score, we desperately needed something to happen. Broad delivered with a hat-trick, ensuring a relatively paltry first-innings deficit, before Ian Bell scored a sublime hundred to take the game away from the opposition. At 2–0 up in the series, our dreams of becoming the world number-one side seemed incredibly close to coming to fruition. All we required was one more victory.

  * * *

  I can’t say enough what a pleasure it was to captain the England cricket team during the series against India. I think that I can appreciate what Steve Waugh must have felt like when he was in charge of the rampant Australian side in the early 2000s. We were a side brimming with confidence, full of players who knew their roles and were comfortable with their games. In the unlikely circumstances that we found ourselves in trouble, invariably someone would stand up and deliver. Cook, Pietersen, Trott and Bell were all in sublime form and our bowling attack was a handful for any opposition team. The combination of Anderson, Broad and Swann, backed up by the likes of Bresna
n, Finn and Tremlett, was striking fear into opposition batting line-ups.

  I think much of our confidence originated in having a strategy that we knew worked for us. Commentators like nothing more than to judge a captain or a team on tactics. They wonder whether he could have an extra slip in place, or if a change of bowler is required. From the decisions that happen out there in the middle, they then deduce whether a team or captain is either positive (i.e. good) or conservative (i.e. bad). From my experience, I think they generally miss the point. Tactics are important, but not nearly as important as having the right strategy and committing to it.

  One of the issues we have always grappled with as an England team is that of identity. You could easily define the West Indies by their calypso cricket – flamboyant players, outrageous shots and quick bowling. India have always been associated with spin – either batsmen expertly capable of playing it or beguiling exponents of bowling it. Likewise, you can broadly characterise South Africa as methodical, Pakistan as mercurial, Australia as domineering and so on. What was England’s cricket about, though?

  To me, this was a vitally important question, because if we could answer it, we would always have something to fall back on when things were difficult and it would allow us to follow our own path, rather than look towards other countries in an effort to emulate their strengths. There is no doubt that a team’s strengths will change over time, according to which players they have at their disposal, but after thinking about it for a while, as well as looking at some really good analysis from Nathan Leamon, it became clear to us where our strengths lay.

  Our batting line-up was useful because it was varied. We had myself, Cook and Trott at the top of the order. Our job was to set up the innings for the more explosive middle order of Pietersen, Bell and Prior. In the midst of those three lay Paul Collingwood or later Eoin Morgan, who were both adept at playing in a number of ways, as versatile batsmen. We were then very fortunate to have the likes of Broad and Swann, who could make life difficult for opposition captains with their counterattacking style. All in all, it was a good blend of different styles.