Why regional aid would benefit England

In the end, the selectors came close on this occasion to picking the side best suited to home conditions, but they did not make up their minds early enough. Next time, they have to choose a team specifically for what will probably be mainly day-night cricket in South Africa and get an appropriate squad together much earlier than they did on this occasion.

The odds were always long against England going farther than the Super Six stage because they are short of players with the talent, flair and temperament to dominate world-class opponents when the stakes are high. Paradoxically, however, a shortage of players generally is not the most trying problem. Rather it is sorting the sheep from the goats in a flock far larger than that of most of the competing countries. Zimbabwe just about know what their best team is: England have barely a clue.

It is worth considering who might have represented the home nation against India at the weekend and asking whether they would have fared much better or worse than those who actually played. Here is an alternative XI: Nick Knight, Alistair Brown, Mark Ramprakash, Chris Adams, Matthew Maynard, Martin Speight, Dougie Brown, Gavin Hamilton, Graeme Swann, Peter Martin and Chris Silverwood. That is a choice comprised largely of talented cricketers, most of whom are all-rounders and outstanding fielders.

There are four present county captains to choose from, four fast bowlers, who would have used the white ball effectively, and the most promising off-spinner. In practice, they would not have been so good a bowling unit as the one that played, but they would have been a superior fielding side and would have batted down to No 10.

Too many experiments for too long is one reason, perhaps, for England's failure to get through to the Super Six, but the team above surely illustrates what a well-nigh impossible task it is for the selectors because they have too large a pool in which to fish. The answer is, and has been for a long time, regional cricket. If a manageable number of seriously competitive matches from six regions, each comprising three counties, had been introduced for the best England qualified players, the selectors would have been choosing from far clearer evidence. We would then have had no need for the forthcoming experiments with two divisions and England contracts, the first of which will not ensure that the best players are playing in the top division, the second of which is going to cost the game more than £1 million a year, with no guarantees.

After all, while a permanent England squad would be better prepared, carefully managed and the beneficiaries of a shared team ethic, no one will be any more certain than they are at present who the best 15 or 16 players in the country really are.

Yet this weakness of the professional game in England and Wales ought also to be a strength. The abundance of players should allow the selectors to pick horses for courses, especially for a World Cup. The team best suited to dry, bare, slow pitches in Sharjah is not the one needed for English pitches in early summer. The selectors recognised this up to a point, but, because of the importance of the World Cup, they should have had a much clearer idea of who they wanted by the end of last season and prepared the team, albeit under different conditions, in the tournaments in Australia and Sharjah earlier this year, rather than experimenting with different permuations almost until the World Cup itself began. The priority was clear.

Instead, they fell between two stools. Tinkering with the likes of Fleming, Alleyne, Wells, Ealham, Dougie Brown, Austin, Hamilton and the Hollioakes was a waste of time. Ealham had emerged by last summer as the best and most consistent of the all-rounders and there was room for no more than one other in the World Cup XV because the conditions, which everyone knew were likely to suit bowlers who move the ball and batsmen with good techniques, were clearly going to demand specialists.

One of the Scots, Hamilton or Brown, should have been added to the quartet of Gough, Mullally, Fraser and Ealham, which always promised to be an effective attack in the conditions.

Nearer to the competition itself, mistakes were made in selection from the 15 players eventually chosen. Nick Knight had established himself as a consistently successful opening batsman in one-day internationals when the tournament began. The proper solution was for him to open with Nasser Hussain, whose fielding throughout the competition was brilliant and who was a logical replacement for the originally selected specialist opener, Mike Atherton.

Alec Stewart, whose technical problems had been all too clear throughout the tour of Australia, should have dropped to No 6, leaving a choice, from those in the squad, between Flintoff, Hollioake and Wells at No 7, followed by Ealham and the three specialist bowlers. If Stewart did not dare to bowl Croft for more than two overs against South Africa, he was unlikely to use Hick's off-breaks, but that, too, was an unused option.

June 1, 1999