Cure For Travel Sickness Is As Yet Unknown

Cure For Travel Sickness Is As Yet Unknown

- Derek Pringle

Ashes series, especially if the loser is whitewashed as England could again be this time, tends to end in regime change of one sort or another.

Usually it is the captain, or coach, or both, who end up going, along with a smattering of senior players and the odd bad selection. But that pre-supposes there are ready replacements lined up for the space created, something not that obvious this time.

In any case, Joe Root has only just taken charge of the side so needs to be given time and growing room. He could stop most of the speculation by winning one or both of the next two Tests, an achievement that would also give credence to the spin he and his team are putting out – that there isn’t much difference between them and Australia.

The likelihood, unless they can find another gear or two, is that his team will go the way of Alastair Cook’s side and Andrew Flintoff’s and get whitewashed 5-0. If so, it will be the third time in the last four tours that has happened to England in Australia, which suggests we are creating cricketers who travel worse than a punnet of strawberries.

It is instructive at this point to turn to recent history. After the whitewash of 2006/07, the England and Wales Cricket Board commissioned a report by Ken Schofield which made 19 recommendations, not all of them taken up. Many, though, were implemented, most notably the appointment of a managing director of England cricket to sit above the England captain and coach.

It is a role currently held by Andrew Strauss who made the somewhat kneejerk reaction to impose a curfew on the England team after some high-spirited jinks in a Perth bar. It was a decision that humiliated England’s players and provided endless ammo for an Australian press never knowingly even-handed during Ashes series.