Having watched England cricket capitulate in the forth and final test it is interesting to understand how a pretty good team have gone from a winning team to a team who couldn’t win a one ticket raffle.
How can players who were so good only a year ago be so bad today, and what do we need to do to improve things.
There have even been suggestions that all 11 players be dropped, but this is crazy. Good players don’t become bad players, they just lose confidence and form, and they need to have this restored.
This is the role of leadership.
And in the England team at the moment there is a complete absence of leadership.
Where does leadership come from in sports, well it starts with the Captain, and then the senior players, and here it is the senior players, including the captain, who seem to be having the biggest crisis of confidence.
To fix something like this we need to change the leadership, changing the junior players in the hope that one of them will set the example is just wishful thinking.
We need a change of leadership, because at the moment there is no leadership.
We need to change something, we need to shake things up a little, in order to get out of the rut that we are in.
We need someone to make a stand, to provide the example for the others, to show the way back and to start to re-build their confidence. Confidence is so low it is now impacting every aspect of the game, such that England are poor in every single department.
This is when we really need too see leadership, its very easy to lead when things are going well, but a true test of leadership is how well you lead when things are going badly.
Englands leadership is showing that they are failing that test.
You can argue that we need stability, but after a capitulation like this, the last thing we need is stability, no only does winning become a habit, but so does losing, and a losing habit is very hard to break.
I don’t believe that Alistair Cook will survive as captain, and I think changes should have been made after the third test. He seems to be carrying too big a burden on his shoulders, such that it is impacting his own form, and not just his captaincy.
Maybe with a release from this role it would free him up to play better.
For some it is difficult to recover from such a situation, and often we have to be cruel to be kind, like a trainer throwing in the towel when his boxer is taking too much punishment.
We need these players to be able to come back and fight another day.
The England ship is sinking, and we could let the captain go down with the ship, but as a player, England need cook for the future. He is one of England’s greatest ever batsmen, but may he will not survive this calamity.
We need to be cruel to be kind, and make a change, and that change starts at the top!
Gordon Tredgold
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