England have now succeeded — as Hugh Morris, the managing director of England cricket, avowed when he took the job — in winning the Ashes and a global one-day tournament.
The eighteenth time of asking it might have been in ICC one-day tournaments, but no one could argue that England did not deserve their triumph yesterday in Bridgetown. They were outstanding, as they have been throughout.
It was Australia who looked the nervous outfit as England’s bowlers bowled quickly and straight and the fielders, athletic and alert, boxed them into a corner from which only a par score was possible at best. At the heart of Australia’s troubles was the captain, Michael Clarke, who, on this form, does not warrant his place in the team, and yesterday fiddled at the top of the order, his running between the wickets betraying his unease.
Throughout the latter stages of the tournament, Australia have flopped at the top of the order and each time they have managed to wriggle their way out of trouble. But England’s attack has more variety and fewer weak links than other countries, Graeme Swann again confirming his excellence in all forms of the game. Once England negotiated Australia’s new-ball attack, the result was a formality.
England’s batsmen coped with the bounce better than their counterparts and did not go into their shell as teams often do on the biggest occasions. They had played aggressively throughout, and it was aggressive that they were determined to be.
What will this success mean for English cricket? Although there were few signs of a nation gripped as it will be, no doubt, in the summer when the football World Cup comes around, there were enough unlikely types asking me about the tournament to suspect that this fortnight will confirm Twenty20’s standing as the most popular form of the game.
Despite that, yesterday was not one of those “Where were you when” occasions for a number of reasons. Principally, because there is widespread recognition that it is not the pinnacle of the game — not at international level, at any rate. Take a straw poll of English professional cricketers and ask them which domestic one-day tournament they would like to win and the unanimous choice would be Twenty20. But at international level, cricketers still regard the fifty-over World Cup as the pinnacle of the one-day game.
Nor can success in a Twenty20 tournament be equated with success, for example, over a five-match Test series against Australia. Michael Vaughan, the former England captain, suggested ridiculously that victory over Australia yesterday would better the Ashes victory in 2009. Ask the players involved in both series — Paul Collingwood and Swann, for example — which challenged them more as players and as human beings.
There is one other reason, though, why, regardless of what happened yesterday, the achievements of Collingwood’s team would not have gone down in English folklore: people do not generally regard this England team as an “English” team. What is English is a profoundly difficult question and, as a liberally minded chap, I am happy that England’s “foreign legion” have the opportunity and freedom to make their careers here. In that sense, the team do reflect something of the country.
But the public are not fools. They know that Collingwood’s team are not representative of the health of the English game in general, and that without Michael Lumb, Craig Kieswetter, Eoin Morgan and Kevin Pietersen, who learnt their cricket elsewhere, England’s batting would have a far more anaemic look. In that sense, they will not be loved as the heroes of ’66 were.
What there will be, though, is deep and heartfelt gratitude that the country which invented the game and which plays more professional one-day cricket than anyone else, is no longer an embarrassment at it. Since 1992, when England’s performances in global one-day tournaments have been, with the exception of the Champions Trophy in 2004, uniformly appalling, any anger has been directed not at the failure to win, but at the failure to be remotely competitive.
No longer do we look on an England one-day team and despair at a relative lack of power, fitness and athleticism. In some areas, notably the bowling of slower-ball bouncers at the end of an innings, and the unorthodoxy of Morgan in the middle order, England are leading the way. As Kumar Sangakarra said during the Super Eights stage, England have more depth, variety and power than before.
For that reason, Collingwood’s team have our gratitude and we can look forward to the fifty-over World Cup in Asia next year with expectation rather than trepidation.
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