A Very English Batsman

Despite his Australian upbringing (and the fact that he was crassly written off as a 'poor man's Nick Compton' by Bob Willis after his first Test appearance), Sam Robson cuts a figure which seems far from out of place at the top of the English order, with the result that he already radiates a curious sense of belonging.

With his pale, pinched features, his diffident seriousness, his hunched, mildly idiosyncratic, ball-sniffing method, and his steadiness of tempo, Robson seems a world away from the popular notion - fed with relish these past couple of years by another Sydneysider - of the gum-chewing, Baggy Green wearing, top-order slasher, bristling with confrontational aggression. If you want to fall back on Aussie stereotypes from a dimmer past, years before Robson was even a glimmer in his now well-recognized father's eye, he's a good deal more Bill Lawry than Keith Stackpole, let alone David Warner. He bats as if he was brought up on the capricious surfaces of his adopted county, with their boundary roads and their exhaust infused atmospheres, rather than the true surfaces of the Australian world city where he grew up.

In this he fits. English cricket has always subsisted on an underlying conservatism of method, a mistrust of the unusual, a reluctance to embrace and celebrate genius. With Pietersen - a foreign-born and raised player whose contradictory nature and self-celebrated brilliance always ran counter to this - cast to the winds, there is a sense that, even though three of its newest recruits were born abroad, that the English side is retreating towards that which it knows best and feels most comfortable with. This may not, of course, be an entirely good thing.

Although sterner tests await, Gary Ballance has looked well-organised and temperamentally sound at three, replicating much of Jonathan Trott's calmness and resilience without his obsessive ritualism and sense of restrained, scowling anxiety, while Moeen Ali has exuded languid class at six, although each of his dismissals so far has raised questions. Chris Jordan has the air of a gifted and versatile operator, if one who still doesn't quite grasp the limitations of his technique or the limits of his potential. Joe Root, back in the side after a year of being messed around, accumulates with the unpretentiousness assurance of one who, for all his lack of distinctive elegance, knows that he can perform at the highest level and isn't afraid of being seen to enjoy the experience.

And then there is Robson's more experienced opening partner. With Cook we have been this way before, and, in the end, he always comes good. And, on account of his much-derided captaincy, the end for him will be further away than for many others, which, in its turn, reinforces the impression of a team which is rebuilding by retreating to the mode which it knows best, new players from around the globe or not.

This grates a little. England may be more stable sans KP and ultimately - although one's hunch is that it will be a long time - they may become as successful as they were with him. But it will also be a long time before they will excite in the same way.

For all that Robson appears to fit his role like a glove, he will never set many pulses racing. For that we may have to wait in hope for a player who was born in the county which Robson has adopted.

But Alex Hales still isn't deemed good enough for England's fifty over side, which, if you stop to think about it, says quite a lot.

Past Tense

With the dust settling on Jonathan Trott's return home, and with the precise reasons for it still unclear, thoughts turn to what he has left behind.

If it is to be the end of his England career - and no-one yet has any firm idea about that, including, I'm sure, Trott himself - he leaves behind him a legacy of apparently emotionless intensity, of striving purposefulness and of calmness under fire which has served England well through both difficult and glorious times. With all this said, though, the feeling persists, as I touched upon back in June here, that Trott has never, will never, quite be admired in the way many of his colleagues in the current England team are, let alone the way in which many England players of the past (think Tom Graveney, to take just one example) have been truly and unconditionally loved.

The recent turn of events has shown that Trott - scowling, balding, crease-occupying, Jonathan Trott - is as vulnerable as the rest of us (and we warm to him just a little more for that), but the fact remains that for most of his four years in the England side, regardless of the runs he made, he was just a little too much of an outsider for people's comfort. His lack of visible emotion, his occasional (exaggerated by his critics) reluctance to adjust his approach to the perceived needs of the situation and the obvious otherness of his accent all contributed to this in a way that similar traits haven't for other players. Trott is no more or less South African (or English) than his erstwhile colleague Kevin Pietersen, but for all his perceived arrogance, Pietersen's relative extroversion, and the dazzlingly innovative genius of his batting, have brought him closer to the hearts of England fans than anything Jonathan Trott ever did.

This, of course, is unfair; many of the things which Jonathan Trott did for England were exceptional. Of course you had the century on debut, of course you had the doubles at Lord's and Cardiff, of course you had the runs which nailed the Australian coffin shut during England's last tour there, but most of all you had the innings during which he, in partnership with Stuart Broad, took a Test away from Pakistan on the day spot fixing came to Lord's. Regardless of where his front foot was landing, Mohammad Amir was making it talk that morning, and Trott's judgement and resolution, coupled with his finely tuned awareness of when and how to start to take the game to, and then away, from the opposition, marked him down as someone who could be a player for the ages. It may not be widely recalled as such yet (perhaps, in the future, it will), but that was a truly great innings.

As to what else Trott has left behind, he has left an England team which, for all its planning, its attention to detail and its past successes, stands close to the precipice. Established players' form continues to falter, others, perhaps, are fading in age's spotlight. Trott has no obvious replacement in the team, chiefly because, although we are told his illness is nothing new, nobody thought to bring a player who could act, without hesitation, as a direct substitute for him. This week, in Adelaide, the wheels can either be bolted firmly back on to the wagon, or. conceivably, they may start to come off.

For England the pressure this week will be as intense as the South Australian heat. For Trott, the chill greyness of a Birmingham winter will be a strange but necessary kind of release from the stresses of his former existence.

It is to be hoped that he will return to England colours in the future. In the meantime he may be missed more in his absence than he was ever valued.

Riding for a Fall

In cricket, as in life, times change. Teams, empires, rise and fall.

In early February 2009, England were bowled out for 51 by the West Indies at Sabina Park, Jamaica, to lose by an innings and 23 runs.

I wrote about it here.

Strauss was new as captain, Flower as coach. It was a time of flux and unease. Despite evisceration in Australia in 2006-7, the 2005 Ashes triumph was still relatively fresh in the memory. England followers had received a taste of the promised land, quickly followed by a dose of hard reality.

Then came retrenchment, rebuilding, discovery, hope and triumph.

For a time in 2011, it was possible to believe that here was a team for the ages. As an apogee, 7th January 2011, at the Sydney Cricket Ground, has it. A cathedral of Antipodean cricket is packed to the rafters with singing English fans and fellow travellers as Australia, a weak shadow of the team which had bestrode and defined an era, slides to their third innings defeat in four matches. Later in the year, India are humiliated at home.

There is a sense, though it is illusory and in some quarters self-congratulatory, that cricket has come home. England, for so long whipping boys, are now on top of the world. They have batsmen who can accumulate as few in the modern world can - Cook, Trott - they have technicians of style and brilliance - Bell - and they have an artist of unadulterated and unconventional genius in Kevin Pietersen. They also have a wicket-keeper batsman who can bend any attack in the world to his will, skilled, aggressive, penetrative seamers and an exceptional spinner. They have all bases covered. This is a team which can lose a Test match in the arid heart of India and come back to win the series. This is a team which can win an Ashes series 3-0 when playing far from its best. There is a feeling among some that this is a team that can do anything.

They are manifestly wrong. That way hubris lies.

On the eve of their next Test series, the airwaves in Britain are full of former players predicting an easy series victory for England. Despite the persuasive evidence of the danger he poses (his potent bowling in the one-day international series in England just two months ago has been instantly forgotten), fans who should know better (and now they do, boy they really do) are dismissing Mitchell Johnson as though he, a man with more than 200 Test wickets, cannot bowl. The team's support staff are issuing prescriptive and precious demands about how and when their players should be fed. In some senses this is a cricket culture, if not a team, that is riding for a fall.

On the first day in Brisbane it carries on. Michael Clarke, unquestionably a great batsman, pops one to short leg off Broad and people are questioning his future. It is implied that Broad can get him out as and when he wishes. Two days later, the same people are uncomfortably aware that he cannot.

Late on the game's third day, Jonathan Trott, for so long a byword for imperturbability and remorseless consistency, plays a short innings of such panicky impermanence that his dismissal to a truly dreadful stroke comes as an inevitable but merciful release.

At the same time, both on the pitch and in the Gabba's stands, there is ample evidence of Australia's renewed aggression and self-belief. They have taken it from England for too long and now it is payback time. This is a cricket country to its soul.

For Flower's England, painfully reacquainted with the feeling that accompanies crushing defeat, the next few weeks will be the hardest many of their players have ever had to face.

England's Bass Player

These days, it seems, whenever England play, whatever the weather, or the competition, or the format of the match, there is an unemotional man in his early thirties with a perpetual scowl on his face at the wicket. And he is making runs.

Jonathan Trott is a man who averages more than fifty in both senior formats of the international game. A man who has made thirteen international centuries, two of them doubles, and two other scores over 150. A man who has made Test centuries in England, in Australia, in New Zealand, in India and in Sri Lanka, mostly from number three. A man, in other words, who can really bat.

If you weren’t paying attention it could seem difficult to believe that his value is still doubted by so many. But if you know a little more about how the British choose their sporting heroes, it’s not quite so surprising.

The most obvious - but, in context, utterly relevant - thing to say about Jonathan Trott is that he is South African. Born on the Western Cape, schooled in the intensely competitive cricket culture of the Rainbow Nation with an English father for a coach, he was a relative latecomer to the county game. In this Trott is far from unique - Tony Greig, Allan Lamb, Robin Smith and Kevin Pietersen, to name just four - trod a similar path in the years before him, but it remains central to the feeling that he isn’t embraced in the way that the natural born Englishmen with whom he shares a dressing room - Alastair Cook, Ian Bell, Jimmy Anderson, Graeme Swann - are.

The players that came before him had other qualities. Greig an impulsive charisma and distrust of authority; Lamb a punchy, uncomplicated flamboyance; Smith a disarming, counter-intuitive reticence, coupled with an ability to roll with some of the hardest punches anyone ever had to take on a cricket field; Pietersen a complicated, unalloyed genius.

Trott, with his unfeigned seriousness and his fussy, uncompromising preparations, doesn’t feel the need to reassure people other than with the reliability of his batting. Because of this, his personality will never really chime with people in this country. We prefer a hint of vulnerability, of light and shade, of humour, to mechanical, rigorous excellence, even if it’s tempered by the best drive wide of mid-on that you’ll ever see.

There was a time, not so long ago, when any type of consistent excellence from an England batsman was a rare and wonderful thing. Now England have three batsmen who, in their differing ways, are as good as almost anyone else around. Pietersen, when fit and psychologically settled, is England’s flamboyant lead guitarist, Cook is the rhythm guitarist, setting and maintaining the tone, impossible to shake or dislodge, and Trott is England’s bass player. Always there, and all too often taken for granted.

Pietersen is an outlier, but there are obvious similarities in the ways in which Cook and Trott bat. Early on, judgement of line and sound defence are everything, but later, as the bowlers tire and fade, their errors are mercilessly exploited. However, there are also differences, and, aside from the fact that Trott bats right-handed and Cook left, these have their origins in the players’ varying characters and backgrounds. Trott, as the outsider desperate to underline his worth, plays with an aggression and combativeness which Cook, with his soft features, dark eyes and choirboy’s background, feels no need to emulate. Of course, Cook’s outward appearance belies his immense toughness of mind, but with him it is always the iron fist in the velvet glove. Trott doesn’t wear gloves.

These differences also have their bearing on the players’ popularity. Cook is a classically well-mannered young Englishman, Public School background worn lightly, eager to please. Trott doesn’t concern himself with pleasing anyone.

Then there are the statistics. At the time of writing, Trott averages a shade over fifty in Test cricket, with a strike-rate of 47, and more than 53 in ODIs, with a strike-rate of 77. It can reasonably be argued that there are times when he scores too slowly in the limited-over game, especially when batting at three, but this can be countered by pointing out that he simply scores runs across all formats with a consistency that is beyond almost all his team-mates. Occasionally, as late on the second day of the Leeds Test against New Zealand in May, Trott’s self-absorption clouds his judgement, but, most of the time, his instincts, his feel for the pace and rhythm of an innings, are sound.

What is better: to be at the wicket and scoring runs even if at a slightly slow rate, or to be sitting on the dressing room balcony? The answer will vary according to the circumstances of the match about which it is asked, but, most of the time, I’ll take the former.

Like Cook, and like Pietersen, Jonathan Trott is one of the best batsmen in the world today. Unlike the others he has neither the personal qualities to be truly popular, nor the character flaws to be truly interesting. Trott was a relatively late starter in international cricket and he is already thirty-two years old. Within the next two or three years it is possible - likely, perhaps - that his star will begin to fade. It is, in all probability, already too late. He will never be truly loved.

All he has are his runs. And, for now, they will do.

As Mad as O'Keefe, as Good as Trott

One of the only entertaining aspects of the deathless one-day series between England and Australia (for anyone who's fallen asleep, it's still going on but mercifully ends tomorrow) has been the commentary of the one and only Kerry O'Keefe. I've heard snatches of him before, but the fact that TMS has taken the ABC coverage wholesale has brought his genius to a wider audience.

With O'Keefe you get some of the most bizarre comments you'll ever hear, delivered with the wit and timing of a superb natural comedian, but mixed in with the stuff that makes you laugh are shafts of observation which make you sit up and think, even if he's not saying anything that's unusual or extraordinary. An example of this came the other day, when O'Keefe described Jonathan Trott as 'the best leg-side player to come to Australia in the last twenty years'.

This was noteworthy, not because it isn't true but because it still seems a little strange that people who have really seen some cricket are saying such things about Jonathan Trott. Yes, that's Jonathan Trott. Plays for Warwickshire, rising 30, losing his hair, with a perpetual scowl on his face and a batting style which even his best friend wouldn't write home about. But currently the owner of some of the best damn batting stats on the planet and a man who looks as sure of his place as anyone in an England side which is as stable as they come (in Test cricket, anyway).

Before Trott came into the England team in the late summer of 2009 I'd seen bits and pieces of him on TV. At times he looked quite classy, but he never seemed to have that many runs to show for it, and it's hard to assess people's temperaments on the basis of a truncated innings in a county hit-and-giggle game. He made runs here and there for the Lions, but if anyone had told you that two years on he'd be up there with the world's greatest run-machines, you'd have thought they were as mad as Kerry O'Keefe.

Trott, though, is tough. His unemotional demeanour reflects both his upbringing in a country where cricket is taken a bit more seriously than in England, and the fact that he has had to fight every step of the way to establish himself in an England side to which many people felt he didn't belong. Like Marcus Trescothick and Michael Vaughan before him, this is a man who breathes more easily in the rarefied air of Test cricket than the safer surroundings of the county game. In a country which has had more than its fair share of players who have done things the other way round - at least one of whom also began life in Africa - such players are like gold dust.

Late in a long winter, two English batsman stand out. Alastair Cook, who had the good sense to get out of Australia before a constant diet of limited-over cricket started to sap his will to live, and Jonathan Trott. Both could be flashier and more elegant, but both hate, really hate, getting out.

To use the oldest phrase in the book of timeless cricket cliches, it's not how, but how many.

And Jonathan Trott is currently making as many runs as anyone, anywhere.

Ring Out The Old

Best wishes for 2011 to all my regular readers and anyone else who's dropping by.

Having enjoyed The Old Batsman's take on the year's best innings, I've been mulling over what I've seen.

The innings I can't get out of my head is Jonathan Trott's 184 in the final Test against Pakistan, which I watched from the Warner Stand. Deliberate no-balls or not, he came in on as difficult a batting morning as you'll ever see at Lord's with more than a few people still wondering if he was the best England could do at number three. Hours later he left the field with Stuart Broad to a standing ovation. Just before he went up the pavilion steps he raised his bat and looked back towards the Grandstand with a broad smile on his face. He belonged.

This is what I wrote at the time.

A Full House of Negatives

Whatever happens as this game plays out, things look truly grim for Australia. Grim in a way they haven't against England for a quarter of a century.

One of my favourite memories from the summer before I went to university is the day Gooch and Gower flogged a pallid Australian attack all over Kennington. Today, with the hapless Xavier Doherty playing the part of Murray Bennett, and Shane Watson as Simon O'Donnell, Cook, Trott and Pietersen did much the same.

For the majority of the twenty-five years which have elapsed since that day, the Australian cricket team has had it all. It still has, only now it is a full house of negatives: a threadbare, poorly selected attack; batsmen who are ageing, or lack form, or both; fielders who cannot take catches which should be routine at Test level.

It's still possible, given the benign pitch and the possibility of rain later in the game, for Australia to escape defeat in Adelaide, but the psychological damage being done here is huge.

Australia's glory years were really over as soon as all the greats had retired, but full confirmation of what this has meant on the pitch has taken a while longer to come.

Now, though, it is over. And there is nothing that anyone - least of all Ponting - can do about it.

Hard to Love

I began writing here in 2006, just a few months after Alastair Cook came into the England team, and, in the first few years I was writing, I mentioned him a lot.

Over the last couple of years I haven't written about him so often, as for much of that time he's been battling a range of technical demons and his runs haven't been as plentiful or consistent as they were in his early days.

He's a player, and person, of contradictions. Still young, boyishly good-looking, often uncertain of manner, but with an old pro's patience, steely determination and hatred of getting out.

He can be hard to love, but when he plays like that it's not hard to see why his record's so good.

Tomorrow morning he and his partner, Jonathan Trott, can take the game right away from Australia.

A Sense of Belonging

Until today there was an uncertainty about Jonathan Trott's status in the England side. Of course, there was a nerveless maiden century in the deciding Test of an Ashes series, and a double century at Lord's, and a record-breaking ODI partnership, but there was also the timewasting fussiness of his guard-taking ritual, more than a hint of strokelessness under pressure and an innate lack of charisma and batting elegance. Earlier in the season it began to look as though many in the media wanted him to fail, simply so as the sainted Eoin Morgan could be welcomed into the Test side.

Today, though, he resoundingly came of age with a truly magnificent combination of patience, technical rigour and impeccable shot selection; as good a century as has been made in England colours in the past couple of decades.

And Stuart Broad, for once rejecting hubris in favour of simply showing what he can do with a bat in his hand, was equally impressive.

As the runs mounted, their body language between overs reflected the way in which their partnership moved from uncertainty to realisation to fulfilment. By the end they were pumping each other's hands like long-lost friends, and they resume tomorrow at 11 requiring a further three runs to break a record which has stood for 79 years.

If Jonathan Trott lives to be 79 he'll never play better.

This is a player who really belongs.

The More Things Change...

Brian Brain was a seam bowler who played county cricket, for Worcestershire and Gloucestershire, from 1959 until 1981. Just before he finished playing he published a diary - Another Day, Another Match - about Gloucestershire's 1980 season, and his part in it. It is a fine book, recording the life and opinions of a county journeyman who had begun his career in a time that now seems like something from cricketing pre-history, and it laid the ground for similar publications which came later, such as Peter Roebuck's It Never Rains, published in 1984, Eight Days a Week, by Jonathan Agnew (1988), and Ed Smith's On and Off the Field (2004).

In May 1980 he wrote this:

I've yet to see a bad South African cricketer over here. It must be a combination of learning the game on good wickets, strength of character, competitive instinct and natural ability.

Brain was writing with Allan Lamb in mind, and also his colleague Mike Procter, but his summary of what makes South African-raised cricketers good still holds true today for the likes of Kevin Pietersen, Jonathan Trott, Craig Kieswetter and Michael Lumb.

Exchanging Congratulations

As the congratulations were exchanged and the hands shaken at the end of the Mirpur Test, one's thoughts inevitably drifted to those of the players. Michael Carberry, who looked happy but perhaps a little wistful, will have known that there's a good chance that his Test career has ended almost as soon as it began, while James Tredwell, well though he acquitted himself over the five days, will have known that it might be a long time before he's seen again in England whites. A few romantics may talk about England playing two specialist spinners, but when apart from in the sub-continent (and then rarely) is it ever going to happen? Barring a serious loss of form in all areas, Graeme Swann is destined to remain England's sole spinner for the foreseeable future.

Tim Bresnan's sentiments will have been different. A big bear of a Yorkshire lad with a winning smile and an instinctively confident attitude, he looked, with his ability to extract occasional but potent bounce and movement from the most soporific of tracks and his uncomplicated batting, like a player who could stay in England's Test match mix for a while. Having troubled the Bangladesh batsmen on their own dead surfaces, he's sure to do so in this country, and the fact that Graham Onions' back injury is worse than first thought may mean that he gets a chance to do so. For his ability to look as though he was enjoying the hard work and for maintaining his equanimity in a way that the increasingly annoying Stuart Broad would do well to copy, you don't need to look far beyond him as the quiet success of the trip.

The batting was as good as it needed to be. Cook was outstanding and KP showed that rumours of his demise (so persistent that I stupidly started to believe them myself) were greatly exaggerated. Trott, as The Old Batsman writes, is a potential complication, but an interesting one. With his obvious mental resilience he has a good base on which to build; his Warwickshire colleague Ian Bell should now go from strength to strength (although I've said that before).

Bangladesh, though much improved, are still weak, but with the heat and the dust it's a tough tour. Whatever the deficiencies of their tactics and the limits of their ambition, England deserve credit for emerging unscathed and remaining the only major country that's yet to lose to Bangladesh in any form of the game.

And, for that, Eoin Morgan, currently engaged on IPL business, must be thanked.

No Brainer

What's been happening these past few days? Well, it's been raining a lot, but Twenty20 has got underway again, in between the showers and in front of the usual fanatical crowds, and England have predictably decided that a brave new one-day world needed a new captain, and have appointed Paul Collingwood.

To me it was a no-brainer: Vaughan has never thrived in limited-over cricket and he needs to save his fragile body for the sterner challenges which lie ahead in the Test arena, and, with Pietersen ruling himself out, Colly - lacking captaincy experience but with every other quality you could wish for - was the logical choice.

With a reshuffled side, including a couple of new foreign-bred debutants in Dimitri Mascarenhas and Jonathan Trott - it'll be interesting to see how things go, even if they are still playing the West Indies, who, unless they can shake off the torpor which led them to defeat by Derbyshire today, won't offer any greater a threat than they did in the Test series.