Power-sharing begins at Stormont for England - wicketkeeper

Stormont Castle does not at first sound like a suitable venue for Andrew Strauss to begin his appointment as England's cricket captain. Tuesday's venue for the first ever one-day international between Ireland and England is, however, such an appropriate location that England supporters would be justified in believing this is a happy omen which will result in his captaincy being much longer and more successful than Andrew Flintoff's.
Stormont is the home of power-sharing between the two communities of Northern Ireland whenever they can be persuaded to work together, and power-sharing is what Strauss and Michael Vaughan should be doing for the foreseeable future. Strauss in one-day cricket, and Vaughan in Tests, is the optimum arrangement until the Ashes series is over, when Vaughan can take over for the World Cup. Between them these two leaders should be able to dispel the unthinking drift which allowed Sri Lanka to stage their tail-end partnerships, then lure England into Muttiah Muralitharan's web and square the series. Batsmen, when captaining, have time to think about putting the opposition under pressure every ball, which fast-bowling all-rounders do not.

When flying to Belfast tomorrow morning, at the head of the group of novices now billed as England's one-day squad, Strauss could be forgiven for thinking that the parallels with politics may extend further. The raw recruits have promise but will raise as many questions as they answer. Can Tim Bresnan, who can certainly hit, find at least the one extra yard of pace which is necessary to contain one-day international batsmen, as his Yorkshire team-mate Matthew Hoggard has finally found? Ed Joyce is far more talented than the brothers he left behind in Dublin, notably Dominick who opens the batting for Ireland, but like Rob Key he went through his early 20s without doing the hard work which his fielding needs.
A shock defeat in the grounds of Stormont Castle, in what is being hailed as Ireland's biggest ever cricket match in front of a full house of 7,000 and BBC cameras, would threaten to make the England captaincy the same sort of dead-end job for Strauss as being Northern Ireland Minister. But a second happy omen for Strauss is that luck favours him, as it does all good captains.
His opponents on Tuesday are not Wales, who defeated England in the equivalent warm-up one-dayer in 2002, or Scotland, who at their strongest have several county cricketers in their ranks. Ireland have also lost their two most talented players: Niall O'Brien, the wicketkeeper-batsman who is required by Kent because Geraint Jones is playing for England; and Eoin Morgan, described as an 'Ed Joyce clone', who was withdrawn by Middlesex yesterday to fill the gap left by Strauss, Joyce, and Jamie Dalrymple. The Irish team consists of good club cricketers from the Republic and Northern Ireland and, like any English first-class county, overseas players. ''Cricket in Ireland knows no boundary,'' according to the Irish Cricket Union's press officer Robin Walsh, pointing out that Ireland's big matches alternate between the Clontarf ground in Dublin and Stormont. But the biggest contributors to Ireland's one-day wins over Zimbabwe in 2003 and West Indies in 2004 were the 'deemed nationals', as the ICC call them, the foreign players who personify the overseas investment which the Irish economy has attracted.
Their captain, Trent Johnston, is a 32-year-old pace-bowling all-rounder who played five games for New South Wales without having serious pace; Jeremy Bray is an opening batsman from Sydney, David Langford-Smith is a Sydney all-rounder, Andre Botha another all-rounder from South Africa. No less influential has been Adrian Birrell who used to coach South Africa's Eastern Province in the same quiet, methodical style as the Western Province coach, Duncan Fletcher.
After Belfast, England's one-day party will fly to Southampton for the Twenty20 international on Thursday evening, when England will have an advantage as it will be Sri Lanka's first 20-over match, followed by the five 50-over internationals starting at Lord's on Saturday. This is when England's pitiful inexperience - in the absence of Flintoff, Simon Jones, James Anderson, Ashley Giles and Ian Blackwell - will kick in. Steve Harmison is the only 10-over banker left standing; England's second most senior bowler is Liam Plunkett with 10 caps. Not for a while yet will England be allowed to forget that sense of drift which let Sri Lanka share the Test series. A 2-0 victory, which the respective runs per wicket ratio suggests would have been the right result (England averaged 33 runs per wicket in the Tests, Sri Lanka 28), would have given England some momentum going into the one-day series; now Sri Lanka are favourites.
England's one-day party have taken 122 international wickets between them. Muralitharan, Chaminda Vaas and Sanath Jayasuriya have taken a total of over a thousand one-day wickets and they have been reinforced by the impressive fast bowler Dilhara Fernando, who has taken more than a hundred himself. If England manage to win this series, even 3-2, they will know their new captain will also make a fine long-term replacement for Vaughan in Test cricket.

Source:
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/sport/main.jhtml?view=DETAILS&grid=&xml=/sport/2006/06/11/scscyl11.xml

England’s Joycean moment - wicketkeeper

Ireland’s Ed Joyce has been included in England’s revamped squad to face Sri Lanka and could well be in line for a tilt at World Cup glory next year

The inclusion of six uncapped players in England’s latest one-day squad may look like a justifiable clear-out after the winter defeats in Pakistan and India. In fact it has much more to do with the difficult problem of replacing Andrew Flintoff, the country’s one genuine allrounder.
Of the four bowlers who have not played before, all are capable batsmen and boast good first-class averages this season: Tim Bresnan 31.8, Glen Chapple 41.7, Jamie Dalrymple 40.8 and Alex Loudon 39.1. Two of them can expect to play in an XI that will almost certainly include five specialist bowlers, in addition to five specialist batsmen and a wicketkeeper. So the lower order needs to be able to wield the willow.
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Providing Flintoff is restored to full fitness, we should not assume that many of the six will still be around come the World Cup. Neither Dalrymple nor Loudon may survive once Ashley Giles and Ian Blackwell are playing again. The best chance of anyone cementing a place is if Bresnan or Chapple can make a convincing case as the side’s No 8.
Ed Joyce, who will be vying with Alastair Cook and Ian Bell for batting places, is the most romantic of the new selections. Joyce was born in Dublin, not in modern times a renowned nursery of England cricketers but his ability with the bat was such that he was quickly spotted by a county side, Middlesex, and persuaded to cross the sea to further his ambitions.
He first represented Ireland at 18 and two years later was making his first appearances for Middlesex’s second team. He scored 60 in his first match and shared a ninth-wicket stand of 91 with Ian Gould, who would take a paternal interest in Joyce’s development with the club. Joyce’s first full season of county cricket came in 2002, when he scored four centuries, and although two relatively quiet seasons followed, 2005 — when he completed his England qualification — was a breakthrough year with 1,668 runs at an average of 61.8, including an innings of 192 against the eventual champions Nottinghamshire. His form was recognised with a place at the national academy and he scored three fifties in one-day games when England A toured the Caribbean earlier this year, probably a persuasive factor in his inclusion now.
The timing of his selection could not be better because he’s in prime form. Last week, he scored 155 to help Middlesex seal their first championship win of the season over Yorkshire. Standing 5ft 11in, he is now a power player, but has a knack of placing the ball in the gaps square of the wicket.
Although his stated ambition is to play for England at the World Cup next year, he has not lost contact with his Irish roots and last year played a prominent part in Ireland qualifying for the tournament by scoring two centuries in the ICC Trophy.
The best thing about the clutch of injuries that have removed five frontline one-day players — Michael Vaughan, the captain, and James Anderson are also missing — is that it puts pressure on the other regular members of the side to perform. As Andrew Strauss, who will captain the team against Sri Lanka in the absence of Vaughan and Flintoff, said yesterday, all 11 players must contribute if England are finally to achieve some consistency and success in one-day cricket. In recent times they have been far too dependent on Flintoff and Kevin Pietersen.
“You can’t afford to rely on one or two players in one-day cricket,” Strauss said. “Look at the Aussies, they have 11 who can perform day in, day out, and we need to replicate that.
“The rest of the summer is going to be crucial because that is where the momentum builds for the winter. We need to perform well against Pakistan and have a good run in the one-day competitions. If we’re always focusing on Australia, we are not going to hit the ground running there.” Rejecting Steve Waugh’s charge that England, who have failed to win a Test or one-day series in the past nine months, had lost the killer instinct, Strauss added: “We didn’ t play our best cricket (in the Tests against Sri Lanka) but I didn’t think we could be called casual in the way we prepared. We were fully focused.
“People have very quickly forgotten that the 12 players who played in that (Ashes) series haven’t played together since and that a lot of the time four, five or six have been missing.” Strauss did, however, concede that England had been missing Vaughan, who has appeared in just two out of 20 internationals since September. “Vaughan did an incredible job as England captain over the past few years and never more so than during the Ashes, when we really needed a steadying influence and a guy who could make us feel relaxed enough to play the sort of cricket we needed to play to win,” he said. Vaughan is expected to rejoin England for the Test series against Pakistan that starts on July 13. If Joyce and Alastair Cook are both chosen, they could make up with Strauss and Marcus Trescothick a quartet of left-handed specialist batsmen. Whether this is the help it once was in negating Muttiah Muralitharan is a moot point. The problems Murali poses have multiplied since he added the doosra to his armoury. It was a weapon designed to counter the best left-handers, who were picking off his stock ball with near impunity, and in that regard it has been a triumph.
On the face of it, England ought to have the measure of Sri Lanka. Sri Lanka being traditionally bad travellers but England are fighting a substantial tide and will need some purposeful performances from their spearhead, Steve Harmison, who is set to play his first international this week afterthree months out with injury.

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,2094-2220602,00.html