England - Back to the Future?

With a England victory in the Third Test about as likely as Buster Douglas riding Foinavon to victory in the 2008 Grand National, it's time to consider where England go from here. Yes injuries, yes players out of form, yes poor decisions by umpires, but the fact remains that England have forgotten how to win cricket matches against any team not called West Indies and that's got to change.

When change is needed, English cricket tends to look to Australia for inspiration, even if the personnel tend to come from Southern Africa. The hard-hitting keeper-batsman experiment doesn't seem to be working, but that doesn't mean that we should stop copying the Antipodeans - it just means that we need to be smarter about what to copy. Like this.

Looking for a replacement for Andrew Strauss? After seven Tests, Matthew Hayden averaged 22. He was, not surprisingly, dropped and played just one more Test in the next three and a half years, before returning at the age of 29 in November 2000. He's been handy since then. England's Hayden? Robert Key (above) has been absent from Test cricket for two and a half years and averages 31. He is 28.

Perhaps Ian Bell needs a break? Mike Hussey racked up plenty of runs around the world and but must have given up on a international call-up, especially nearing 29 without so much as an ODI cap. He averages 59 in ODIs and 80 in Tests. Stuart Law is nearly 39, which is too old... isn't it? 

Need a hard hitting all-rounder and dazzlingly aggressive fielder? Andrew Symonds waited 18 months between the second and third Tests of his career before showing his worth in the Test arena last winter at the age of 31. Rikki Clarke played two Tests four years ago and his last ODI just over a year ago. He is not yet 26.

How about a seamer who can bat at 9? Jason Gillespie played just five Tests between August 1997 and December 2000. Kabir Ali played just one Test four years ago, but is still not 27.

The Trumpet's point is that Australia is never too proud to return to players who have been dropped early in their careers (Damien Martyn and Michael Clarke are other examples) nor to try players deemed "too old" by the punditocracy (Adam Gilchrist, no less, was just nine days short of his twenty-eighth birthday on Test debut and Stuart Clark was no spring chicken when he got the call). Perhaps England should go back to the future in Sri Lanka, where canniness and cool heads count for much in the cauldrons of Columbo and Kandy.

[The Tooting Trumpet]