Port Elizabeth
Mike Atherton28-Apr-2003Mike Atherton talks to the players and sees signs that England’s day may not be too far awayPort Elizabeth. Remember Port Elizabeth? All right, I know we’re all trying to forget it: Australia 135 for 8 and still needing 70 to win on a near impossible surface; and then Michael Bevan and Andy Bichel coming together and playing with such calm, such certainty, as if victory was never in doubt. No wonder we’re trying to forget it.One look at the England players’ faces that evening told starkly that they wouldn’t forget it, not in a long while. Not that they got an almighty bagging afterwards: the initial taunt of "you’re a disgrace, Hussain" from one disgruntled supporter as the team boarded the bus was replaced by whole-hearted applause when the players entered the foyer of their hotel – you know, the kind of applause that English supporters hand out for a nice try or a good effort, that second-best kind of applause.Most of the players went straight up to their rooms. James Anderson, who had had the kind of day that sooner or later he was bound to have, looked ashen and very much of tender years. Alec Stewart was stone-faced; he knew now that the World Cup would elude him. Duncan Fletcher went to the coffee bar, poured himself a strong one and his face said it all: "How do we beat these guys?"How indeed? On that particular day England did most things right, but not quite everything right. Later, I bumped into Nasser Hussain looking fairly dishevelled outside the lifts. "Would you have bowled Caddick instead of Anderson?" he asked, with a pained look. Well, the question is irrelevant because I’m not the England captain. And, although bowling Anderson was not the percentage call – he’d had a bad day and lost his run-up twice the previous over – those are the gut-instinct calls that only a captain on the field can make. You hope to get more right than wrong, which Hussain has.More damning was the way that Bevan was allowed to play his natural game of knocking the ball into the gaps without having to take risks, more damning because we have seen it from Bevan time and again. History suggests that, if he is still there at the end, Australia will win. England banked on getting Bichel and then Glenn McGrath out when really they needed to get Bevan. Or at least they needed to make him take risks.Other than that England had a pretty good day. In a way, though, that is also a problem. England had a good day, Australia didn’t and still England got beat. For a while I have argued that mental scarring is a problem for players who are constantly on the wrong side of it against Australia. It is too late now for one or two of the older players but the younger brigade – Vaughan, Trescothick, Flintoff, Collingwood and Anderson – must start winning soon before that culture of defeat against Australia becomes endemic for them.For that reason it was good to see the team out together later in a restaurant across the road from the hotel. Take it from someone who has lost a few games he should have won, getting it out of the system as quickly as possible is the best way. Anderson, who had said he wasn’t going out and must have felt like hiding away, joined the team later and that was good to see.It was encouraging to hear some of the players talking openly about the game. What did we learn? What can we do better next time? Paul Collingwood, for example, marvelled at the way Bevan played: his ability to manoeuvre the ball and stay cool under pressure; and his reaction at the end, his total self-control, which gives an indication of his state of mind throughout the run chase. It is a good lesson, the best kind of lesson, for Collingwood, who is establishing himself as England’s middle-order finisher.With that attitude England’s young players will move forward, will learn from mistakes and may go one better next time. Let us hope that the selectors learn from theirs. Now is the time to start planning for the next World Cup, not three years down the line. Now is the time to be ruthless; players who will not make the Caribbean in 2007 should be discarded immediately, no matter how unfair it seems, because there really is no magic formula to winning cricket matches, against Australia or any other team, other than having good players and good preparation.During the afternoon at Port Elizabeth I was watching the match with Mark Taylor. As Bevan and Bichel started to make the impossible possible, he turned to me with a grin and said: "If you don’t beat us today, you’ll never beat us." Mental scarring again, you see. Still I laid down a wager, which I’d been doing throughout the Ashes series in the Channel Nine commentary box, and awaited my winnings. It has been an expensive winter.Australia, of course, have inherent advantages of a better, tougher system and an outdoor lifestyle but I have seen signs in the last year or so that make me believe that England’s day might not be too far away. They were the third best team I saw during the World Cup, after Australia and India, and but for the ridiculous shilly-shallying over the Zimbabwe issue I believe they could have gone a long way in the tournament. A strong nucleus from that team should stay together now for another four years.To beat Australia a team must focus on certain areas. Wherever possible they should bat first so that the pressure will tell on Australia’s weak suit which, in one-day cricket, is their batting. They should target the fourth and fifth bowlers – in this tournament largely Brad Hogg, Andrew Symonds and Darren Lehmann. And they should have specific plans for the batsmen: for example, round the wicket to Adam Gilchrist, a packed field square on the off-side to Damien Martyn, and make Bevan take risks by hitting over the top early on.Of course, as England look to develop over the next four years, so will Australia. There are noises coming from the Australian camp, however, which suggest they might be getting a little cute with the game. Throughout this World Cup Ricky Ponting suggested they simply do the basics better than anyone else and more consistently. Now, it is claimed that they want to start producing ambidextrous batsmen and bowlers in the near future. In that case, England won’t have to do very much improving at all. Australia might just beat themselves.After the Port Elizabeth game I had to endure the usual taunts from Taylor and Ian Healy. I reminded them that it was only half a dozen years ago that we whitewashed Australia in a one-day series in England and that supremacy in sport never lasts forever. I hope.Click here to subscribe to Wisden Cricket Monthly.The May 2003 edition of Wisden Cricket Monthly is on sale at all good newsagents in the UK and Ireland, priced £3.25.