"Watch ball, hit ball." This was as profound as Virender Sehwag's masterclass got the other day when he was asked for some advice by Paul Collingwood, his Delhi Daredevils team-mate here in South Africa. For adherents to the G Boycott school of batting, the mantra will come as a disappointment. But for England's players at the Indian Premier League and way, way beyond, it may just be the most useful snippet they will ever hear.
To be an English hack in South Africa these last few days has been - give or take a few breaks for food and sleep - to enter into conversation about the problem with Andrew Flintoff and Kevin Pietersen. (Poor old Colly hasn't even made it on to the field; neither have Owais Shah or Graham Napier.) Theories have abounded. So here's another. And it's unlikely to be patented any time soon.
The Slower Ball Theory states that English cricketers are flummoxed by innovation. Flintoff himself admitted his only variation was to bowl a bit quicker and duly flew home for an operation on Friday with IPL figures of 11-0-105-2 after AB de Villiers had taught him a painful lesson about predictability in Durban. Pietersen is less culpable, being England's innovator par excellence, but even he was undone when Kings XI Punjab's Yusuf Abdulla gave him a slower one last week. The result: caught at extra cover second ball for a duck.
This was the tournament that was supposed to show the world how badly the IPL had missed the English in 2008. That was the theory, anyway. But all we've had to show so far is Ravi Bopara's sparkling 84 against Pietersen's Bangalore. When he told this column last night that "I've learned how to open the batting in Twenty20 cricket", the pessimism was briefly stalled. But not for the first time in the history of the limited-overs game, England are being left behind.
Whether or not the Spin would currently be walking around South Africa proudly waving the cross of St George if England's players had been made available for last year's IPL is another matter. The suspicion of otherness, so inherent in English cricket, may have been ingrained decades ago. And it goes hand in hand with the tendency Collingwood picked out when we chatted two nights ago in Port Elizabeth.
"I keep asking Sehwag, 'What's going on technically in your mind when the bowler's running in? Are you saying, I've got to get this right?' And he says: 'No, no, no, watch ball, hit ball.' In England we think about our feet being in the right place, hands going through. We over-complicate it." Hallelujah for the honesty.
But the indoctrination is endemic. In his recently published diary of the 2008 season, Pavilion to Crease ... And Back, the Nottinghamshire batsman Mark Wagh recalls asking his former Warwickshire team-mate Brad Hogg "about his pre-delivery movements". He goes on: "Should I go back and across or press with the front foot?" Hogg, the former Australian left-arm wrist-spinner, replies: "Not a clue, mate, sorry." Wagh's conclusion? "It's funny how aiming to middle every ball causes the rest of your game to fall into place."
Very few possess either the lightning-fast reflexes or eagle eye of Sehwag; even fewer can combine them. But that is no reason for England to play their one-day cricket as if they are knocking it about on a Sunday afternoon at Bath in the John Player League. If Flintoff's latest injury is a worry, then his failure to develop a variation other than quick/quicker is damning. It is hard to avoid the conclusion that the only format of the game in which Flintoff is a consistently world-beating bowler is 50-over cricket. In Tests, he lacks penetration; in Twenty20, imagination. Only in ODIs, where batsmen are still allowed a measure of caution, do his back-of-a-length heavy balls pull their weight.
Pietersen's problems here have been less symptomatic. Perhaps he's falling prey to the other English disease of sheer nervous exhaustion. But where was his customary trademark bravado when he was poking and prodding at Pragyan Ojha in Cape Town last week? On Sunday Pietersen insisted he was learning lessons about Twenty20, but England need him to learn them fast. Without him on top form in the World Cup in June, England's chances go from slim to non-existent.
Really though, if they do perform well, they will be bucking a trend. Bopara did it during his 59-ball innings last week, when he provided an object lesson in how time a Twenty20 innings and play the percentages. But can the rest follow? As we've done so many times in the past, it's little more than a case of hoping for the best. Or at least not the worst.
[the article was originally published at http://www.guardian.co.uk/sport/blog/2009/apr/28/ipl-england-kevin-pietersen-cricket]
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