There has been a lot of focus on “positive influences” and the right characters playing for England in recent times but, as the team come to terms with their World Cup predicament, there is a growing sense this bunch are too nice for their own good.
Stuart Broad admitted that is part of the problem as England contemplate how to recover this World Cup campaign before it is too late.
“When things are not going well you tend to go within yourself and I think we were a bit like that in the field. We don’t have natural ‘out there’ guys at all. Everyone’s lovely. Everyone’s really nice,” said Broad. “If you put them all in a room together for five days and have a beer, there wouldn’t be a bad word said.
“Sometimes you need a bit of ‘that’ in the field. Did you notice the other day in the field when it looked a bit dead out there? Jimmy and I came in from the boundary to the middle just to try to create a bit of uncomfortableness for the batsmen.”
It did not work and Sri Lanka hammered England by nine wickets. This is a young, developing team. That is the message Paul Downton constantly tries to press home, and that we must be patient and expect them to need time to develop a hardened edge.
But having sacked their best batsman, Kevin Pietersen, for personal reasons some fans will be exasperated to hear the problem could be that they have too many nice guys – because we all know where nice guys tend to finish.
It is down to senior players to lead a young group but the elder statesmen in this squad – Ian Bell, James Anderson and Broad – are not forceful characters off the field and are all dealing with their own ups and downs of form as England prepare for their next match against Bangladesh on Monday.
“It is a young group. It’s also a danger with a young group that you’ve watched the guys you’re playing against on TV,” said Broad. “But actually you’ve got to stand up and believe you can take on these sort of players.
“And we can. We’ve got the talent and skill to do it. I don’t know if you’ve heard this phrase going around our group at the minute – attitude over skill. It doesn’t matter how you hit them in the nets.
“Get out in the middle and front up and play. So that’s a big push we’re trying to go with at the minute.
“When we were at our best, we had characters like Trotty and Swanny. They couldn’t give a c**p what anyone else was doing. They hardly knew who we were playing against but when they got out there, it was, ‘Right, let’s do this, let’s do that’.
“It’s a dangerous place when you say an opposition batsman always hits it to square leg because it makes you think, ‘Don’t bowl it to square leg’. “Maybe as a playing group, we can get stronger with not bothering what the opposition are doing. Where is your best ball? Force your will on them. We did that naturally when we had a lot of experience in our team and guys with that mental attitude.”
Does that mean it is death by information overload? Broad says they are sent stats on their iPads but it is down to players to use them in the right way. That is down to confidence not experience, because even Broad has slipped into an over-reliance on data.
“I have been looking at things like where [Tillakaratne] Dilshan’s strong areas are and where shouldn’t you bowl to [Kumar] Sangakkara, but actually from now on I’m not interested in that.
“I’m going to run in and bowl what I’m good at. I’ve got a good leg cutter to a right hander, I’ve got a decent bouncer and I hit length hard. Maybe I can go a little fuller than I have done.”
Is this the coach’s fault? Is Peter Moores filling heads with too much information?
“He has been relaxed around the group and keen to get the guys speaking. We have a lovely group of guys but not many who will stand in front of a group and talk. He is trying to extract that out of a lot of the players.
“He has not talked a huge amount because he is trying to get other people to lead within the group, which I think is an important thing. But it is quite a scary thing to do to speak in front of a group if you have not played a huge amount. But we need those sort of characters.”
Pietersen arrives in Australia next week to begin his commentary work, starting with England’s final group game against Afghanistan.
Could he realistically ever walk back into the England dressing room and play with colleagues such as Broad who were criticised in his book?
“To be honest, we have had a tough last week, this is a huge two-week period for us and the last thing this group needs is a KP media storm popping up again,” said Broad.
“I can honestly say I don’t think I have heard his name mentioned since the Big Bash. During the Big Bash someone would say, ‘Did you see KP’s shot last night? It was unbelievable’.
“But because he has not been in the news he has not been on the guys’ mind. It has not been mentioned. For our group, it is poor timing. We don’t need that distraction. It has raised it’s head again but more like we have got better things to be focusing on.”
