By David Hopps
THE indictment of England's shattered tourists is not only the poor cricket they have played in Australia but the timorous impression they have made. The local perception is that the players' psychological decline, referred to by Michael Vaughan at the weekend, is the result not only of Australia's cricketing superiority but also of their own narrow attitudes to life.
The talk is of a bloated and cowed group that has toured joylessly. Nothing illustrates England's suspicious and insular approach more than the four security guards employed by the England and Wales Cricket Board to protect the players on their travels around Australia. It is a disproportionate measure that suppresses England's players mentally as much as it seeks to protect them physically, proof only of English cricket's pompous self-regard.
Gary Hayes is one of South Australia's most respected and sociable cricket coaches. He coaches Adelaide University's first-grade team, a club where Liam Plunkett once passed a contented and productive season. His desire to wish Plunkett well at an England net session this week required a security officer to hover a yard from his shoulder, antennae twitching. Hayes is half-Malaysian — he recently coached the Malaysian team — and wonders if that explains it. "Goons," he concluded, suitably unimpressed.
Had the security team investigated Hayes further, it would have discovered that he also had contacted Plunkett during the second Test in Adelaide, the Test where England's last-day capitulation sealed its Ashes defeat.
Plunkett went out for dinner with his one-time coach and some former colleagues, but had to eat at a restricted list of restaurants vetted by England. As he left the hotel, his Durham colleague, Paul Collingwood, joked that he would not be having room service for the first time on tour. How can it be beneficial for an England cricketer to tour in such a reclusive manner?
Against Australia in Adelaide last Friday, Plunkett had his first international bowl of the summer: five overs for 39. Hayes was saddened by a player seemingly bowling in a dream. After three months in Australia, on a hideaway tour where everything had been done for him, it was as if he had been drained of the ability to make decisions.
Modern tour itineraries leave little time for social niceties. Duncan Fletcher, England's coach, has questioned them repeatedly. But Fletcher, a most chary social animal, must also take some responsibility for the siege mentality that preys upon every England one-day squad.
One-day matches generally come at the end of a long tour. Remove matches against Zimbabwe and Bangladesh, and England has lost 46 and won only 20 of the 66 played overseas since Fletcher took charge. That record cannot be explained solely by England's limited skills. It must also owe something to its touring state of mind.
Fletcher talks repeatedly of allowing players rest but never about what they should do with their spare time. There is no point in people having a day off if they just put another DVD into the laptop and retreat into self-analysis. Senior players eventually develop a tour lifestyle that suits them, but who is educating the junior professionals?
Hayes teaches English in Adelaide and sets great store by the mental development of England's young cricketers. He would encourage Plunkett to get out of his room, grab a guidebook, hire a car, find some friends and not be back until nightfall. It is the Australian way, brought into the national team by Steve Waugh and followed since.
Hayes' converts are everywhere in Adelaide. At a barbecue in Norwood on Saturday evening, a young Australian spinner, who had been called up by his coach as a net bowler for the Australian and England teams, said that Australia had been keen to display its gratitude but that England had been aloof. He spoke passionately about how a cricket tour should also be about friendships made and about memories left behind. He voiced the Hayes philosophy. If it is also the philosophy of Fletcher, it is a closely guarded secret.
GUARDIAN