Mike Atherton one-on-one with Mark Taylor: The benefits of Bazball and the psychology behind captaincy
Mark Taylor explains to Mike Atherton why he is a fan of Ben Stokes’ approach to captaincy.
Lunn’s particular? Tups Indispensable? Iron Blue? Pale Watery Spinner? Trying to tease brown trout out of the River Test on a bright and hot afternoon, with fish spooked in gin-clear water that leaves no room for error in the cast, and shadows on the water as unhelpful as an Ollie Robinson press conference, is like trying to get wickets on that pudding of an Edgbaston pitch. It requires careful thought, patience and strategy.
Who better, then, to be fishing with than Mark Taylor, among the best captains I played against and a keen fisherman. Taylor won twice as many Tests as he lost as captain, leading Australia to a notable win in the Caribbean in 1995, the moment, it is broadly acknowledged, when the title of the No 1-ranked team switched from West Indies to Australia, where it was to remain for a generation.
Much of the skill of captaincy is hidden, hinging on the empathetic handling of players in small moments away from the cameras that we cannot see. But captains are judged by their apparent effect on their team and players out in the middle, viewed by all. Taylor’s Australia team played hard but fair and looked to take the game on; tactically he was shrewd, blending common sense with a little flair. He was the only captain who got the fields absolutely right to me at the start of an innings, for example, posting point a little further behind square, because I played later than most, and bringing the wider slips up closer, because I played softer than most. I always thought that if he was getting the small details right for me, it is likely he was getting them right for most other players too, helping to improve his team’s chances, in small, barely noticeable, ways.
To my mind, it was the granular details that cost England at Edgbaston: the no-balls, the extras, the dropped catches and missed stumpings – the nuts and bolts of an efficient cricket team gone rusty through lack of use, rather than the broader, attacking style of play that they took into the game, even though most of the analysis has been around the philosophy of England’s approach. It was Taylor’s first look live at Ben Stokes’s England in action, and he liked what he saw.
“Bazball suits England cricket at the moment because the side was playing very poorly leading into this era, and your best players are aggressive players,” the 58-year-old says. “Harry Brook is a very good player. Zak Crawley I think is a good player, although he likes to go fishing outside off stump a lot. They see the ball early, pick up length early which is the sign of a good player, so if your best players are aggressive players then play aggressive cricket.
“It’s not groundbreaking stuff. Your job as a leader is to bring the best out of your players. So if you have defensive players who want to bat long then play a long, defensive game but if you have aggressive players, get them to play their natural game. I stayed in the same hotel as the England team in Birmingham and I could sense that they are relaxed and genuinely enjoying their cricket and that’s half the battle.
“Something I tried to do as a captain, and I was taught very early on, was not to let the game drift. Try and think how you can make a difference in the field, how you can manufacture a wicket or create an opportunity. Very few wickets in Test cricket come about by the magic ball, pitching leg and hitting off. Your job as a captain is to create doubts in a batsman’s mind.
“The Khawaja dismissal in the second innings was a classic piece of Stokes captaincy. Round the wicket, a slightly different field set to a batsman who was in and settled, bowling what we in Australia call a “nude nut”, a blancmange ball, which Khawaja chopped on to his stumps. It’s not always the magnificent delivery, it’s about trying to find ways to create doubt and uncertainty or change a batsman’s thought process.”
Taylor learnt to be proactive playing under Dirk Wellham at New South Wales and then captaining in first-class cricket on some flat, unresponsive Sydney Cricket Ground pitches, where using your imagination was vital. “You’ll remember those pitches in the late 1980s, pretty ordinary and void of grass so you had to be creative and also use spinners. I maintain that to be a good captain, you have to understand slow bowlers because they will help you manufacture opportunities.
“Even with Shane Warne, say, on a day-one pitch, when it wasn’t turning much, you needed to find a way of creating some unrest in a batsman’s mind. I was lucky in my early days, we had Murray Bennett, Greg Matthews and Bob Holland – slow left-arm, off spin and leg spin – and I could watch Wellham and how he used them: sometimes a sweeper, sometimes not; sometimes attacking, by leaving gaps in the field to encourage batsmen, sometimes not.”
“I was so lucky to captain Warney. By the time I became Australia captain he was almost the finished article and it was just a case of keeping him on the straight and narrow – not always easy. But we only fell out once, when I didn’t think he was bowling all that well in the Caribbean in ‘95 and I wanted him to play in a practice match which he wanted off. He bowled a few overs, got two early wickets at which point I told him to rest. He told me to ‘eff off’ and wouldn’t let the ball out of his hand. There was no one more competitive than Warney on the field.”
Warne would have enjoyed Stokes’s declaration at Edgbaston, but what about Taylor? “Eight for 393, first day of a Test match, 78 overs. Australia have a new ball in two overs time, the tail in, with obviously Joe at one end. Ninety-nine per cent of captains would take 400 in the first innings, so now Stokes is thinking, ‘I can put Warner and Khawaja under pressure for 25 minutes.’ To me it’s a no-brainer. I thought it was a brilliant declaration.
“They didn’t take any wickets in that final 25 minutes but did you see the running between the wickets from Warner and Khawaja that night? Panicky. They have played cricket together since under-14s but were running like they’d never batted before together. A couple of 36-year-olds, one with more than 100 Tests, one with nearly 70, and they are running like they’ve never played before. All because of that declaration.
“The only time I would be critical of England’s approach was the batting in the middle session on day four, where they had the game. You don’t have to bring the opposition back into it; there’s nothing wrong with batting Australia out of the game. People may say that’s conservative but I don’t think it is. Just play appropriately. Joe [Root] didn’t look like getting out; he played a rash shot and you have to take some accountability for that. That’s the time England got a bit carried away.”
And results? They matter, don’t they, contrary to some of the rhetoric from the England dressing room after the match? “Results always matter. You can’t say they don’t matter. Of course, you don’t think of results in the middle of the match, you think of process and that’s fine, but results matter, of course they do. And results have been good for England, that’s the point: 11 wins from 14 now under Ben and they could easily have won this match too.”
Taylor has been fascinated by the psychological challenge to his countryman Pat Cummins, having to react to the sudden reversal of the traditional stereotype, with Australia no longer playing a dominant style of cricket compared with England. He remembered vividly a game against New Zealand in Hobart in 1997 when, after a lot of rain, Stephen Fleming declared way behind on first innings – 400 plays 251 for six declared – taunting Taylor to set a target.
“We’d won the first Test and we’d scored 400 in this game at Hobart and there had been so much rain we had mentally checked out, getting ready for the flight home. Suddenly, Fleming declared 150 behind and I knew I had to take up the challenge, albeit reluctantly [Australia set New Zealand a target of 288; New Zealand held on for a draw at 223 for nine]. The psychological aspect of captaincy is so fascinating and not used enough.
“I sensed watching the first game that no longer playing the dominant role, if that’s how you want to put it, doesn’t worry Pat. He seemed quite comfortable with it. It worried me more than him. I wondered whether they had gone too far into a defensive mode, almost as if they were saying, ‘We are going to go the other way and be more conservative than we would normally be.’ I wasn’t against a deep point from the outset, but I was surprised with the deep square leg, especially as we didn’t bowl a bouncer for an hour and a half. So I thought that was an over-reaction.
“But what I like about Pat is that he doesn’t have a big ego. He’s confident in himself for sure and is no shrinking violet as we saw at the end of the game, but he’s not the type to let his ego get in the way. That was a great Test for him to win, just for the validation that the method worked. You can imagine if they hadn’t won, all the questions around whether Australia should be upping the ante, so I reckon it came as a huge relief.
“The captaincy side of things when he’s bowling is an interesting one. I’ve always maintained it’s easier to do the job as a batsman, because the big moments are on the field and particularly if you are a fast bowler having to think about all the other stuff, it’s not easy. I think Pat has been clever in the way he’s used Steve Smith. A great mate of mine and a bit of a mentor, Ian Chappell, hates it as he thinks it’s the captain’s responsibility alone to make decisions, but I think as a fast-bowling captain, it’s smart to almost hand it over when bowling.”
This contrast between the methods and philosophies of the teams, and the captains, is fascinating because for the first time in a long time in an Ashes series, captaincy, strategy and leadership have become a topic of debate. It has helped open minds to the possibilities inherent in a long game where conditions change. The first Test reminded us above all, that there is more than one way to approach a five-day game, more than one route to success.
“That’s what made this Test, and will make the series, even more watchable. That extra dimension of, what will Stokes do now? What will Cummins do in response? People like you and me, we live for that. Of course, we watch the game for brilliant batting and bowling, but we watch Test cricket for the strategy too. There’s lots of different ways to win a Test, and lots of different ways to play the game.
“There’s this feeling that in one-day cricket and T20 cricket that more runs and more boundaries means more excitement. But what happens when a six becomes the norm? Where do you go from there? What we saw at Edgbaston, and why I am so much looking forward to the rest of the series, is the impact of captaincy and strategy. It’s intriguing and enthralling and part of the beauty of the five-day game.”
Strategy is the key to trout fishing too. Taylor is not the first former Australia captain to fish the River Test. Recalling his friendship with Richie Benaud, the Englishman John Woodcock, the former cricket correspondent of The Times, who lived in Longparish about 500 yards from the river, once wrote: “In fishing for trout with dry fly, Benaud found a pastime which matched his temperament perfectly. He took to it eagerly, assiduously and successfully.
“To him, the fish he was casting for and whose downfall he planned, could have been Peter May or Frank Worrell in a Test match. Coming to know the flies by their name, as he did, a Lunn’s Particular became his leg break, an Iron Blue his googly and a Pale Watery Spinner his top spinner. He loved the beauty, privacy and inherent challenge of it all.”
So did Taylor this week, getting the better of me as so often in the 1990s. If fishing is an omen, it will be Australia’s summer.
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