Dad’s Army: England‘s go-to selection ploy

‘Good morning, my name is Cowdrey’, said Colin Cowdrey to Jeff Thompson as the latter was pacing his way back to his bowling mark. While this line has been repeated in the doldrums of The Ashes Series folklore, it has a massive significance to the context in use. Of course, a few years later, Richie Benaud and Thommo himself used the line in ‘The Best Test one liners’ and the MCC Spirit of Cricket talk respectively.

It was 1975, and England were being roasted in The Ashes cauldron down under. While Mike Denness was leading his side through their worst possible baptism, Lord Cowdrey was positioned on his arm chair. The sinister cup of Irish coffee was placed on the table beside him. He was seated on the arm-chair in his royal robe, watching as the team he once led was being torn to absolute shreds. Being a Lord in the House of Lords was not his cup of tea perhaps.

Of course, there was no better way to spend one’s life in retirement, but he did love the occasional cricket match from time to time. After the first Test, England was to travel to Perth, the fastest wicket in the world. Immediately after the first Test, the telephone in the Cowdrey residence rang. The call was from Australia.

A battered Mike Denness gave Lord Cowdrey a verbal report of what had happened. They had been destroyed by Lillee and Thommo. ‘Can you come down here and do battle with us?’ was the questioned popped from Denness. ‘I’d love to,’ replied Cowdrey as he packed his bags, tossed his robe into the closet and prepared for battle.

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Little did he know what he was himself getting into. Rodney Marsh went on to recount a few years later that Cowdrey suffered a terrible barrage of short-pitched bowling. ‘Ashes to ashes, Dust to dust; If Lille doesn’t get you, Thommo must.’ In this capacity, it is safe, to sum up, that this most certainly did not end well.

Apart from the cracking of David Lloyd’s soap holder inside his swimming trunks (good riddance that he had the trunks on) and Cowdrey’s bruised ‘pear-shaped’ body, everyone remembers it as the tour where the Aussies asserted their dominance.

Fast forward to 2016. Colin Graves took his seat in front of Andrew Strauss and the rest of the stuffed shirts donning the England Cricket Board. The ballroom at the Lord’s Cricket Ground had been used a few times prior to host a bunch of events with even The Queen in attendance on a few occasions. However, as Graves took his seat, it was clear that it was all down to business.

Among the names put forth by the selection committee were those of Haseeb Hameed and Gareth Batty. While the first name certainly did not faze the committee that much, the second brought Colin Graves to a standstill. The situation in 2016, in more ways than one, had somewhat repeated itself. Of course, it was Colin Cowdrey then and Gareth batty now; yet there was one fundamental difference to the ordeal.

While Lord Cowdrey was in his royal robes and Irish coffee, ducking and weaving at the television set, Gareth Batty was in all browns and turning out for English county side Surrey. It had been 11 years since Batty had played Test cricket. Of those 7 Test matches Batty had featured in, the last team he had played against was Bangladesh. Irony and coincidence must have surely crept across them.

Michael Vaughan, the skipper of the England Ashes-winning team of 2009 had reckoned that Batty should make a comeback. Whether he was trying to pull the leg of his former teammate or not is another matter. In the boardroom at Lord’s, Graves and his colleagues were making a serious note of the tweet from Vaughan.

In mid-2014, Vaughan had brought up this debate. Who was the best spinner in England? By then, the Brits had already seen many a spinner come and go. Graeme Swann, Monty Panesar, and Adil Rashid were a few names in the hat. They had all come and gone as quickly as one Ashes series had passed by. Vaughan had gone on to name Batty as his pick for ‘The Best spin bowler in England’.

One must also give credit to Batty for the way he conducted himself. Writing in his column, Batty directed his guns towards Vaughan’s words in The Daily Telegraph. While Vaughan had touched upon the so-called bigger picture of the obvious spin factor in the subcontinent, Batty wrote back that he did not expect the call and was also fully prepared if the England selectors did indeed give him a swansong after all.

Colin Graves perhaps took the executive decision to give Gareth Batty a swansong in Bangladesh. After all, Batty’s debut and his final Test both had come against Bangladesh. Moreover, at 38, they perhaps felt that it would help the spinners on the tour as well while they glanced over all their spinning options apart from Moeen Ali and Adil Rashid.

With this dubious selection, one can only assume that the ‘Dad’s Army’ is happy and well in England at the moment. For those scratching their heads right now, ‘Dad’s Army’ refers to the reserve army employed by the Royal British Army during the World War II to protect the Civilians within the British Island. While the able-bodied men of Britain fought on the battle lines in Normandy and Dunkirk, the others became the ‘Home Guard’ aka ‘Dad’s Army’.

Since the War, however, ‘Dad’s Army’ has largely referred to those players who have been fished out of oblivion to do battle with the opposition. The most recent of these cricketers most certainly refers to Gareth Batty. However, the funny thing is that England always does this. Anytime there is a crisis overseas, the selectors stick their fingers into the jar labelled ‘Dad’s Army’ to fish out the experienced players to do battle overseas.

After Cowdrey’s sojourn in 1975, the England’s think-tank of sorts comprising of Alan Smith and Alec and Eric Bedser stuck their hand into the jar yet again. What they pulled out was something that fascinated the cricketing fans as well as skipper Tony Greig himself. From the jar, they pulled out 45-year old Brian Close, the closest to the best left-handed opener in England at the time. Also coming out of the jar came 37-year old John Edrich and 35-year old David Steele.

This series, however, hinged on some sweeping comments from skipper Tony Greig. ‘With the help of Closey and a few others, we will make them (The West Indies) grovel.’ As well documented, the British batsmen paid the price for the comments made by Tony Grieg. The worst affected of the lot was Brian Close, one of the first few members of the Dad’s Army.

Michael Holding charged in from the boundary and fired it in with all his might. The first delivery rammed into the rib cage of Close. To the 45-year old’s credit, he did not flinch. The next one from Holding was a shot for the following day’s newspapers. The ball narrowly missed the unprotected head of Brian Close.

When Bedser probed into the ‘intimidation tactics’ of the West Indies pacers, a photograph of Brian Close was shown, battered and bruised from the onslaught of the West Indies pacers. This was one of the few bad cases of the use of the older gentlemen in a younger man’s sport. It was not until 2006 that the cover of the jar was opened once again.

This time, Shaun ‘Shaggy’ Udal was fished out to help England square the series against the Indians in the fall of 2006 at the Wankhede Stadium in Mumbai. Needless to say, Udal picked a few crucial wickets and the Brits claimed a win, one of the few under Freddie Flintoff.

Similar to Udal, Batty has been brought into the side with the wild hopes that he can affect change in a side that has not had the best of luck in recent times when it comes to clinching wins on spinning tracks. ESPNCricinfo feature writer recently suggested that age did not have anything to do with one’s selection in a cricket team.

Of course, anyone in good conscience will agree with Mr. Hogg that age has nothing to do with selection as long as the selected individual had the desired impact and relevance on the field of cricket. However, adding a bit to what Hogg says, age has an impact on the experience of an individual, something that Gareth Batty will most certainly boast of when he joins the bandwagon to Bangladesh and then subsequently to India.

To conclude, Shaun Udal seems to be the only player to have made the desired impact in India thus far. Some of the others from the Dad’s Army to have made it out to India include Colin Miller (2001), Bryce McGain (2008), and Bob Holland (1986). Most of them have not been successful. However, in spite of this, it is most certainly a good way to inject experience in the side.