A thumping defeat at Lord’s by Pakistan in mid-May has set alarm bells ringing and raised concerns about the methodology
Never mind The Hundred; English cricket is in dire need of any old hundred. The inability of England’s Test team to convert fifties into centuries has become one of their defining foibles. And it’s getting worse: 24% in 2016, 20% in 2017 and, so far in 2018, a pitiful 6%. An elite batting lineup – such as England in 2010‑11 – would be at around 40%. An even more perverse statistic is that since English cricket’s new dawn in the summer of 2015, the one-day international team have a much better conversion rate (27%) than the Test team (19%). Given the nature of one-day cricket – limited overs, the greater need to risk your wicket – that is pretty staggering, especially as many of the same players are in both batting lineups. Maybe England could try some unusual incentives: a knighthood for the next centurion; Advanced Hair Studio vouchers for players with a conversion rate in excess of 40%. They should certainly pick and pick and pick the brain of the England and Wales Cricket Board’s lead batting coach Graham Thorpe, who made heaps of pretty fifties in the first half of his Test career and plenty of clinical hundreds in the second. It is hard to see how England can improve without resolving such a fundamental problem. Every captain wants to build a team in their own image, but this probably is not what Joe Root had in mind.
Related: Lord’s humbling should remind ECB it is easier to sell a winning team | Vic Marks
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