The Hindu : Sport / Cricket : Obsession with Tests hurting England in ODIs: Atherton

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Monday, Apr 10, 2006

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Obsession with Tests hurting England in ODIs: Atherton

LONDON: Michael Atherton has blamed England's obsession with Test cricket for the team's continuing poor show in one-dayers.

"England has always treated the one-day game as a poor relation of Test cricket," he said while analysing the country's general apathy to the shorter version and the team's disastrous performance in the seven-match ODI series against India.

"It is not that English players try less hard to win ODI matches. Somehow, the attitude that it doesn't matter as much if you lose, has seeped in," he wrote in The Sunday Telegraph.

While admitting the fact that "this ODI series has become the most one-sided since the Christians were thrown to the lions," he did give some leeway to the injury-hit England team.

`Specialists'

"The aftermath of the Mumbai Test was similar to most other tours in recent history. Rightly, the players celebrated their achievement long and hard, took a couple of days to recuperate before scanning the ODI itinerary and wishing the next three weeks of their life away," he said.

"One or two `specialists' headed home thanking their lucky stars. Other `specialists' — who had spent some time acclimatising to conditions while being made to feel alienated from the Test squad — joined up. As ever, some looked for excuses to travel home. Some did," he added.

Atherton also criticised Andrew Flintoff's mid-series trip home to see his new-born baby. "It meant that the squad began preparations without the captain. Reports filtered through that England's best ODI batsman was preparing for the series in the nets at Taunton," he recalled.

Atherton said it was ingrained in players since the beginning that Test cricket was the real thing.

"The coaching, the talk, the tactics all centred on trying to produce Test match batsmen. And so, by and large, England produced stiff-wristed, technically sound, low-intensity players... When I became an England player myself, the administrators confirmed the low esteem in which ODI cricket was held," he revealed. — PTI

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