Cricket

[Le Chef]

Broad and Prior have talked a man out of jumping off a bridge in Sydney! Heroes!

Either Alistair Cook or Andy Flower

[Shaggy]

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/sport/cricket/international/theashes/10559275/Ashes-2013-14-England-players-lost-their-respect-for-the-team-the-captain-and-the-coaches-says-Matt-Prior.html

Ashes 2013-14: England players lost their respect for the team, the captain and the coaches, says Matt Prior

Little things such as poor timekeeping and not wearing the right kit show the players let the dressing-room environment slip and the result was utter humiliation

Sorry bunch: The England party look on forlornly at the presentations at the end of the fifth Test in Sydney

By Matt Prior, England wicketkeeper

There are obvious straightforward cricketing reasons why we lost The Ashes in Australia but when assessing this defeat you have to look deeper.

On one level Australia played brilliantly. They bowled with accuracy and pace, we lost wickets in clusters and our batsmen did not cash in when set. You generally lose when that happens.

But you have to look at other reasons why we could not turn the tide. It all goes back to the dressing room and making sure that environment is right and on this tour I think we let it slip a bit.

We talk about one per centers, the little things that can make a big difference when added up.

It is always those that go first and we were not quick enough to realise that.

We let a few things slide. They appear trivial issues to those on the outside but they are important when building a team environment.

Little things like wearing the right kit, turning up to meetings on time, not five minutes late.

It is about the respect you have for your team-mates, coach and captain.

In any team you have to have strong values and beliefs, and we need to start again and rediscover those before we can move forward.

And to clarify, I am not talking about particular individuals, I am talking about us letting a few things slide as a whole group.

Sometimes it can slip without you noticing and only become clear in hindsight when it has all gone wrong.

Were we honest enough? Did we address the problems?

It has got to the stage now where we have sunk to rock bottom and you say the brutal honesty has to come back.

This tour has been the worst period I have experienced with England but actually it is quite exciting that we can start again.

We can say: “Right this is a clean slate, where do we want to go?”

And it is great that Alastair Cook and Andy Flower want to lead that process.

Cook has taken a lot of criticism and that will always be the case when you lose 5-0. He knows that.

But he was let down by his players and we have to take that on the chin.

I believe he is the right man for the job and to take this team forward.

He is hugely motivated to do that. He is a proud man and he was hurting after each defeat.

I can see there is a steely determination inside him and that is exciting for English cricket.

Flower has been outstanding. Look at what he has achieved since taking over at a tough time. He has been integral to that success.

I have not seen two harder working guys on this trip than Flower and Graham Gooch.

The amount of hours Gooch has put in and the passion he shows for English cricket is an example to everyone.

It has hurt me to see the criticism he has received because that has been caused by our failures.

We are the ones who messed up, not the batting coach.

It is very easy to blame coaches but ultimately they are there as support staff; they help you get in the best position to be successful, but it is down to you score runs or take wickets.

That is why it is so important players stand up and take responsibility, not only for performances but the way forward for the team. Players have to set the tone.

It is always dangerous when players rely too heavily on the coaches to tell them what to do.

The best teams I have played in do it themselves.

You sit down with your team-mates when you need help with a certain aspect of your game and back yourself as a team.

The coaches are there to guide and influence you and we have had outstanding help on this tour, but the team run themselves.

We have departed from that ethos a little, which is a shame because we played our best cricket when we had that kind of environment.

At the start of these back-to-back Ashes series everyone thought the physical demands would be the toughest to handle, but in fact the mental challenge has been the hardest part.

Playing an Ashes series is 10 times more mentally challenging than any other form of the game, and to play two of them in six months takes its toll, especially when a team are not playing well.

If you can get on a roll like the Australians did it is very hard to turn momentum around.

Likewise, if we had gone on a roll at the start of the series it would have been hard for Australia to turn the tide.

Playing the second series away from home was always going to pose a challenge for us.

It is not an excuse. We deserved to lose. But it is just one of the reasons that may have added to the problem.

I do not agree that we were caught by surprise in the first Test by the hostility towards us from the Australia team, crowds and press.

We knew that it was coming. Darren Lehmann had stated they wanted to make Broady cry, and we knew we were stepping in to a hostile environment.

Well done to Broady because he knew he would be the main target but handled it by bowling brilliantly.

It was a lesson to us all and one we can use as we look to bounce back.

I arrived in Australia knowing it would be a tough trip but confident we would cope and succeed.

I prepared as well as I ever have for a tour until I pulled a calf muscle and that threw everything up in the air.

I was fit to play the first Test but for 10 days leading into it all I did was focus on my calf rather than my usual preparation for keeping and batting.

As a professional sportsman you have to adapt if things do not go 100 per cent to plan.

Going into that Test I felt fine, but Australia hit us hard and did not let go for the whole series.

Mitchell Johnson bowled brilliantly with aggression, pace and accuracy.

It was the accuracy that really took us by surprise.

Everyone talks about a “new brand of cricket” Australia played, but actually they just did to us what we did to them three years ago.

There was nothing new.

There are certain principles that have remained the same throughout cricket history and one is that if you concede runs at fewer than 2.5 per over then you will take wickets.

If you bowl tightly and build pressure it brings opportunities. It is what we did so well here in 2010-11.

We were unable to repeat it this time and on the batting front we did not score big hundreds. The basics still apply.

I hated sitting on the sidelines watching the last two Tests and there is an incredible hunger to get back in the team as I do not want my career to finish on this note.

I have worked too hard for that to happen.

I have huge ambition to turn it around, to get back to playing at the level I have done for a number of years and to help this team build again, move forward and win Tests.

But since being left out I have recognised that I was walking around in a fog.

I was going around in circles. Everything I tried did not work, but the minute I stepped out I had clarity.

I looked back and said to myself: “Why was I doing that, worrying about silly things?”

It suddenly became very clear. I had been hitting the ball brilliantly in the nets.

There was nothing technical. I was just not performing in the middle.

I felt really good going into the Perth Test. I had time in the middle in Adelaide and I was catching the ball as well as ever when training with Bruce French. I was confident.

But the biggest shock was missing the stumping off David Warner.

My keeping had been outstanding until that terrible moment. It was as bad a moment as I have ever experienced on a cricket pitch.

I stood there knowing that Swanny was struggling a little bit and I had let him down.

When you make a mistake as a keeper it is the worst position in the world. You want the ground to swallow you up.

You hope he nicks off next ball and you take the catch. Then everyone forgets your error.

But he kept slogging it further and further until he reached a hundred, and I felt gradually worse.

Now I will have a bit of a break at home. I will catch up with friends, play golf, weather permitting, and do the normal things in life.

In March I will cycle the Cape Rouleur, a four-stage race in South Africa.

It will be good for building fitness and helping my Achilles before I return for pre-season and concentrate on cricket and scoring runs again.

Gooch has devised a programme for me and I intend to find form with Sussex and get back to scoring runs again.

[Alex]

Good article from Prior. Always liked him as a cricketer. Nice to see him addressing his own problems, and explaining his thought process on the field.

Sounds like from the end of that he wont be playing for England again until the Summer, if he even plays for them again. Which I guess is a good thing, as it will give time for Bairstow to try and cement a place or even just get some experience.

Think he will be back, and back for a while to come though.

[Shaggy]

[ame]https://twitter.com/the_topspin/status/421247210735419393[/ame]

[EwarWoo]

That's very frank. Good to see some honesty coming out of the camp.

[Harv]

I think its just an excuse to hide the fact he's an absolute donkey

[Buzzo]

Kevin Pietersen: England captain Alastair Cook fails to back batsman

Captain Alastair Cook has refused to give Kevin Pietersen any guarantees about his England future. Asked whether he wanted the 33-year-old batsman to help him regain the Ashes in 2015, Cook would not be drawn. Referring to the recent 5-0 series whitewash in Australia, he said: "We're going to have to let the dust settle on everything. "If I gave one player reassurance there could be [up to] 10 players who want that... it's unfair for us to do that."

England coach Andy Flower this week issued a statement denying he had given an ultimatum over Pietersen's future. It followed reports he would resign if Pietersen remained part of the England set-up.
Any immediate decision about the future of Pietersen - or any other player - seems unlikely, however, as England seek to rebuild following Graeme Swann's retirment and Jonathan Trott's early return home from Australia with a stress-related illness. "It's very important the leaders of this side take their time to make the right decisions because knee-jerk reactions are not what's required," said Cook.
"It needs a lot of thinking and most importantly we need to get English Test cricket back on track. "We have been a good force for five years, we've had a tough three months - that's hard to take - but we've got a lot of good cricketers in England and you have to start looking to the future as well."

This summer England take on Sri Lanka in a two-Test series, beginning on 12 June, before facing five Tests against India. Before then, Flower may want England's leading players to fight for their international places by performing well for their counties in domestic cricket. This may conflict with Pietersen's ambitions to play in the Indian Premier League (IPL). While he has been released by the Delhi Daredevils , he will be a free agent for the players' auction on 12 February where he could attract a lucrative contract. This year's IPL tournament runs from 8 April to 30 May.

The agreed cut-off date for IPL players to return to England is 13 May, which would give Pietersen - who has only played in nine one-day internationals since February 2012 - seven days to prepare in home conditions for the ODI series against Sri Lanka.

...realistically the headline could be 'Cook fails to back entire England team'. I suspect his hands are tied.

[Vermilion]

...realistically the headline could be 'Cook fails to back entire England team'. I suspect his hands are tied.

KP is the target at the mo where the media are concerned, they'll do anything to get his team mates to say something controversial about him, and if the players wont be controversial, the press will do it for them.

[Buzzo]

KP is the target at the mo where the media are concerned, they'll do anything to get his team mates to say something controversial about him, and if the players wont be controversial, the press will do it for them.

You wonder if Pietersen had been brought through the ranks of English cricket as opposed to the SA system if he would be so vilified.

...He'd be amazing in the SA team right now as well

[captainfog]

Total spin from TMS. Poor from them.

[Buzzo]

Cook lasts 3 balls of the first over of the first ODI.

[Chazza]

The embarrassment continues.

[Buzzo]

Australia on the other hand pile on nearly 170 runs for the opening wicket chasing down 270...

[Chazza]

England beat a Prime Minister's XI by 172 runs for a first win in Australia for two months, but captain Alastair Cook again failed with the bat.
Cook was caught behind off 37-year-old Brett Lee and Joe Root lbw to the same bowler as England slipped to 149-6.
They were revived by a stand of 80 between Jos Buttler (61) and Tim Bresnan (36) to reach 264-8.
The Prime Minister's XI then wilted to 92 all out, with Ravi Bopara claiming four wickets.

Ravi's figures were 3O 0M 4W 3R

[Shaggy]

Not arsed about one dayers but Cook should've come home with some of the others. He is mentally fried. Besides, he's such a plodder I never understood why he gets a game in the shorter form.