Should England keep or dump Tim Ambrose?

horace wrote:is vaughan at risk if he fails again?

GordoninPortsmouth wrote:
Far from it Chas, and I think you have misunderstood me if you think I am.

I would not pick Chris Read for the very reason he's been shown to be mentally weak and now carries any number of scars which would IMO sabotage any attempts he might now make to forge an international career . Can I be any plainer on that point?

However I don't agree with you that there is nothing that can be done about young players who are not mentally tough enough when they first come into test cricket. Good management IMO can overcome this. Not by mollycoddling the young player "with warm milk and biscuits" but by a) identifying to them their shortcomings; b) setting them the challenge of overcoming them; c) offering them the support necessary to assist them in acheiving their goals; d) holding them to account on their work rates to acheive their goals.

In the case of Chris Read you would have sat him down after his first test back in 1999 and pointed out some of the facts of life about international cricket to him. That there is no quarter given and that any fraility is seized on by the opposition as a weakness to exploit. Technically also you would tell him he needs to work on his defence against the fast bowlers. You might tell him that if he works on all this there is an excellent chance he will be the long term replacement for Alec Stewart on the latters retirement (after all the selectors must see something in him to give him a test cap at age 20) but that ultimately if he doesn't work to overcome his shortcomings then all his talented promise would come to nothing. You then keep a close eye on him (perhaps with a central contract but not necessarily so) at Notts, send him on A tour and even have him as the No.2 to Stewart on the longer tours. In other words you offer him the incentive to work hard at his game but you hold him to account if he shirks his responsibilities

Now I accept I don't know for sure and maybe this is exactly what the Eng management did with Read. And if after all that Read was still shirking, still mentally weak then fine fair dos. Thats why his international career has ended up in the toilet.

However all the anecdotal evidence suggests his reception by the test team in 1999 was anything but friendly. After that one test he was sent into selection outer-Siberia and further to that Duncan Fletcher never at any stage seemed to either like the guy, accept he had a role to play in English cricket or do anything that would suggest he was interested in improving Read's game.

There are very guys who will be the finished product in their early 20s when they first play test cricket. Mental weakness is just one of the many potential flaws you might find as there are plenty of young people that age who are not sure of their place in the scheme of things and basically just need to grow up a bit. Good management IMO can help to overcome this. Not always for sure, but certainly its worth a go. I certainly don't accept that all you can do is just wash your hands of such players.

The big problem with the "wash your hands of em" approach is that if the player really is talented then they will simply end up clogging your FC system with high calibre performance and their very presence causes endless debate about their worth and whether they should be picked or not. They don't just go away and hide under a rock. I think Eng have exactly this problem with both Read, Ramprakash and possibly Shah. All of which doesn't exactly create a healthy feel about the international set up.

Basil wrote:

horace wrote:is vaughan at risk if he fails again?

I think he's safe until the end of the series. After that who knows. I sense that there is not such an umbilical cord between MPV and Moores/Miller as there was with Fletch and Graveney.

beamer wrote:

Basil wrote:The young player most likely to break through is Joe Denly - but he's an opener and we've got that pretty well sorted with Cook and Strauss.

We do need an attacking opener though, and he appears to fit the bill in that respect. Not suggesting he's ready for Tests yet but I'd like to have seen him given a chance in the shorter game first, so his omission from the Champions Trophy 30 was disappointing really.

THICKEDGE wrote:

beamer wrote:

Basil wrote:The young player most likely to break through is Joe Denly - but he's an opener and we've got that pretty well sorted with Cook and Strauss.

We do need an attacking opener though, and he appears to fit the bill in that respect. Not suggesting he's ready for Tests yet but I'd like to have seen him given a chance in the shorter game first, so his omission from the Champions Trophy 30 was disappointing really.

Denly, Hildreth and Goddleman seem the best of the batting youngsters.

The probability is that some of the big names will fink on touring Pakistan. Last time we went there the captain and the players were whineing pathetically about 'cabin fever'. All of this was occuring while Pakistan was enduring a natural disaster of a giant earthquake that rendered a huge number of people homeless in winter. Sending keen young players who are grateful to be there is not a good move.