'Build for the future.' Why?

February 7, 2007 by The Third Umpire

Readers, a question: who would be in your World Test XI?

Always a good one this, and nicely complicated by the recent retirements of Pigeon, Warner (and possibly Alfie Langer).

Most of it selects itself: Ponting, Yousuf and KP must be in there. And Murali and Hussey. But what about Sangakkara or Gilly? Pollock or Flintoff (or both)? Having duffed up England and South Africa, Stuart Clark presumably takes over from McGrath.

But what about putting in a few youngsters? A few names for the future? A few players who don't belong in your world side right now but will, possibly, do the business next year or the year after or maybe the year after that.

No?

Exactly - that would be insane.

Yet when it comes to the England team, this hopeless idea of building for the future is never very far away.

After the Ashes, Duncan Fletcher said he had a good nucleus of a team for the 2009 Ashes. Flintoff said most of the team would be around in 2009, too.

Actually, fellas, the job was to win the Ashes this time round, in 2006/07. Didn't anyone tell you?

In the ODIs, Fletcher and the players repeatedly bang on about the side's inexperience, as if there was some magical sporting equation: Promise +Time = Champions.

Last week, Beefy Botham was the latest to reveal he believes that old lie, when he said he thought Paul Nixon shouldn't be in the side because "he's not one for the future".

Well, maybe Nixon, 36, and Mal Loye, 34, SHOULDN'T be in the side - but that's got NOTHING to do with the 'future'.

What's so great about the future? Is Fletcher building an entertaining team for when cricket comes back on terrestrial TV or something? Is there a reason why the NEXT World Cup should be taken more seriously than the one that starts in a month's time?

The point is if you're good enough, then you should play and it doesn't matter how old or young you are.

Alex Ferguson, famously, won the 1996 Premiership with a Man Utd side full of "kids" - but he wasn't building for the future. Beckham, Scholes and the Nevilles were already good enough to win the title, not makeweight youths keeping better players out of the side.

Ferguson's most recent signing was Henrik Larssen, who's 36. Not one for the future. Possibly Fergie wants to win the title THIS year, though. Imagine that.

Australia don't 'build for the future.' Their new, younger players - Mitchell Johnson, for example - come straight in and succeed. And, as they pick their best 11 men for the job, they turn to battle-hardened 'new' boys like Stuart Clark and Mike Hussey.

Presumably Beefy Botham would throw up his hands in horror that Australia don't have one eye on the 2013 Ashes series.

Well, look in the book, mate: the most important games in any sport are the ones taking place right now. If England could find a way to win the World Cup with a team full of 35-year-olds, one imagines the fans would be happy enough - or would they be chewing their nails, worrying about the future? (Australia are quite happy to have a team full of 35-year-olds.)

Right now, there are rumours going round that England are toying with calling up Darren Gough or Mark Ramprakash to the World Cup squad.

Beefy says that's a step backwards. Of course he does.

But the ONLY criteria here is whether the Dazzler and Ramps would make THIS World Cup campaign a success. And their age or ability to play for another decade at the top level are 100 per cent irrelevant.

If Sajid Mahmood, Liam Plunkett and Jimmy Anderson are more likely to bowl England to World Cup glory than Gough, so be it. But if Fletcher is going to take them to the West Indies as some kind of building-for-the-future exercise, then he's an idiot.

In sport, the future never comes - and that's a fact. How do you know that your players will continue to improve? You don't. When Michael Owen and Wayne Rooney burst onto the scene as teenagers, idiots assumed that somehow in five years' time the prodigies would be twice as good.

But, though no-one seems to have told our 'leading' sports pundits, sport doesn't work like that. It's not predictable.

In 18 months' time, the squad you're planning to have will have injuries or loss of form and there'll be another 20-year-old banging on the door.

I'd say only let the 20-year-old in the door if he's one of the best 11 players in the country. Beefy Botham, conversely, would prefer to see a team of teenagers as England build towards some non-specified future Golden Age.

Look at the guys Fletcher has picked 'for the future' over the four years since the last World Cup. There's been 28 new caps in all, from Jim Troughton to Rikki Clarke to Michael Yardy to Kabir Ali to Alex Loudon to Tim flipping Bresnan. Where are THEY all now?

Were any of them among the best 11 players in the country when they were given their debut? And, if not, why not? The future Fletcher was supposed to be planning for is here right now – except that now he's still apparently planning for two years' time!

Sri Lanka brought back 36-year-old Sanath Jayasuriya last summer and blasted an England team full of Bresnans and Mahmoods 5-0. Confidence buoyed, the Sirils have carried on building towards the World Cup and are now among the favourites; but none of the England youngsters involved in that debacle have 'come through' yet. Most have disappeared back to county cricket.

If only the Sirils had been planning for 2011, then things might have been very different.

Ravi Bopara looked good the other day; Plunkett and Mahmood bowled straight at the 20th time of asking; Folksinger Ed Joyce survived being dropped on 6 and hit a ton.

Well done, everyone. If we really think these guys are in the best 15 players in England then throw 'em in the world Cup squad. If you're 'building for the future' - well, let's just forget it, eh?

Club sides might need to build for the future. But international sides have got the pick of everyone. It's fantasy cricket - just pick the best 11 players in England.

Or maybe picking the best team really is no way to win a World Cup.

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