What we have lost

I watched Graham Napier bat for Essex in a Pro 40 game the other day. He made 60-odd from about 40 balls at number three. I got that deflated feeling when he was dismissed because he has that extra dimension, that indefinable something that marks him out.

He doesn't do it often, according to his average. Essex don't seem to be able to decide where to bat him. You could drive a truck through parts of his technique. Yet his talent is rare. It even sounds different when he hits the ball.

Napier is thirty now, so he might be lost to England beyond the T20 format. But perhaps more than anyone else, he exposes the paucity of vision in our one-day cricket.

The 50 over side has not just been moribund against Australia this summer, or at the last World Cup or the last Champions Trophy, or even at the ones before that. It's been a generation of utter mediocrity, of wasted time and wasted careers. In a decade when batting has been redefined, England have singularly failed to identify players who can push out past the norms and conventions.

England's selectors tend to spend a lot of time looking at what players lack, at what's not there. It's the orthodox view. Instead, they could start from the point of the problem and work backwards. They could ask, 'who can hit the ball?' and build on that. Identify what's there rather than what's not.

Napier's probably not good enough to make it as an international player now, but he is talented enough. There's a subtle difference.  The same could be said of other hitters: Ian Blackwell, Dimi Mascarenhas, Ali Brown, James Benning. 

Yesterday Rory Hamilton-Brown, who's 22, walked out at Hove and smacked an average Notts attack around for a while. There's plenty that Brown can't do against better bowling, but he hit the ball harder and cleaner than anyone else except perhaps Dwayne Smith. It's a place to start, and god knows, watching England peck around for 250-odd ad infinitum, a start is what we need. 

And Napier can bowl at 90mph, too...

NB: Napes is on TV again now, playing for Essex against Somerset. He's sporting a fierce pair of sideys. He's just yorked Marcus Trescothick and hit Justin Langer on the shoulder first ball. 

Infernal affairs

132 years to the day since England contrived to bring Test cricket to the world - and lose at it of course - there they were again, demonstrating to everyone exactly how far they've come in another format that originated here, Twenty20. And the answer was...

Andrew Strauss's kit was 'lost' (read: 'we had absolutely no idea he'd ever play another T20') and so he wore Matt Prior's. Right shirt, wrong player. Expediency, as ever, rules.

Strauss is, technically, England's fourth T20 captain in 18 games, although the sequence is illuminating: From the first match in 2005 (glorious, glowing herald of the Ashes that it became), it runs Vaughan, Strauss, Strauss, Vaughan, Collingwood  (for the next 10 games), Pietersen, Pietersen, Pietersen, Strauss.  

Forty-three players have represented England in those 18 matches. Twelve of those have played only once, eight twice, seven three times, four four times and two five times. Only eight players have appeared in more than half the games.

Amongst the forty-three are six wicketkeepers - Jones, Nixon, Read, Mustard, Prior and Davies - and 14 opening batsmen - Trescothick, Jones, Strauss, Bell, Joyce, Vaughan, Cook, Prior, Maddy, Wright, Solanki, Mustard, Davies and Bopara - who have appeared in twelve separate combinations. The longest-running was between Bell and Prior, which lasted three games. England began the match in Trinidad with Bopara and Davies, neither of whom had opened for England before. 

Of the 18 T20 matches that England have played, they've won eight and lost 10, but three of the wins came against Middlesex, Trinidad and Tobago and Zimbabwe. Now there will be more upheaval as it becomes apparent that they can't carry Strauss. No-one needs a Brearley in T20. 

One man yet to appear alongside storied T20 names like Schofield, Dalrymple, Lewis, Trott, Batty, Yardy, Strauss, Snape, Cook etc: Graham Napier (highest score 152, career strike rate 154.72, total sixes 37, best bowling 4/10, economy rate 7.09, ave. 19.07). 

English player 'good enough for IPL' - Official!

The line from the sunday papers is that England should return to India with whatever squad they can patch together. While we wait, Mike Atherton is the first journo to confirm that he will be on the plane. Maybe pack your pads, too, Athers. We miss having an opener on 27 not out at lunch. Or just not out at lunch. 

Concealed in the depths of Simon Wilde's why-oh-why in the Times* is the news that Graham Napier has a deal in place to play for Mumbai in the IPL. This is significant in that he'll be just the second Englishman, behind Dimi Mascarenhas, to do so.

So what do Dimi and Napier have in common? That's it - neither of them are in the England one-day set-up (except for inclusion in the pat-on-the-head 30 man 'performance squads' that we cherish so). The point is slightly skewed because those on central contacts can't sign for IPL sides yet, but it's common knowledge that only KP, Freddie, Shah, Bopara and Monty are likely to get one.

Flintoff had a pre-terrorism rant about the importance of playing IPL cricket next year. Which provokes a question as to why Napier and Mascarenhas aren't in the T20 side, never mind the squad. 

It's not as if England don't need someone who can hit 30 off five balls against India, or 24 from four against New Zealand like Dimi did. Dimi can do that stuff. Napier can too, and he can sustain it for far longer because he's not confined to hitting in one area.

So shall we give someone who's good enough for one of the two IPL contracts in England a go. Or shall we just pick Belly again? 

* Can anyone from that newspaper explain why they still insist on calling Mumbai 'Bombay'? They are alone in this. Old stylebooks die hard, eh boys...