Richard
Cricket Web Staff Member
Because MacGill had such phenominal success in his last series against England (and most others lately)?i think this is actually a pretty good thread, although i think a lot of people already mentioned before the last Ashes that we had no idea how a lot of the players would go against Warne because they havent played any spinner of note during that successful run from 04-05/06. As it turned out, despite what Swervy and a few others might say, England were distinctly average against Warne in the Ashes of 05 and im confident had Australia been intelligent enough to throw Macgill in the frame that Australia would have had a lot more success in that series.
Just because someone plays Warne poorly (which England did - indeed they played him better in 2006\07) doesn't mean MacGill will be successful.
Cook is far from useless. Not outstanding certainly, but definately not useless.As far as why England is poor against spin is concerned, well it all starts with the now ex-coach, Duncan Fletcher who by and large kept advocating the sweep and reverse sweep despite most players not being good enough to play it. A lot of credit is given to Duncan Fletcher and the way he got his team to deal with spin in their subcontinental victories of 00/01, but the fact is that most of the players who played a part in those series- Atherton, Hussain, Trescothick, Thorpe and Craig White were already extremely good players of spin and had nothing to do with Fletcher's methods. Only Butcher IMO can be said to be have improved his technique against spin during the Fletcher era. Most of the players now- Strauss, Flintoff, Geraint, Cook and a few others are almost useless against quality spin bowlers which shows up as a minus in Fletcher's end of term portfolio.