Safety-First Policy A Big Risk

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Bhasin - struggling in the Caribbean.

By Dave Tickner

England's openers Michael Vaughan and Ed Joyce have both been vocal this week in their defence of England's go-slow batting tactics in the opening overs.

The policy of including three touch players at the top of the order has yet to catch up with them in the Caribbean, and it probably remains the right choice on the unpredictable Providence Stadium surface against Ireland where any score over 200 should prove sufficient.

But at some stage England will have to accept that a policy apparently designed to ensure a score of between 220 and 250 whatever the conditions and whatever the opposition can only take them so far. Time was when consistently scoring 250 would see you win a huge majority of the ODIs you played, but those days have gone.

Australia have passed 300 in each of their four games so far, contributing to a total of eleven 300-plus scores in the first 26 matches of the tournament. Add South Africa's 294 all out against Australia, and you have 12 innings higher than England's best effort thus far - 279-6 against mighty Canada.

England's plan requires one of the top three - Joyce, Vaughan and Ian Bell - to bat through the innings and allow the strokemakers coming in later to enjoy themselves.

But this is where the plan falls down, as it did against New Zealand and Canada. With those three having a grand total of one ODI century between them and a troubling tendency to score attractive 40s before getting out in ludicrous fashion, England are invariably 120-3 with a huge chunk of their overs wasted, with Pietersen, Collingwood, Flintoff and the rest forced into a desperate late slog to try and drag the score up to something competitive.

Unless one of the top three comes spectacularly good against Ireland, then change is a must. Out should go Bell, and in should come Andrew Strauss and some flexibility. Strauss, let's not forget, has twice as many one-day hundreds as the current top three put together, and can happily fill the 'third opener' role currently occupied by Bell. But he could just as easily make way for Pietersen to come in at three should the first two openers get England off to a reasonable start, and slot in at number four.

This would give Pietersen - the world's best one-day batsman according to the ICC computer - his best chance of setting the tone. It's hardly rocket science: the longer your best and most-attacking player bats, the more runs you will accrue.

Pietersen and Strauss rather than Strauss and Pietersen may seem a subtle distinction, but it could be a crucial one. Such a seemingly-innocuous switch can have massive consequences. Girls and Boys, for instance, was a joyous slice of Britpop perfection from cockney sparrows Blur; Boys and Girls, on the other hand, was a hateful Saturday night Channel Four wrongcast in which Vernon Kay embarked on an ultimately successful pursuit of the lowest common denominator.

Indeed, so bad was Boys and Girls that there is only one TV programme ever made that's worse. That's right, BBC's World Cup highlights show - starring confused sandal-clad word-mangler Manish Bhasin.

It's a show that has two things in its favour; first, the single greatest theme tune of all time is getting a regular airing again, and second, it's showed that the now-slightly-broader Angus Fraser is gradually morphing into the now-slightly-slimmer Phil 'The Power' Taylor.

But Manish... It seems almost cruel to heap further derision on the biggest BBC broadcasting mistake since Graham Norton, but his continued slips, stammers and wide-eyed rabbit-in-the-headlight confusion when yet another VT fails to roll continue to delight and appal in equal measure.

His regular guest is Jonathan Agnew, who long ago stopped taking Manish seriously. In one memorable section, two consecutive pre-filmed pieces broke down while Aggers and fellow guest Ian Smith giggled like errant schoolboys as Bhasin searched his exhaustive cricket knowledge for further questions. He eventually stammered "Massive game.." at a bemused Agnew. When greeted with silence from the TMS stalwart, Bhasin fumbled on. "Aggers? New Zealand v Kenya?"

Like a trooper, Agnew stepped into the breach while Smith continued snickering. But it's this palpable lack of any prior cricket knowledge or insight that fatally undermines Bhasin's already-shaky control of the show. He always manages to come across as a lucky competition winner given the chance to present a BBC TV programme for a day. Except he keeps coming back. Night after shambolic night.

While the Beeb are essentially only repeating Channel Four's mistake of having a 45-minute highlights show that gives more screen time to its presenter than any actual cricket, at least on Four the on-screen presence was the ever-entertaining and - crucially - knowledgeable Mark Nicholas.

The extent to which former players have utterly sewn up the cricket broadcasting industry just makes it even more galling that when a non-player is given a chance on the BBC, he makes such an embarrassing mess of it.

They might as well have gone all the way and given the job to Vernon Kay.