Can England sustain their position as world no.1?

England: world-beaters, record-beaters and, by the looks of this picture, wife-beaters.

I, like many people, am quite young. This is a blessing in one respect of my life: my love of cricket. I have two memories which define this love. The first of them is the honours-winning team of 2005 (can’t remember why they all got MBEs, but I’m sure it was more important), and, far more interestingly, Shivnarine Chanderpaul’s stunning rear-guard action in 2007, when he averaged 148.66 in a four-Test match series they lost 3-0. And he didn’t even play in one of those.

More recently, a reasonably famous Indian team came over to these shores, and , clearly not having watched the 2007 DVD like I do once a week (or if they did were wearing special Chanderpaul-ignoring glasses) collapsed to an even worse result than the turmoil specialists had managed. The main upshot of this 4-0 demolition was England finally realising 134 years of talent and assuming the top Test ranking. This despite the media’s reaction of “No. 1? But none of our players are legends! Where’s Freddie? Or WG? Or Basil D’Oliveira?”

The reaction to a clearly very talented team becoming the World Number One team was, frankly, annoying for cricket fans. The aspects of the media that clearly know very little about cricket whinged as above, saying none of the England team were “star players”, which, if it were used about Barcelona if they won a match without Messi playing, would be shouted down by every football fan on the planet: egos very rarely win matches.

The other, more knowledgeable, writers looked at the lack of depth in the England team. They have a valid point: England’s reserve, Ravi Bopara, looked sketchy in almost all of his innings, and the 96 he made in one of the ODI matches was marred by the fact that he lost/tied the match for England by holing out on the last ball before the rain came, when a single, maybe even a dot ball, would have sufficed to win the match by the Duckworth-Lewis method (no, I don’t understand how it works).

But I find the argument that England lack depth is a false one as to whether they can survive as No. 1. Four teams have been No. 1 in the ICC rankings: Australia, South Africa, India and England. Australia reigned from June 2003, when the rankings started, to July 2009, at times by a massive margin in ranking points (I don’t know how they work either). Since then, they have fallen in spectacular fashion, losing two Ashes series and looking awful in the Test arena, despite keeping their No. 1 position in the ODI rankings (same answer).

Many point to a lack of depth in this Australia team, with its many great names, as well as South Africa, who ruled for a short time, and India, who showed this with their choices as back-up “pace” bowlers in the recent series. But all teams suffer from this. For example, Australia during their reign, played 26 debutants, compared to England’s 30. This, over six years, is very little difference for the gap between the teams, especially compared to post-reign, where the numbers are 11 to 6, and three of England’s debutants in the latter period are Trott, Finn and Morgan. Somehow I don’t think Steven Smith and Trent Copeland will have had the same effect on Test cricket.

The fact is, England don’t lack depth. The figures above highlight England’s lack of confidence in established players on the big stage, whilst Australia played their debutants in less important matches. Yes, they didn’t find 26 great players in that period, but the likes of Watson and Hussey appeared in that time, but so did Cook and Pietersen for England. The more recent figures are the telling ones. Australia have panicked, especially post-2009 and in the winter 2010-2011 Ashes, but England choose to show confidence in their players: Strauss and Morgan average less than 40 with the bat, considered standard for a batsmen in Test cricket, during this time, but England stick with them because they can do it. And for England’s depth? There are a number of young English players, picked in the ODI to tour India in October, that can, and probably will, make the step up to the Test level. People just need confidence in names they haven’t heard of yet.