A sad day for England cricket, but an inevitable one unfortunately. Andrew Strauss retired from professional cricket today citing a lack of form for his decision. And this is fair enough in my view. Strauss has not scored many runs in the last 12 months, and a team cannot stay at the top level based upon sentiment.
Strauss' achievements are superb as a cricketer and captain, but at the age of 35 he feels that there is nothing left to encourage him to rediscover his form. He'd taken England to the summit of Test cricket and in doing so won back-to-back Ashes wins, a huge achievement for English cricket. The trouble is that the only way from there was down, and Strauss knows it. It's time for the England cricket team to introduce new blood in the form of Jonny Bairstow and James Taylor, alongside more established, but still world class players like James Anderson and Steven Finn.
England have rightly just relinquished the top spot in both Test and ODI cricket to South Africa, as Graeme Smith's men are clearly the best team on the planet, so now is the perfect time for Andy Flower and his new captain, Alastair Cook to rebuild.
Strauss has 50 games as skipper, which should have been more because it was only sentiment that gave Andrew Flintoff the role in Australia in 2006/7, and that would have meant no KP as skipper too.
Now is the time to rid the England side of its older members and replace them with young talent. Test and ODI cricket will be dominated for a few years by South Africa, so now is the time to prepare for when they experience a decline so that England are there to step in and take over. Lose the likes of Pietersen and Trott (who aren't English anyway, but have performed well in the colours) and get some young guns in!
Thank you Andrew Strauss - you are a true England cricket legend.
No comments:
Post a Comment