Ballance needs truer test than county game

Doubts over suitability of domestic cricket to stretch struggling players

So Gary Ballance has been banished back to the shires. Trent Boult (who saw him off three times in this summer’s Tests), Tim Southee, Josh Hazlewood (twice), Mitchell Johnson and Mitchell Marsh have put him firmly on the back foot.

It seems safe to predict that Ballance, as hungry and talented as he is, and still aged only 25, will fill his boots again in Division One. His Test average (47.76) is still superb, but it has been on the wane the last five matches (67.93 after his 10^th) to what it is now (after 15).

He cannot win really. There will be nobody around like Johnson in county cricket, so who is going to assess if he is managing to get on to the front foot more. The danger is that he stacks up runs again for Yorkshire using similar methods, earns a recall; then scores heavily against India or Sri Lanka’s medium-pacers, only to then be found out once more when he faces a top pace attack.

He could almost be better off playing a winter in the Sheffield Shield.

Which is why a quote from Alastair Cook in the aftermath of the Lord’s Test struck me as debatable. “The best players in county cricket are the ones who score the most runs,” said Cook. “You don't get that kind of pace in county cricket that often. You get the odd one but you don’t get three, so it is a different thing, but the best players adapt."

The last sentence is sound, but it is the first one that troubles. There is surely a difference between having the patience and hunger to construct massive centuries (like James Taylor has just done with 291 against Sussex at Horsham), and surviving a torrid spell against Johnson, Mitchell Starc and Hazlewood armed with a new ball.

Until you try someone in an Ashes Test, or against India’s spinners in Kolkata, or South Africa’s pacemen in front of a braying Wanderers crowd, you have no idea how they are going to cope.

Cook seemed to be suggesting that you pick players by scanning the county averages (OK, selectors, coaches and umpires are consulted far more than they were when Peter May was chairman of selectors, but you take my point). In that case, step forward Alex Hales and Daryl Mitchell.

But that goes against successful selection methods of the past. Duncan Fletcher identified Marcus Trescothick and Michael Vaughan on gut instinct, and an appraisal of their characters, not on their moderate county records. 

And further back, Graham Gooch wanted Wayne Larkins and David Smith to open the batting with him against the pacemen on hard, overseas pitches; or Peter Willey being drafted in for 26 Tests here and there because of his bravery or determination (both his Test hundreds came against the quicks of the Caribbean). Or David Steele being called up to the Home Guard in 1975 (Dennis Lillee/Jeff Thomson) and 1976 (Michael Holding and co).

Not because these players had scored buckets of runs more than anyone else in county cricket, but because they were effective against pace. Horses for courses.

Every time Ian Bell returns to Warwickshire he seems to score a century. Each time Stuart Broad puts on his bowling boots for Nottinghamshire he fills them with wickets. It is a handy exercise, to find rhythm and confidence; but it is not a true test of what they are going to face in the international arena.

For all the runs Jonny Bairstow has scored this season, he knows the true test now awaits …

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