To speak up or not to speak up... that is the question that springs to mind after Malan's remarks

HUW TURBERVILL: Discretion is the better part of valour and all that, but the world would be a boring place without people taking a view. With that in mind, should selectors speak their minds?

I’m a big fan of Dawid Malan and his batting, but I feel he was on slightly shaky ground talking about Ed Smith.

When Smith was National Selector he left Malan out of the Test team in 2018 after a lean spell, saying he was “better suited to overseas conditions”.

“It probably did affect me for four or five months and every time I went away for tournaments I couldn't get in the right head space,” said Malan ahead of this summer’s third Test against India at Headingley. “But after a bit of a break when I had gathered my thoughts, I found a new lease of life.”

After his successful Test comeback, in which he scored a pleasing 70 in the first innings, Malan will now feel vindicated.

I’m wary of people objecting to others voicing opinions, however.

Discretion is the better part of valour and all that, but the world would be a boring place without people taking a view.

Magazines, websites like this one and newspapers would have a lot of blank pages, and no one would buy them.

The fact is that Malan averages 35.46 overseas in nine Tests, with that splendid 140 against Australia at Perth’s Waca (known for its bounce) in 2017/18, and 23.78 in seven Tests at home – improved by that sparkling innings at Leeds. 

So Smith did seem to have a point...

Or should the selectors keep their views to themselves?

Alec Bedser certainly didn’t in 1981.

^{Dawid Malan said being dropped by England, and the comments by selector Ed Smith, affected him for months}

It was a different time of course, when the England captaincy seemed to be renewed on a match-by-match basis, at home anyway.

When Sir Ian Botham offered his resignation as captain after that second Test against Australia at Lord’s when he made a pair, Bedser indiscreetly told the world “I was going to sack him anyway”.

How tactful.

Jonathan Agnew turned up the sarcasm level to factor 10 on Test Match Special talking about the red-ball form of Malan.

In his last three first-class innings Malan has made 219, 199 and 70 against Derbyshire, Sussex and India respectively, all at Headingley.

Trouble was the first was last August, the second was this June, and the third was just gone.

Three red-ball innings in 373 days...what a joke.

England played catch-up in the third Test and splendidly so, but they looked undercooked in the first two, at Trent Bridge and Lord’s respectively.

A fixture list that resembles this summer’s will surely not be tolerated by fans of the first-class/Test game again. 

It’s certainly an issue that is going to be looked at very closely by The Cricketer in the months and years to come.

Another red-hot topic is over-rates, judging by the letters we receive.

Full marks to Agnew, and on Sky especially Nasser Hussain and David Lloyd, for highlighting the issue.

^{Do captains like Joe Root need to do more about over rates?}

Over and out

Spectators pay a lot of money to see 90 overs in a Test day (albeit minus two for a change of innings).

Umpires should be empowered to tell 12th men where to go when they run on with a drink or a change of gloves for the umpteenth time.

There is a drinks break on the hour and that is enough in this country - especially with the summer we have had.

Why is it that new, young fans are happy to start following old football clubs like Manchester United and Liverpool? Yet in cricket they have seemingly embraced new Hundred clubs like Trent Rockets and Southern Brave, but don’t find Nottinghamshire and Sussex CCCs so appealing?

Is it a marketing problem? Certainly the ECB spent a fortune on promoting their new baby… 

Now a county like Surrey would say that this doesn’t apply to them. They have 14,000 members, and sell out their home Blast matches. There is no doubt that they had no need for The Hundred, and were ambivalent/antagonistic to it from the off.

^{The Hundred continues to divide the cricket community}

Sky's the limit?

The other football/cricket conundrum I have trouble with is the Sky factor.

People blame cricket’s problems – especially the decline in recreational participation – on the satellite broadcaster, after Test cricket/all live cricket left our terrestrial screens from 2005 to 2019. 

Yet how do you therefore account for football’s incredible expansion since the move to Sky?

Is The Hundred our Super League?

Speaking of football’s Premier League, and the Big Four (or is it Six?)... all hell broke loose about the plan of Manchester United, Liverpool, Arsenal, Chelsea, Tottenham Hotspur and Manchester City to create a 12-team European Super League with no promotion and relegation. 

Yet nothing is said about eight-team The Hundred in that regard…

Richard Gould, the former chief executive of Surrey who now runs Bristol City, said that the counties were on the verge of agreeing to a new two-division T20 set-up before the ECB agreed to pay each county £1.3m each a year to force through The Hundred.

Instead we have a closed shop… unless the ECB expand their pet project to incorporate new teams in Durham and Somerset, of course.

So one league without jeopardy is acceptable, but another one isn’t – double standards, surely?