Until the current England 50-over team began ripping up the record books, the general consensus was that the team which contested the 1992 World Cup final was the best this country has produced. But Eoin Morgan’s side are playing a dynamic brand of cricket their opponents are finding difficult to counter, leading some to claim – Michael Vaughan chief among them – that they are the best this country has produced.
Comparing players from different eras is fraught with airy speculation, though that does not stop us from doing it. There is probably an algorithm somewhere that can tell us whether an 86mph ball in 1992 has the same effect as a 90mph ball in 2016, but if allowances are to be made here, it will be human judgment making them.
Let’s start with the relative achievements of the two sides. By hammering Pakistan at Trent Bridge on Tuesday, the current side won its sixth completed match in a row. That victory also saw them complete their second series win over Pakistan since the 2015 World Cup, the starting point and catalyst for their new, emboldened approach.
They have also beaten Sri Lanka, at home, but they lost to both South Africa and Australia, a mixed bag of results which sees them ranked fifth in the ICC rankings.
By contrast the 1992 team won 11 completed matches in a row and was about to set a new world record when they lost to New Zealand in the 1992 World Cup at Wellington, though they had already qualified for the semi-finals by that stage. Rankings did not exist then but few would not have had that team as the world’s best during that period. Indeed, most felt sure they would win that World Cup. Yet, despite a strong campaign, Pakistan eclipsed them in the final.
I played in the ’92 team and have watched the current one under Morgan. Where they score over the one I played in is in the boldness that is imbued within players throughout the side. Back then, selection was a much more scattergun affair and while winning helped to keep the ’92 team together, players did not really feel secure unless they were Ian Botham or Graham Gooch and it showed in the, usually conservative, nature of their cricket.
Some will point to the depth of the batting available to Morgan at Trent Bridge the other night as another advantage and an obvious reason for their bravado with the bat. But the ’92 side can boast something the record-breaking team at Trent Bridge cannot – that every player in the side had made a first-class hundred. For the current team, Mark Wood is the odd man out.
Approaches to batting are markedly different between the two eras but that is a cultural thing based on peer group pressure. Funnily enough, there have been plenty who said that nobody in the ’92 team could have played the innings that Hales played at Trent Bridge. And yet, the man whose record he beat and which has stood for 23 years, Robin Smith, scored his 167 just a year later in 1993.
If you compare Hales and Gooch, the openers in the respective sides, most with a knowledge of cricket that encompasses the careers of both men would say Gooch is the better batsman. Yet the one-day figures, other than longevity through Gooch’s century of caps, do not bear this out with Hales having a superior average, a better hundred ratio per innings, and a vastly superior strike-rate.
This is where some judgment is required in order to lend perspective to the differing conditions. Gooch used a heavy bat but would have struck more boundaries with a modern one, which picks up light and is more manoeuvrable. His run-rate would have been further improved by the shorter boundaries in place today, at least 10 yards closer in all directions. Finally, as an opening batsman he would have further benefited by the use of white balls which don’t tend to swing while new.
Modern players hit the ball much further is also a familiar refrain these days too, but Botham, Gooch, Allan Lamb and Graeme Hick could all muscle it a long way. Indeed Lamb once struck Bruce Reid, a gangly Australian pace bowler, for 18 off the first five balls of the final over of a one-day international, to bring England victory in 1986-87.
In addition, the ’92 team had Alec Stewart to stroke it and Neil Fairbrother to play any fiddly shots that might have been necessary, but usually weren’t because asking rates were rarely above 5.5 runs an over. What definitely wasn’t around back then was the ramp shot that Jos Buttler plays so well to bowlers trying to get it up into the blockhole. That just wasn’t conceived though some batsmen used to vary where they stood, taking guard outside the crease or deep within it, in order to mess up bowlers trying to bowl yorkers.
The bowling attack of today’s side has more variety, in both type of bowler and in the type of balls they bowl. Where I think they are lacking in comparison to yesteryear is in discipline and accuracy, though the latter can lead to predictability, something most modern bowlers try to avoid.
Back in the day, Phil DeFreitas, Chris Lewis and I tried to move the ball sideways off the seam or through the air, something today’s players struggle to do with the white ball – though that may be more a manufacturer’s fault than the bowlers. We would also try to take wickets by creating pressure through dot balls, whereas Mark Wood, Chris Woakes and Liam Plunkett will risk going for runs in order to bowl wicket-taking balls.
Players are fitter now and as a result you’d expect the fielding to be better though watching Hales in the deep I’m not that convinced. I’m certainly not convinced that more catches are taken, at least as a percentage of chances given, just that the extra athleticism may bring more into play.
Today’s England team are playing a dominant brand of swaggering one-day cricket that has seen them crush recent opponents. But they need to win a global trophy before such grandiose claims as “best ever England one-day team” can be made on their behalf, and they can start with next year’s Champions Trophy at home.
After that there is the World Cup in 2019, also in England. Only when one of them, or both, are on the mantelpiece can the reckoning begin. Until then, the ’92ers – the last 50-over team to contest a World Cup final – hold the bragging rights.
This piece originally featured in The Cricket Paper, September 2 2016
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