The dark clouds of England’s winless Test winter have lifted, replaced by scorching sunshine as the County Championship season begins in earnest.
The English cricketing summer may have officially started with a clatter of wickets, up and down the country, in wet conditions last week, but Surrey were left waiting another week.
Their season got underway on Friday with the visit of Hampshire to The Oval, where a couple of travelers with England over those troublesome tours of Australia and New Zealand have the chance to prove a point to the new senior selector of the national side, Ed Smith.
For Mark Stoneman, it’s a case of proving he can still cut it at Test level after tallying 513 runs at an average of 30.17 over his 10 Test caps so far, while for Ben Foakes it’s showing he deserves his first.
Foakes was England’s reserve wicketkeeper for the winter and, while he feels the experience was very beneficial in terms of his development, he has concerns over how he can take what he has learnt into early-season county cricket.
“I was obviously delighted to be involved on the tour,” said Foakes ahead of the new season. “It was disappointing not to play in any games – but just to work with the guys and see them go about their business was pretty awesome.
“I learnt a lot about the way they have to prepare for international cricket. I feel that has put me in good stead in terms of the work I need to do in order to make that step-up.
“But, in terms of how much this winter has prepared me for the county summer? Not much. It’s such a different game.
“Test cricket is such a contrast to county cricket – it was all pace this winter, a lot of short-pitched stuff around your head.
“County cricket is a different animal, with almost everything on the front foot. I don’t think you can really compare the two, so I’ve got to get used to that again as quickly as I can.”
Foakes’ point is a good one. After a winter away testing his technique against extreme pace – the type of bowling he’d expect to face from the likes of Pat Cummins, Mitchell Starc and Josh Hazlewood in the Ashes – he now has to go full circle and prepare for the seaming and swinging ball, in helpful early-season English conditions.
Much of England’s struggles in overseas Test matches of late – just four wins in their last 33 – can be attributed, at least in part, to the poor schooling county cricket provides for the turning tracks of the sub-continent and pacey pitches of Australia.
The leading wicket-takers across the two divisions in last year’s County Championship were Jamie Porter, Joe Leach and Darren Stevens. Talented performers they may be, but Cummins, Starc and Hazlewood they are not.
The first round of county fixtures last week saw as many as 172 wickets fall in the five completed games – and that’s even despite bad weather disrupting play with regularity. Sussex were the only team to manage a score of 300 plus, while in Lancashire, 12 wickets fell in 15.2 overs on the final morning, including Nottinghamshire losing four when chasing only 10 to win.
Sky Sports Cricket’s David Lloyd believes cricket shouldn’t be played this early in the season, saying: “There are 14 four-day County Championship matches! Be like everybody else in the world and play 10. I’m interested in providing the best cricketers for England. I’m not interested in the complaints of the individual counties.”
England batting coach, Mark Ramprakash, too has raised concerns over the pool of batting talent the four-day game is providing for the national side, though puts it more down to the greater importance placed on white-ball cricket than the amount of cricket.
“If you look at the stats compared to five, 10 or 15 years ago, we just do not have the number of players getting a lot of runs in four-day cricket,” Ramprakash told Sky Sports Cricket recently. “If you look at 15-20 years ago, there would be a lot more players scoring 1,000 runs and now you can count them on one hand.
“The emergence of a very popular white-ball game, where the ball doesn’t really move around that much, has a lot of our best talents shifting towards prioritising that. The skills that you need to be successful in red-ball cricket take longer perhaps to learn.”
Foakes, himself, had a fabulous 2017 in the 50-over game, scoring 482 runs over 10 games – second only to the great Kumar Sangakkara (545) in the Surrey side – and averaging 96.40 per innings as Surrey made the Royal London One-Day Cup final (and were beaten) for the third time running.
Foakes still has white-ball ambitions for England but knows he is swimming against the tide somewhat with their talented array of ball-hitters already including fellow glovemen Jonny Bairstow and Jos Buttler, and so is focussing his attentions towards the longer format.
“At Surrey, we want to win every competition,” added Foakes. “But, I personally, don’t look at it like that, especially this early on in the season. I just look at wanting to win every game. If you look too far ahead, often your form can be a little up and down.
“I definitely feel closer to England in red-ball cricket, even though I’ve done better in the 50-over comp in the last couple of years.
“But, as I say, it’s not just as simple as needing to score runs in county cricket to get back into the international fold because, when I do play for England, I’ve got to be prepared for different tests of my technique.
“You know you’re going to be confronted with other things, so you do have to try to have sessions where you tick that kind of preparation over.”
So, in a crammed county cricket calendar, where can Foakes look to find that kind of challenge? Perhaps it could come in the form of one of Surrey’s high-profile additions for the summer – the pace and bounce of South Africa’s 86-Test, 309-wicket veteran Morne Morkel.
“He’s a pretty ridiculous bowler,” emphasised Foakes. “I think he’s going to be a really good guy to face in the nets, and to keep to – you’ll get the best view of what he does from behind the stumps.
“We’ve got quite a few good pace bowlers in our ranks here, in fact, that I can challenge myself against. There’s a good mix.”
With batting spots up for grabs in England’s middle order after their disastrous Test winter, Foakes’ hard work in the nets and some early-season runs could see him again in the mix for that first international cap.
Bairstow – one of England’s better performers in recent years, hitting two centuries in Perth and Christchurch over the winter – continues to stand in Foakes’ way in terms of the gloves, but could he be picked primarily as a batsman?
“I don’t tend to worry about that kind of stuff,” said Foakes. “You hear the odd murmur of ‘Jonny needs to go up the order’ in the press and that makes you think maybe I will come in?
“But, in terms of the coaches, I never heard anything like that. The way Jonny kept, and batted, it was always unlikely I’d be playing.
“I was always getting ready to play, without necessarily ever thinking I would be.”
England have two Tests against Pakistan and five against India scheduled for this summer, before tours to Sri Lanka and West Indies this winter. Foakes is ready to play.
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