Sunil Gavaskar Shreds Paper Tigers England To Pieces After Ashes Debacle

Indian cricket icon Sunil Gavaskar didn't mince words as he looked back at England's harrowing 1-4 loss to Australia in the recently concluded Ashes assignment. Football and cricket remain two of the biggest sports in England, but their teams haven't done as well as some of the other giants in these games. As captain Ben Stokes and head coach Brendon McCullum face criticism back home, Gavaskar doesn't think the result was a big surprise to outsiders.

"England's performances in most sports are a huge let-down when set against the write-ups their teams receive from people who have hardly, if ever, played any sport at the highest level. The disappointment, therefore, is far greater when the teams show that they are more paper tigers than real ones," Gavaskar wrote in his column for Sportstar.

"England's capitulation to Australia by a 4-1 margin was, therefore, not really a surprise for the non-English. It is extremely tough for visiting teams to win a Test series anywhere, especially in Australia and India. India themselves, however, were beaten comprehensively by New Zealand a couple of years ago and by South Africa late last year," he added.

When Brendon McCullum took over as England's head coach in 2022, he brought plenty of promise, especially as the team developed a new way of playing, labelled 'Bazball'. But the last few series have seen the magic wearing off, with the results graph drastically falling.

"McCullum brought the same freshness to England's cricket, and that took the rest of the cricketing world by surprise. Gone was the dreary, dull cricket they played, and suddenly, the opposition did not know how to counter it. However, as with so-called mystery bowlers, the surprise wore off. Once teams realised that England had little answer whenever the ball deviated, provided the pitches were not flat, the problems became evident," wrote Gavaskar.

"With their media making excuses for them about pitches when they were overseas, the batters refused to change their approach and bat according to the situation. With the management also ignoring some of the unforgivable and irresponsible shots played by the batters, the fear of being left out simply is not there. Valuing playing for your country and putting a minimum price of a century on your wicket is something only the great Joe Root does. The others could not be bothered, as they knew they were unlikely to be left out of the squad," he added.

"What the media calls fearless cricket today often looks more like couldn't-care-less cricket. With the guarantee of a central contract and the various T20 leagues around the cricketing world, there is no worry about how to put food on the table, which was the case when these facilities were not there and losing a Test place meant going back to mundane first-class cricket, where one hardly earned enough, let alone saved for a rainy day," wrote Gavaskar.

"How many in the England team that lost the Ashes series can put their hands on their hearts and say that they gave it everything, not just physically but, more crucially, temperamentally, in the series? You tell me," he concluded.

Topics mentioned in this article

England Cricket Team Australia Cricket Team Ben Stokes Sunil Gavaskar Cricket