BRISTOL: Graeme Swann believes England “do not have a cat in hell’s chance” of winning next year’s World Cup unless they add more firepower to their top-order batting.
Sunday saw England captain Alastair Cook suggest that the team’s prospects for the tournament in Australia and New Zealand were “very good”.
But former England off-spinner Swann was far more pessimistic.
Swann, speaking to BBC Radio’s Test Match Special as rain washed out the first one-day international against world champions India in Bristol without a ball bowled yesterday, insisted England were “so far behind other teams” in their approach to the limited-overs game.
“If he (Cook) truly believes England can win this World Cup...I am the greatest patriot there is but we do not have a cat in hell’s chance,” Swann said.
Opening batsman Cook’s position in the one-day side has been called into question, with many pundits arguing his orthodox approach, while well-suited to Test cricket, has increasingly little place in a one-day context where big hitters dominate at the top of the order.
“I love Cooky totally, but I do not think he should be bothering playing one-day cricket any more,” said the 35-year-old Swann, who played 60 Tests and 79 ODIs for England before retiring during the team’s 5-0 Ashes thrashing in Australia.
“Let young people (play) who want to smash it everywhere,” he added as he called for promising batsmen James Vince and Jason Roy to be added to the squad.
If the rain had held off in Bristol, England would have given an ODI debut to dynamic Nottinghamshire opener Alex Hales. The 25-year-old scored England’s first Twenty20 international century when he made 116 not out from 64 balls against Sri Lanka at the World Twenty20 in March.
Swann played in the last World Cup in 2011, where England bowed out with a 10-wicket defeat by Sri Lanka in the quarter-finals in Colombo.
Recalling that match, Swann said: “I remember (Jonathan) Trott getting 86 in Colombo. We’d batted to our batting plan perfectly, got 229.
“They (Sri Lanka) knocked it off in 40 overs.
“That’s how we always played it. It’s crazy. The batsmen who won’t win you World Cups in Australia will probably do very well in England.
“If you’re not getting over 300 now on good wickets you’re not going to win games.”
Michael Vaughan, England’s captain at the 2007 World Cup, added: “We’ve made the same mistake now as we did in my time, five to six years ago and in the 1990s.
AFP
