Strauss not right for Twenty20

Just a thought on England’s miserable Twenty20 performance tonight. As admirably and as brilliantly as Andrew Strauss has played and captained the side since his elevation to skipper, how can the powers that be possibly have included him in the team for this format of the game?

Yes, he’s the captain and in an ideal world, the captain should play across all formats of the game. But, this isn’t an ideal world English cricket finds itself in. Strauss, a massively talented batsman, is blatantly not a Twenty20 player. He may have a fine collection of shots in his locker and he may even have a good future in the 50 over version of international cricket. But he doesn’t really fit in with this format of the game.

His innings today wasn’t necessarily terrible. After all, in a lame England batting performance, Strauss notched up the second highest score. But his 22 came off 25 balls and featured just two boundaries. Twenty20 cricket is demanding and a strike-rate of under 100 is unforgivable in the majority situations. There comes a certain point where unless your partner down the other end is belting the ball to all parts, you're just wasting balls.

Surely, Paul Collingwood or someone else could have been asked to captain the side for just today’s game? Strauss will lead the team in the conventional one day series and rightly so but for this condensed version of cricket, why couldn’t someone else have done it? Was it really worth including Strauss in the side just because he is captain? Australia regularly choose Twenty20 games as an opportunity to rest Ricky Ponting and give Michael Clarke an opportunity to take charge. It baffles me as to why England have not done something similar here.

Strauss’ inclusion was not the sole reason for England’s defeat (you’d need about three blogs to cover their various Twenty20 inadequacies) but they aren’t doing themselves any favours at all with poor selection choices such as this one. People lambasted the England selectors for including Alastair Cook in the Stanford Series squad and by the same token Strauss should have been left out here. A great player, no doubt, but not the most innovative and Twenty20 is clearly not his forte. England, please take heed in the future.

(The Corridor, 2009)