Jason Gillespie - the only man who can save England from a summer of Ashes torture against Australia

COMMENT: Australian coach would toughen up Cook’s complacent team, writes Ian Herbert

Jason Gillespie (GETTY IMAGES)

Taking the plunge has not always been elementary for Jason Gillespie. When the Australia team were put through their legendary five-day boot camp before the 2006-07 home Ashes series – to deal with the 2005 defeat on English soil that Adam Gilchrist has always said felt like a bereavement – Gillespie just could not bring himself to step over the edge of a cliff for the abseil. It apparently took some time for his team-mates to coax him down, the utter lack of ridicule or laughter being part and parcel of the fraternity of that great squad of John Buchanan’s, which went on to slaughter England.

Gillespie knows a bit about the big picture of success in cricket though, which is precisely why he has made Yorkshire county champions and why his appointment as England coach – when the link with Peter Moores has finally been severed – could not come a day too soon.

It has been a personal view that England wasted time they simply did not possess, ahead of an Ashes summer in which the threat of a resurgent New Zealand is also treacherous, by persisting with Moores after the calamity that the World Cup turned out to be. It was an unfathomable decision to reappoint him, considering the way England had lost all hope during his first 20-month tenure, losing more often than they won. There would be almighty hell to play if the Football Association had returned to a coach whose record read: played 68, won 27, lost 29, with three Test series wins out of seven.

And that’s before you investigate the small details of his management style, like the constant nannying by Moores and his support staff. “No batting, bowling or fielding practice was complete without the coaches getting involved in some capacity – telling players how they should be doing things better,” Andrew Strauss later reflected on that first spell in charge. But it was Moores’ observation, after that most desperate eight-wicket World Cup defeat by New Zealand in February, which made you wonder about the big picture. “We need players who make decisions on the field, so they have to be able to make decisions off,” Moores explained. “We didn’t play like blokes.” Though the players’ public expressions of liking Moores are genuine, you had to wonder where this individual was adding value.

England’s sense of entitlement has remained dismally evident – even in the past few days, with Alastair Cook’s harking back to the fact that a spine of this England team used to win once and so can do so again, and his suggestion that the observations of the new England and Wales Cricket Board’s chairman, Colin Graves, on the West Indies’ weaknesses might have contributed to them beating England. Lamentable.

This team has been dining out on that kind of complacency ever since Australia were last on these shores. After the Ashes series was won in Durham, two summers back, Cook and Co loosened off for the Oval Test, handing debuts to Chris Woakes and Simon Kerrigan (who was scarred by the experience) and granting Australia a toehold.

Alastair Cook has been branded 'untouchable' by Geoffrey Boycott (Getty Images)

That’s just not the Australian way. When Rodney Marsh became involved in the national cricket academy, the tradition of young players being sent to England to enhance their cricketing education suddenly stopped. Marsh sent them to where they did not play well – the Indian subcontinent – rather than where they were more comfortable. And under Buchanan’s leadership, the senior squad in which Gillespie flourished also developed an obsession about what they called “the creep” – a complacency born of repeated success.

Gilchrist has often related the story of a team meeting in Durban at which Buchanan said that there was “no rule that you have to lose a game eventually”. They all got into that way of thinking. Buchanan also hammered the players in 2003 when they quickly dispersed after destroying Zimbabwe by an innings and 175 runs, when Australia had posted 735 for 6 in the first innings. The coach told them that they should have gone out for a team dinner, at the very least.

The Australian way marries the fraternal with the hierarchical. Gillespie is immensely popular with his Yorkshire players, just like Moores with England, but there is not the same cosiness. They will tell you there’s an edge to this individual and that he seems to know how ephemeral success in cricket really is – and doesn’t let them cling on to it. The 2005 Ashes series alone taught the man they called “Dizzy” that much. The one-time lightning fast right-armer found himself being carted for six an over in the third Test at Old Trafford, taking no wickets, receiving such a verbal hammering from the crowd as he walked down to the fence that it tore at the hearts of his team-mates. He was dropped in favour of Shaun Tait for the fourth Test in Nottingham. Such is the kind of perspective the 40-year-old brings to the challenge of fronting up against Australia.

He already has a fully nurtured sense of priorities about what England need to do, to escape this slough and spare themselves a summer of unspeakable torture. Identify the style of cricket they want to play. Do not display an iota of self-doubt. Take risks. Just pitch the ball up. None of the above currently apply to this team.

Andrew Strauss (Getty)

In Buchanan’s boot camp on Queensland’s Sunshine Coast, there was an exercise called “the stretcher”, which entailed fashioning such a device out of four poles and a tarpaulin and carrying a 70-kilo load on it for two hours. Gillespie’s group – Shane Watson, Phil Pope, Shane Warne, Buchanan and him – made a stretcher which collapsed, leaving them to head for home carrying their load between them. In that competitive environment, they did not all see the funny side. Such is the making of winners.

Strauss, England’s new kingmaker, would do well to consider that when his appointment – probably to be confirmed on Monday – leaves him with a decision to make.