It was the perfect night to bury ‘bad’ news, the ECB slipping out a statement saying that Stuart Broad, Graeme Swann and Tim Bresnan were being rested for the final one-day international just before Wayne Rooney was scoring the goal that put England in the Euro 2012 quarter-finals.
Yet, if the timing was aimed at minimising the reaction to the return of rotation, it did not stop the subject dominating many a Twitter timeline on Wednesday, particularly as Yorkshire have been trying to flog £40 tickets for the game against West Indies on the back of Bresnan’s return to Headingley.
The bottom line is that, with the international schedule packed to bursting point, it is unrealistic to expect England’s top players to play in every game in every format at peak performance levels.
Rested: Broad (left) and Swann (second left)What Andy Flower and England are doing is making their own tacit statement about the sheer volume of cricket and trying to ensure that someone like Broad, who has had injury problems, is not burnt out prematurely. He will be needed for many years yet.
There are many big challenges ahead of England in a packed, unrelenting programme and it is perfectly understandable that Flower should make the most of the depth of quality now available to him once a series has been won.
Hence in come new faces in Stuart Meaker, Chris Woakes and James Tredwell for the only three players who regularly appear for England in all forms of the game.
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Maybe it is unfortunate that Bresnan should be left out on his home ground but how many does he put on the gate when he plays for Yorkshire at Headingley? And the fact that England sealed the series at The Kia Oval on Tuesday increases the chances of Yorkshire’s Jonny Bairstow playing.
Hampshire insisted that interest in the first one-day international at the Ageas Bowl went up when Chris Gayle was named in West Indies squad and that nobody asked for their money back when Kevin Pietersen abruptly retired from one-day cricket.
In the event, Gayle was missing on the south coast anyway through injury but he did enough at The Oval on Tuesday to suggest he is the man who most needs to play in Leeds to ensure the Yorkshire public get value for money.
Making the step up: MeakerIs it not interesting to cricket watchers anyway to see the likes of Meaker, the fastest man in county cricket, get his chance to show whether he belongs at international level?
England need to know more about him and Woakes, who promised so much in his initial international outings before suffering injury problems of his own.
Flower is in the process of building as big a squad as possible to reach the top in all forms of the game and is well on the way to achieving his aim. Rotation is necessary for him to achieve his goals, at least until administrators finally accept they are being greedy in staging far too much international cricket. And don’t hold your breath for that to happen.
We need the force of GayleTalking of Gayle, it was the man who is the ultimate example of the modern cricketing mercenary who most lit up The Oval and sprinkled stardust on an otherwise routine, formulaic one-day international.
If the second 50-over match remains in the memory for long — and most do not — it will be for the sight of Gayle smashing five sixes, one of them a huge hit on to the Bedser Stand roof, rather than Alastair Cook’s third century in six one-day matches.
Explosive: Gayle smashes Bresnan for sixSo let us hope that Gayle’s return to international cricket lasts as long as possible. He is too good, too box-office, to spend all his time in domestic Twenty20 competitions. West Indies can never match the money Gayle can earn elsewhere but surely representing the proud Caribbean region that has produced so many world-class cricketers must count for something?
The right compromise must be struck.
Take your timeIt is absolutely right that Surrey will allow their players to decide when they are ready to return to cricket following the appalling death of Tom Maynard however long it takes.
Jade Dernbach and Rory Hamilton-Brown in particular were very close to Maynard and the scale of the tragedy means they must and will receive as much support and understanding from their county as possible.
At times like this perhaps there is a case for the show not going on.
Untimely death: Maynard Bumble's final wordIan Bell has stepped perfectly into Kevin Pietersen’s shoes at the top of England’s one-day order and proved already they are going to be absolutely fine without their big box-office attraction.
Pietersen and Bell are like chalk and cheese, one more David Beckham to the other’s Paul Scholes. Or even Mario Balotelli to David Silva.
The bottom line, though, is that Bell may not aspire to celebrity and all the trappings but, boy, can he play…
More... England to blood youngsters as trio of top bowlers are rested for third ODI The Top Spin: Maynard's shocking death is a sudden and painful descent into the world of reality
