Case Study: England v Australia 1990-91

England's cricket selectors of the 80s and 90s always seemed to try to squeeze an extra player in the team: promoting batsmen to keepers, adding a fifth bowler or a seventh batsman. Picking six batters, a keeper and four bowlers was too hard for them. They simply could not do it.

The Ashes team of 90-91 is a case in point. It wasn't a bad side: you had Gooch, Smith, Gower, Lamb, Fraser, Tufnell, Atheron, Malcolm, Russell. Those are good players. Yes, Malcolm and Tufnell are comic as well, but they could also win matches.

But the selectors never had faith in batsmen to bat, bowlers to bowl and keepers to keep. They kept trying to take shortcuts.

In the first test they went with a 6-1-1-3 formation - Russell was kept as keeper but Chris Lewis, the allrounder, played at eight. England lost.

For the second test they swapped Lewis for Phil de Freitas, who occasionally the press tried to claim was an all rounder but with a first class batting average of 22, it's a doubtful call, notwithstanding the centuries he chalked up. England used a 6-1-4 formation... and lost.

For the third test they swapped de Freitas for Gladstone Small, but kept the 6-1-4 formation.... and what do you know? They almost one. They batted extremely well in their firs innings, had Australia on the ropes until we were rescued by Rackemann's 9 runs off 102 balls. Australia had retained the Ashes.

Then came the game against Qld and the Tiger Moth incident - although England won the game and should have been feeling positive, and still had two tests to go, they had an attack of the sillies.

England had been rattled by its failure to get out Rackemann in the 3rd test so for the 4th test they added an extra bowler, making way by replacing Russell as keeper with Stewart. England ended up drawing the same - they'd been set 472 to win and were making a decent go of it before running out of time.

This encouraged them to stick with their silly 5-1-5 formation for the 5th test, which they lost.

This shouldn't have been a miserable tour for England - several players were in form, Australia weren't that awesome. I don't think they would have won it had they simply stuck with 6-1-4 formation. But they would have done a hell of a lot better.