Steven Finn of England looks on during day five of the 1st Ashes Test at Trent Bridge Cricket Ground in July.
By Barney Ronay, The Guardian /London
England’s new selector, Angus Fraser, has denied that a divergence in method between Steven Finn’s coaches at Middlesex and England’s own coaching unit lay behind the pace bowler’s drastic loss of form during the winter in Australia.
Finn, who has worked with Fraser and Richard Johnson at Middlesex for the past three seasons, arrived in Australia a likely first-choice pick for the Ashes series and by some distance England’s No1-rated white-ball bowler. By the time he was sent home from the tour after 11 weeks working closely with England’s elite coaching set-up Finn had become unselectable due to chronic problems with his bowling action.
Fraser, who now speaks with the triple-tiered hat of selector, Middlesex managing director of cricket and long-time bowling mentor, expressed some satisfaction with the state of Finn’s bowling rehabilitation with Middlesex. But he admitted that the reason Finn had failed to attend Monday’s pre-season media session at Lord’s was to shield him from the kind of questions that might put a specific time pressure on his recovery.
“He’s making his way back and making some decent progress,” he said of Finn’s two pre-season appearances against Surrey and Somerset. “One of the problems Steven had has is trying to get ready by A, B, C or D.
“When you do that you’re not curing the long-term problem, you’re just tarting it up. I don’t want Steven to be put in a position where suddenly people start saying ‘When are you going to be playing for England?’, and that plays on his mind.”
Fraser roundly dismissed rumours of a major rift with England’s coaching staff over Finn’s bowling methodology, in particular the suggestion that one part of his problems might lie in Middlesex trying to turn Finn into an out-swing bowler. “You’ve got a bloke here who’s six foot seven and bowls at 90mph, we’re not going to get him to pitch it up and swing it away,” he said. “There’s been a bit of creative interpretation. We have slightly different views on different things. Coaches are going to have slightly different views. But there’s been no battle. We’ve had good communications with David Saker. All right, sometimes David might have slightly different views as to what we do, but it’s not as though we’re fighting or ranting and raving.”
Fraser did accept Middlesex had been unhappy with the short run-up Finn experimented with after his problem hitting the stumps at the point of delivery. He also revealed Middlesex and England coaches had a meeting at Lord’s in early 2013 specifically to address an issue Fraser believes may be at the heart of Finn’s falling away.
“He [Finn] doesn’t think it is, but I do wonder if it was the knee hitting the stumps [that caused his problems] . South Africa did a job on him there, to be honest. All of a sudden something as trivial as that becomes a big story and the laws of the game have to be changed, and suddenly as a bowler you think I’ve got to try and rectify that.”
Finn worked for a while with England’s team psychologist Mark Bawden in the winter, but Fraser said Middlesex have not seen the need to seek similar help. “We’re treating it so far as a cricket matter in the belief that if he sorts out the technical problems he’ll bowl well and the confidence will come on the back of that.”
Middlesex have announced that Andrew Strauss has joined the club’s executive board, replacing Paul Downton, who left in order to become the ECB’s managing director of England cricket.
