England announced that they are increasing their dual-coaching set up by having Graham Gooch only coach the batting in Tests now as Graham Thorpe will be the ODI and T20 batting coach. I think that it is a good idea; Thorpe has been coaching the Lions and this makes sense. Batting in Tests is quite different to batting in pyjama matches and England’s sides do change between the formats so why should this not be true for the coaches as well? This also eases the workload on Gooch and I suspect before too long England will have a specialist pyjama bowling coach as well.
I don’t think Thorpe will have too much work to do with the ODI side; Gooch did quite a good job overall in his time, despite the results in India. England were very poor in most of that series, but if the suggestions that Gooch was effectively sacked because of that are true (and I’m not sure they are) then it is quite harsh. England’s batting was very good through most of 2012 and in fact their ability to consistently put up large (if not huge) totals and give their bowlers something with which to work was instrumental in their success in the format in last year. Thorpe mostly needs to keep them doing what they are doing and work toward preparing them for the next World Cup. He might have a bit more work to do with the T20 side, of course. England are so inconsistent in that format it is hard to know what needs to be done there.
He won’t have a lot of time to make any substantial changes before the series in New Zealand starts; the first T20 is in under a fortnight. Obviously England don’t have any meaningful ODIs on the horizon as those don’t really exist, but it will be interesting to see if England have a particularly different approach to the ODIs this summer against Australia this summer than last.
Defensive Indifference 