Why newcomers are doing so well in international sport
The Daily Telegraph, 9th May 2009
Ravi Bopara wasn’t literally on debut this match – he’s played four previous Tests. But it was a debut of sorts: his first Test in an Ashes summer, and his first at number three.
It should be no surprise that Bopara made a hundred – and not only because he has the temperament to match his abundant talent. No, Bopara is just one of many who have shone almost instantly at the top level.
Increasing numbers of players are excelling early in their international careers. The out-of-his-depth newcomer is now the exception not the rule; more often a debutant is a good bet for man of the match – just look at Graham Onions.
It’s true in other sports, too. It used to be a truism that professional sportsmen got better and better, as they served their apprenticeship at the top level. It’s now the other way around. Players announce themselves with a burst; much rarer is the ability to sustain it.
Most fans, watching Michael Owen’s wondrous goal against Argentina in 1998, understandably indulged the delicious prospect of this being just the beginning. How many even better goals would Owen score once he had the experience to go with speed and talent? In fact, 1998 was Owen’s finest hour, and now – still only 29 – he sits on the bench for Newcastle.
Cricket, a game well suited to statistical proof, demonstrates more clearly that inexperience is more of an asset than a hindrance. Michael Vaughan went into 2002 with only a dozen Tests under his belt, but over the next two years he was England’s best batsman, and briefly world number one.
In 2004, the newcomer was Andrew Strauss who found the ‘step up’ the Test cricket so easy that he scored more Test runs in his first season than any other England player. Until this current year, Strauss’s best season for England was his first.
Kevin Pietersen was 2005’s new boy. He responded by top scoring on debut, bringing home the Ashes at the Oval, and being England’s leading run-scorer over the course of the year. In one-day internationals, Pietersen’s arrival was even more spectacular. He scored three hundreds in his first nine innings – but has since managed ‘only’ four in his subsequent 73 innings.
Alastair Cook was 2006’s debutant. How would the twenty-one year old handle the furnace of Test cricket? He made a hundred on debut – and 1013 runs, including four hundreds, in his first calendar year. That is his best tally so far. In 2007, Cook made 923 runs with three hundreds, and in 2008 he made 758 runs with no hundreds. International runs, it seems, get harder to come by, not easier.
In rugby union, this Lions touring party shows how reputation counts for little in the modern game. Who would have guessed that Wales’s Andy Powell would usurp his captain Ryan Jones for a back row place? Or that Leigh Halfpenny would cap his first season in top rugby with a Lions shirt for the tour to South Africa?
In other words, fortune now seems to favour the untested. Why?
Three reasons make today’s international newcomer more likely to succeed than in the past. First the gap, if indeed there is a gap, between top club sport and the international stage has diminished. You could make a persuasive case that Champions league football is played at a higher standard than international football. And county cricket, though still far from perfect, has become more effective at preparing players for Test matches (though probably not for ODIs).
Secondly, the money flows more quickly. Sport’s incentive structure has been revolutionized by the speed with which players become overnight superstars. Dirk Nannes was nearly thirty before he played first class cricket for Victoria. Before then he skied for Australia, learnt Japanese and ran a ski company. A few months later, Nannes is knocking over the stars in the IPL and being paid handsomely for doing so. His apprenticeship might only have been twenty first-class games, but he is already dining at cricket’s top financial table.
The whole concept of apprenticeship – in fact, the absence of the concept – is the primary factor why sportsmen are getting to the top quicker, and why they feel less vertigo when they do get there.
The shift in atmosphere is reasonably new. In county cricket in the mid-1990s, there was still a strong sense that a young player had to earn his stripes in the dressing room. This was as much about demonstrating social and psychological resilience as it was about playing well – the old guard used practical jokes and initiations to see if you could ‘take a joke’.
But now the balance of power has shifted. A young player like Eoin Morgan, just picked in England’s Twenty20 teams, knows full well that if he shows his true talent in just a handful of televised games, the IPL may come calling – whatever his form for Middlesex.
Many people mourn the passing of the good old days, when elite sportsmen were more like Renaissance apprentices who served time under the supervision of the old masters. Today’s newcomers, unencumbered by deference or stage fright, head straight for the biggest canvas and the brightest oils.
But modern irreverence makes for a thrilling spectacle, as Bopara’s innings just proved. Yet it is also double edged, even for the impetuous youngster: the future isn’t his for a long as it once was.