There are few more awkward sporting situations to be stuck in than being the poorly performing captain of a very successful cricket team. Leeway is given for a while, but slowly, gradually, as one personal failure leads to another even as the side wins, a little ant in that corner becomes the elephant in that room. The odd murmurs become firmer whispers, then louder questions and finally, a full-blown issue.
Andrew Strauss is not remotely near the final stages of this transformation but when you've gone 30 months with just one Test hundred, months during which England have risen to become the best team in the world, well, then murmurs and whispers will be heard. In Dubai, looking a little like a man who had not played a Test for five months, Strauss was dismissed cheaply twice.
But he has seen worse days in his career and been around long enough to not let him worry unduly about it. "It's obviously disappointing and not getting runs in the last game was disappointing," he said. "But having been around the Test match scene for a while now, I know form ebbs and flows. One innings can completely change both your perspective and other people's perspectives on how well you are playing. I'm not overly fussed about it but I'm obviously conscious that as a captain you lead from the front."
It probably helps that his game is unfussy, played out in percentages and shorn of unnecessary complication and extravagance, so that he does not often look like he is visibly out of form; add to it the inherent risks of being an opener and a lean run of scores can be explained away. In fact, the problem has not been so much as not getting runs, as not converting his starts (a different, more complex problem altogether); in his last 26 Tests, though he averages only 33 and has made a single hundred, he has scored as many as 11 fifties
"The game is like that," he said. "As an opening batsman it can be challenging at times. But all you can do is accept the challenge and make sure you prepare yourself properly and when you get into a position to score a big hundred you go out and do that. That's probably where I've let myself down over the last year or so, when I've got to 50 or 60 I've got out rather than gone on."
Why captains have more slack over poor form is because of the extra burden of leadership, of course. But Strauss is confident that it has actually helped his batting. An examination of the numbers shows he's right, but only marginally; he averages 0.79 runs more per innings as captain than as just a player.
"It can work out both ways because you're obviously busier with a lot of other things in your mind but sometimes that's not such a bad thing as a batsman," he reasoned. "Over-analysing your game or getting too concerned by technical worries or whatever can put you in a bad place mentally so it can work both ways."
And given his essentially balanced perspective on most matters, it's no surprise he's not doing anything different in his preparations to break the run. He's been around far too long for that as well. "When you're young and naive you're always looking for that magic answer where you'll be trying to change your technique, trying different things in the nets," he said. "When you're a bit older you realise the best thing to do is keep everything the same, keep your preparations the same, don't have too many concerns about your technique and make sure you watch the ball. That's the best recipe to doing well."
