Speaking at Surrey’s pre-season media day at The Oval on Tuesday, Batty suggested that the direct link between county performance and international selection has been blurred in recent years. “My thoughts would be that the road has been misted over fractionally, from how selections have been recently,” he said.
“It’s not my place to comment on how somebody else does their job, but I’ll go back to it: I truly believe that this [county cricket] is the best breeding ground in the world to produce all-format players, because we can get volume [into players].
“Your best players don’t play it as much because they’re with England. That’s what central contracts are for. I would hope that we are looking at getting our young players lots of cricket, lots of gametime, so that we cherry-pick the very best to make England the very best team.
“This [county cricket] will always have a very, very big place within our system because you can’t have that [Test cricket] without this.”
“I think you get a sense of when you’re going to be valued or wanted,” Burns said. “When I first got in, the metric was you score the most runs in the calendar year, and then you’re the one that gets picked, and you’re the next cab off the rank.
“I still think there is a place for that. If you’re still banging down the door, all of a sudden, your name is going to crop up in selection. You might not feel like you’re there as a player but if you keep churning out numbers, at some stage, you’re going to be unavoidable.
“On the flip side, it’s probably quite a cool thing because even if you don’t think you’re in the conversation, all you’ve got to do is have a couple of innings – and play a couple of shots on Instagram now – and then you’re right in the conversation… There’s positives and negatives, basically.”
Surrey’s England players struggled to make an impact in Australia: Pope was dropped after three Tests, Smith made a solitary half-century, Atkinson took six wickets at 47.33 and Jacks leaked runs with his offspin, though he went on to play a key role in the T20 World Cup. Jacks will miss the start of the Championship season while at the IPL, but Batty said Surrey will act as a “comfort blanket” for the other three.
“That’s what we’re here for. That’s what county cricket is,” Batty said. “It’s not the end game, or it shouldn’t be. We should be the ones constantly trying to create players’ dreams and get them to where they want to be. I hope that everybody still is desperate to play for England, which is very evident [from] the way that people have trained.
“But also, when people have been to England, we should be the comfort blanket that we come back and we go, ‘We’ll have some positive truths, but we’re going to get some work done,’ because nothing’s going to correct itself [if you are] feeling sorry for yourself and not doing the work.
“We very much understand that international cricket is a very difficult place to operate when it’s not on your terms and it’s not quite gone your way, but we are definitely here to help and get people back and beyond where they were.”
Key and McCullum are both expected to remain in post after the ECB’s internal review into England’s Ashes defeat. England’s next international assignment is a three-Test series against New Zealand in June, with their players spending the next two months either with their counties or at the IPL.
Matt Roller is a senior correspondent at ESPNcricinfo. @mroller98
