England Lions

Jo Harman-McGowan revisits the England A tour of Australia in 1996/97, which featured late nights, exasperated coaches and several players who would go onto establish themselves in the full side.

In early November, 18 bright-eyed young cricketers will fly out to Australia looking to burnish their reputations as the next generation of England stars. While the Ashes takes centre stage, the England Lions will be beavering away in the background, hoping to make a lasting impression on the selectors. And who knows, if past tours are anything to go by, they could even find themselves thrust into the limelight by the end of the series – though, as Scott Borthwick, Mason Crane and Tom Curran would attest, that may not be advisable if they’re hoping for a lengthy Test career.

Four of the 18 – Matthew Fisher, Tom Hartley, Rehan Ahmed and Josh Hull – have already received Test caps, and Jordan Cox and Sonny Baker have made their England white-ball debuts. But, for the most part, the group is made up of players at the beginning of their cricketing journeys. Only three of the party are aged over 25, while eight are yet to play 30 first-class matches. Thomas Rew, who will turn 18 on the trip, is still to play a professional red-ball game.

In talent ID speak, these are players with ‘high ceilings’ – believed to have, or the potential to develop, the attributes required to succeed at the highest level, and do so in a way that fits the current England mould.

Led by head coach Andrew Flintoff, they will have the opportunity to bloody the noses of their senior colleagues in a three-day contest in Perth ahead of the first Ashes Test before matches against a Cricket Australia XI, a Prime Minister’s XI and a four-day “Test” versus Australia A in Brisbane.

All the while, the England management will be building dossiers on these players, evaluating them both on and off the field to determine if they have the character and talent to prosper at the highest level.

A positive review can lead to rapid progression. After being fulsomely praised by Flintoff on the Lions tour of Australia last winter, Baker, who made his first-class debut on that trip, was swiftly awarded a development contract and fast-tracked into the ODI and T20I squad just a few months later. And we know that Rob Key is a close observer of these tours. It was during a Lions trip to Sri Lanka in 2023 that he became convinced Jamie Smith was a readymade Test cricketer.

It's a slick, well-oiled operation, with the senior and Lions set-ups now so closely interwoven that they feel almost inseparable.

For many years that wasn’t the case. Prior to 2007, when the England Lions were formed and integrated with the ECB National Academy, the England A side existed almost as their own entity, and their tours had a somewhat different, more clubbable flavour.

“Nowadays, the Lions are mostly selected from younger, high-potential players around the country,” writes Ashley Giles in his new book, The King of Spain and I. “In the 90s the A team was largely the next best players in the country, those most likely to be next in line for full England selection.”

Giles was part of what he describes as a “work-hard, play-hard” England A tour of Australia in 1996/97 that has gone down in legend for those involved. Aged 23, it was his first experience of representing his country at any level following a breakthrough season with Warwickshire.

A 13-strong group captained by Adam Hollioake and featuring 11 current or future Test cricketers (Glen Chapple and Andrew Harris being the exceptions) got stuffed by a New South Wales second XI in their opening fixture (Stuart MacGill running riot with nine wickets) and then hit the self-destruct button in their clash with South Australia, collapsing from 65-1 to 151 all out in their second innings to leave their team manager David Graveney fuming.

With South Australia needing just 170 to win the following day, the tourists hit the town that evening, revelling in the Adelaide bar scene and crawling back in the early hours.

“Grav [Graveney] was worried about how much of the candle we were burning in the evenings and waited up in the hotel reception to count the players in,” writes Giles. “He caught one of our players coming in at about 1.30am and gave him a proper rollicking. Grav then went to bed soon after. What he didn’t know was that most of the squad were still out.

“The next morning he shared his concerns with Smokey [Hollioake] and asked him whether he would behave the same way if he were playing for the full England team. Smokey said he would, and that was the end of the conversation.”

The late-night carousing seemed to bring the best out in Hollioake’s side the following day: South Australia were skittled for 157, Dean Headley taking five-for and Giles chipping in with three in a rousing 12-run victory. It was a watershed moment on the tour.

“Grav basically threw his hands up and let us crack on,” recalls Giles. “The tone was set and we had a great trip both on and off the field, making memories and friendships that lasted a lifetime. Having lost our first match, we didn’t lose again.”

“From that win against South Australia onwards we ran the show ourselves and were very successful,” says Mark Butcher, who impressed at the top of the order, averaging 53 in the first-class matches. “Adam was a brilliant leader who got everyone together and we enjoyed ourselves immensely, on and off the field. It was just hilarious, such good fun. Nowadays you’d never get away with the stuff we got up to.”

With the senior side simultaneously on a tour of Zimbabwe, drawing their Test series 0-0 before being ignominiously whitewashed in the ODIs, Butcher says the second-stringers were aware of potential opportunities opening up, particularly with the carrot of a home Ashes to come the following summer. But he says there was no real sense of synergy or communication between the two set-ups. “They were very disconnected, whereas nowadays the whole thing is very much tied together. You didn’t feel part of the organisation as perhaps they do today.”

Nonetheless, the presence of Graveney on the tour proved invaluable for the prospects of many of the players. In March 1997, a few months after the trip, Graveney was appointed chairman of selectors and lent heavily on those who had impressed in Australia. “That was the link,” says Butcher.

Butcher, Hollioake and Headley all made their Test debuts in the ’97 Ashes, with Mark Ealham, who had made his Test bow in 1996, recalled for that series. Giles had to wait a year longer for his maiden Test appearance but made his ODI debut in the summer of ’97, while Graveney later handed debuts to Warren Hegg, Michael Vaughan, Owais Shah and Anthony McGrath, with 33-year-old spinner Peter Such, who had made his Test debut in 1993, recalled for the 1997/98 Ashes trip. Chapple belatedly made a solitary ODI appearance in 2006 in the final stages of Graveney’s tenure but, to the consternation of the Red Rose faithful, never received a Test cap.

The Lions squad this winter will be hoping to follow in their footsteps, using a tour of Australia to make a statement and elevate themselves into the senior set-up. But for all the tantalising opportunities that lie ahead for them, the trip’s unlikely to be as memorable as Hollioake’s untamed class of 1996/97.

England A squad, 1996/97

Adam Hollioake (c), Warren Hegg (wk), Mark Butcher, Glen Chapple, Mark Ealham, Jason Gallian, Ashley Giles, Andrew Harris, Dean Headley, Anthony McGrath, Owais Shah, Michael Vaughan, Craig White