FROM THE TOP TO THE DROP
HOW ENGLAND HAVE GONE FROM 50-OVER WORLD CHAMPIONS TO CURRENTLY NOT QUALIFYING FOR EVEN THE CHAMPIONS TROPHY IN JUST 4 YEARS
England’s performance at the 2023 World Cup has been nothing short of a debacle, and weird as it may sound from an England cricket fan, I am almost glad, this performance should help the 50-over game in England in the long run. It may sound cynical but, could this help bring the format most commonly played in English club leagues over generations back to the fore in this country at the professional level too.
Surely this performance after this four-year cycle shows the importance of 50-over cricket, the world’s love for 50-over cricket and with the likes of Tom Harrison and Mo Babot now gone/going from the ECB and the two Richards (Gould-CEO and Thompson-Chairman) in, things have to change. I have not personally met the two Richards, but hear good things about them from good authority. They supposedly love the county game and want the best for English cricket, which is surely two of the top bullet points on both their job descriptions.
We-England-have got what we deserve. We won the 50-over World Cup (yes by the barest of margins when truthfully New Zealand deserved to win it more than us, a great deal of fortune in the final knockings went for England) in 2019. Guess what also happened that year….Somerset won the 50-over Cup (RLODC at the time) in its last ever final at Lords. This was a major blow to the format of cricket club cricketers can most easily identify with across all generations.
‘Normal’ people cannot have four or five days off work consecutively to play or watch cricket regularly, we do not play multi-day cricket below county level. League cricket in the UK is generally at most 50 over cricket or 90 overs in a day declaration cricket, where teams almost never bat more than 60 overs. T20 has of course become more and more common, such that in my state school we never even played more than T20s in my entire five years at a supposedly high-performing sporting school.
T20 cricket is taking over from 50-over cricket but there is still enough time in the year and people out there who love both, together or individually to keep both healthily alive alongside the County Championship and Test cricket too.
In the past half-term week I have been reading Dominic Cork’s diary of his 1995 summer when he broke through from Derbyshire into the England test side when it was normal and expected for players to go and play for the counties the day after a test match finished. So players could finish at The Oval at 6pm and be ‘warming up’ for the county at Chester-le Street (seven hours drive+ north) come 9.30am the very next day. And no they did not fly nor even take a pimped-up coach like sports teams have these days, even fast bowlers would drive themselves up there instead of ice-bathing on the conclusion of completing their 40th over inside five days.
An extract from ‘Uncorked-diary of a cricketing year’ 1995 read the para I’m pointing at; no rest even after day 5 of the final test of a 6-test series v 1 of the great Windies sides!
People moan about the schedule so much, but realistically even the best summers see multiple days rained off or rain affected. So the entirety of the schedule is never fulfilled anyway-rain=a rest for all players!
I also had the pleasure of interviewing Phil Tufnell at the Yeovil Literary Festival last week and mentioned similar points to him then. Of course not all human beings have the talents of ‘the cat’ to simply nap in the changing room, and nowadays ‘twelthers’ are in demand for fielding shifts, drinks and all other sorts of paraphinalia perhaps more than before so they can’t rest like Tuffers did. But modern cricketers still have way more time off than they did last century, and so many 20/20s are played these days where they can only bowl a maximum of four overs or bat for a maximum of 120 balls, so really even a T20 day is not that taxing.
I do love how fielding has gone to the next level and of course this takes way more effort and concentration than the Inzamam ul-Haqs or Tufnell himself of yesteryear. But players rarely say they are tired and need a break from fielding too much-it is more common from fast bowlers steaming in again and again.
People argue the standard of cricket would be better if played less, and perhaps this would be the case but fans would rather see cricket than no cricket. Standards dropping by a couple % because some bowlers are tired or injured would not stop people getting into the game of cricket, but having a whole period without cricket in the summer holidays which school kids could watch would have that negative impact. They would simply take up another sport which they can access and watch live close to home.
A bit of history on the 50-over game in England:
The John Player League was launched in 1969, the second one-day competition in England and Wales alongside the Gillette Cup (started in 1963). The 17 counties (Durham were awarded first-class status for the 1992 season) played each other in a league format on Sunday afternoons throughout the summer.
These matches were, at that time, deemed concise enough to be shown on television, BBC2 broadcasting one match each week in full until the 1980s, and then as part of the Sunday Grandstand multi-sport programme. Similarly to Sky Sports in recent years; in close finishes for the title, cameras appeared at the grounds where the contenders for the title were competing and the trophy presentation to the winners would be on film.
Now three hour T20s are not deemed short enough to be shown live on terrestial television! I remember ITV4 showing the early days of the IPL, back when classical stroke-makers like Ajinkya Rahane and Rahul Dravid were allowed to open together before the supposed need for powerplay capitalisers. This helped me get into the game as a teenager before the English season was underway in April, or whilst it was too wet to play in English Spring.
What is ludicrious is that the ECB have deemed 20 less balls off each innings as more appropriate for TV coverage and thus made their own format, not played anywhere else in the world, where 16.4 overs a side is played. I was at the first ever pilot event of this format in the UK in September 2018, at Trent Bridge, do see my unbiased response article written as a budding journalist live from the scene at the time:
I had previously written a blog post in October 2016 when the rumours were first majorly afloat:
Daryl Mitchell, Paul Walter and many other county stalwarts were there, mystified by this format. “It will never catch on” was a phrase I heard multiple times from players and press alike throughout the afternoon. Lo and behold a few years later and a few million pounds of investment later, and this format is pushing not only 50-over cricket, but even a full Ashes series to the sidelines.
Tuffers of course was horrified that this Ashes series was squeezed into just a few weeks.
“They all look out of nick actually, not just one or two of them, but the whole lot of them at the same time” the legendary England spinner told me.
Now why’s that? Simply that this England squad have barely played 50-over cricket in the past four years. Halloween has now passed so I should not spook you with the scary stat of the figure of matches this England squad have played in the RLODC/MBODC in the past four years….but Malan alone, now with Yorkshire has a fair % of the entire figure.
I was working as a gap tutor in New Zealand during what was dubbed to be the debacle of all cricket world cup performances debacles from England in 2015. I was there at ‘The Cake-Tin’ when Tim Southee got 7-33 and Brendon Mccullum (yes the man coaching our test side now) flat batted Messus Broad, Anderson and Finn all around the Westpac Stadium chasing down our paltry 123 all out inside 13 overs. And we were not unlucky that day, not they fortunate, we were just horrendously out-played.
Since then Eoin Morgan did a stellar job changing our mindset around to take the 50-over game on more like a T20 and we found ways to attack throughout the match, but still keep wickets in hand for the last 10 overs, 100 run target as AB De Villiers liked to talk of. England made a habit of scoring 350/even 400+ in the now lesser-spotted bilateral ODI series up until the 2019 climax when we lead the way in the format. You could argue our cavalier attitude earned us more boundaries and thus the title itself on boundary countback over those unfortunate kiwis.
But the past few weeks England have not managed to play the modern attacking way nor even the seemingly defensive/boring way that earned Jonathan Trott a decent, respectable England ODI career back in the early 2010s. That man himself finished with an ODI average of 51.25 at a strike-rate of 77.06, higher than some of England’s top six this tournament-and they altogether have scored nothing like what he or his Afghanistan team have managed in most games in recent weeks.
The Afghans are not as small a cricketing nation as they were of course, they have stellar franchise names like Rashid Khan and Mohammad Nabi-who was there right at the start of their remarkable journey to becoming World Cup regulars. They beat England comfortably and empatically without too much fuss, just played good 50-over cricket, much better than the three lions could manage.
And David Willey. What a poor bloke, shafted for Jofra Archer just before the successful 2019 campaign (yes understandably so-Archer bowled well and was a big part of England sealing that triumph, but he could have been benched slightly less harshly) and yet again mid-campaign now with central contracts bizarrely being announced during the World Cup!
Liam Plunkett got similarly poor treatment post World Cup win and he was the best-bowler in the world in those middle-overs during 2019 (closely followed by Lockie Ferguson who has the advantage of a few less years and a fair amount more pace.) I could also mention Jason Roy, Luke Wright did not cover himself in glory with his announcements regarding the man who made the most England caps between 2019-23 and then was unceremoniously ditched at the last moment from the World Cup squad thanks to his injury-hampered late summer.
Of course cycles end and management want to get fresh, younger blood in ready for in four years time when the likes of Gus Atkinson could be spearing an England attack with Tom Lawes, but we could wait until the tournament is over before making career-changing decisions.
Imagine just after winning the football World Cup in 1966, Bobby Moore and dat, the FA decided we in England no longer wanted to play 90 minute football matches, we were going to change to 90 minutes because it suits TV and a new fanbase better, we’ll prioritise our new format, exclusive to our country and then the same players will have to adapt with a couple of friendlies in the final weeks before the next World Cup in four years time having barely played 90 minutes of football in that time period. Oh and because Ireland are our last friendly opposition before the World Cup and they are not that great, we’ll give our big guns an extra rest and put our second string out to play them. So the main guys only play one team (New Zealand in September) a few times before we play the same team first game of the World Cup, in completely different conditions…
…and then Gareth Southgate having a conversation with Harry Maguire-Harry you are our first choice centre-back currently but we are not wanting your services any more so will be ripping up your England contract….am not sure if we want you or if you’ll want to play in our remaining World Cup games…though you have been one of our better players…
I could turn this post into a full on essay like my 2018 Sports Journalism degree dissertation discussing if T20 cricket was ruining the game at the time (verdict was no-I watch T20s across the Globe, but don’t want T20s to be the detriment of the other 2 great formats) but shall leave it there for now.
I’ll still be watching every game of this World Cup, it may not have the drama yet of 2015 or 2019 (though of course NZ v Australia was another cracker) but it is still thoroughly entertaining and it is great to see a South Africa side who have played ODI cricket together successfully throughout the year doing so well on the biggest stage-I hope they don’t flop at the knockout stage again and the Springboks get to celebrate a title with them.
It also is of course great to see Afghanistan and the Netherlands doing so well. Hopefully further editions will regularly have more nations involved again, with at least two groups and we can see the likes of Scotland, Ireland, the UAE, Namibia and even the once-great West Indies back with the big boys.
Feel free to get in touch with me @HarryEverett_14 if want to discuss any of the above further.
