They are now in a place where they need to decide whether one-day cricket matters
Cameron Ponsonby07-Nov-2024There is a fundamental truth in life. You can’t be good at something you don’t do.Only rowers, who spend their lives facing the wrong way, are the exception to this rule. But they are six-foot-five-inch, VO2 max robots who couldn’t catch a rugby ball at 15 and were instead shoved into a boat to live a life of misery. Cricket is actually a sport.And it’s one that England currently aren’t very good at. After a 13th ODI loss in 20 and third consecutive one-day series defeat, the ECB need to make a choice: invest in List A cricket or not.When the Hundred arrived in 2021, the repercussions on the international one-day side were not immediate. Those in the team already had vast 50-over experience to draw on and were World Champions. There was not much room in the team – and if there was – you were of an age where you’d had some List A experience in the preceding years.Related
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But now it’s three years later and the next generation of English one-day cricketers are arriving in the team with next to no experience. Of the 15 players to make their ODI debut for England since the first edition of the Hundred, ODI cricket makes up 23% of all List A matches they’ve played. And that’s only due to David Payne, Sam Hain and Jamie Overton doing a lot of heavy lifting. Remove the ‘old-boys’, aka those aged 29 and above, and that percentage jumps to 41%.Dan Mousley scored his maiden international half-century in the decider•Getty ImagesWhen Dan Mousley, who made his maiden international half-century in the deciding ODI, walked out on debut to bat in Antigua at No.7, with 15 overs to go, he commented to Sam Curran that he didn’t really know what he was doing.”He almost admitted himself he hadn’t actually played loads of 50-over cricket,” Curran said earlier in the week. “Guys are learning.”More experienced players are adding their voice to that sentiment.”I don’t think there’s many players in this team that you could go through and go ‘oh they’re doing a great job right now’,” said Phil Salt ahead of the third ODI, where he made 74. “That’s the reality of it because we’ve not played a lot of 50-over cricket. I’d love something like a domestic 50-over competition. I’d love the opportunity to play in that so you can get the rhythm and it’s not always stop-start.”There is, of course, a domestic tournament in England, but the current calendar infamously means that none of the top white-ball players are available to play in it.This is not a call to scrap the Hundred, far from it. But a recognition of the reality that English cricket finds itself. If ODI cricket is something they want to excel at, a change from the status quo is required to give players the opportunity to play. They’re literally asking for it.What that looks like is unclear, and it is easy to point to some of the best ODI cricketers in the world who have not developed from a healthy back catalogue of domestic cricket. Virat Kohli has played 34 domestic one-dayers compared to 295 ODIs. Joe Root 38 compared to 171.But the thing about the best is that they are by definition anomalies. Harry Brook does not need to play a handful of games for Yorkshire to get the rhythm of the format, but Mousley might.Phil Salt had a consistent series in the West Indies•Getty ImagesIt is unusual and not desirable for an England team to lose to a team that hasn’t even qualified for the Champions Trophy and consider the entire XI almost devoid of any responsibility. It is not Jordan Cox’s fault that he underperformed at No.3. He had literally never done it before. In his four List A matches before this series, he had batted at four once, five once and six twice.”I’m not paid enough for that,” Salt laughed when asked what the answer might be.There are all number of fag-packet solutions. More England Lions matches, the return of the North-South series or letting any player in the Hundred hop home quickly to have a hit in the One-Day Cup. None of those ideas are particularly good.Ultimately, the untangling of the calendar would be the only solution. One option would be to move the One-Day Cup to April when wickets are fresh and bowlers could benefit from building their workloads rather than entering a two-month block of County Championship cricket straight off the bat.
“I know that I’ve not had the most successful time in 50-over cricket and not really been doing myself justice, but the more opportunities I get to play it, the better I will be at it. That’s the bottom line.”Phil Salt on ODI cricket
Yes, it would clash with the IPL, but if you’re playing in the IPL, you’re probably already playing for England so you’re of less concern. It’s the players who aren’t currently playing for England, but might in the future, that you need to target.”I don’t think there’s many people that can just walk in and do it after not playing for a while,” Salt said. “I know that I’ve not had the most successful time in 50-over cricket and not really been doing myself justice, but the more opportunities I get to play it, the better I will be at it. That’s the bottom line.”There is, of course, option C. Which is that it’s not worth the hassle. Test is best and play T20 the rest. In the modern world with format fatigue and an overcrowded schedule, maybe something has to go. That would be sad. But if something is of value to you, you put in time towards it. And if you’re not going to play it and you’re not going to practice it, then really, you’ve got to ask what’s the point of it.Players deserve the opportunity to be good at what they do. It’s up to England to decide whether one-day cricket matters enough to give them that chance.
