The ambition, all agreed, was to make the England men “the world’s best team across formats within five years”. So far, so straightforward.
But how to gauge what is meant by “world’s best"? Rankings or tournaments, or a combination of both? There is the World Test Championship, staged over a two-year period, as well as the ICC Test rankings. New Zealand are the world Test champions, but are ranked fifth. For England supporters, neither counts for as much as the Ashes, one suspects. There are World Cups for 50-over cricket (quadrennial) and T20 cricket (biennial) as well as ICC rankings. England are world champions in both, but are ranked fourth and second respectively.
In the months between the internal dissemination of a first draft of the high-performance review and the eventual publication of the final draft, the evaluation of what was meant by “world’s best” changed. Initially, it was defined as “being No.1 in at least one format and top three in the others”. Eventually that changed to “winning World Cups and winning major Test series home and abroad”. That subtle change highlights where the priorities lie and how a hotch-potch landscape adds context to the kind of series England are playing in South Africa and their recent form in one-day internationals.
There is a realisation now that England will not be able to put out their best team for every series they play. Therefore, a more focused ambition is to win World Cups – when they will be at full strength, injuries notwithstanding – and the prestigious Test series such as the Ashes when, again, they will aim to be at full strength. Which is not to say that winning bilateral series such as the one they are playing at the moment in South Africa is beyond them or unimportant, merely that the schedule demands prioritising.
During the past two weeks and for the next month, England find themselves with two different squads on two different continents; the white-ball squad in South Africa and (at the start of March) in Bangladesh and the Test squad in New Zealand.
For a while, it looked as though England were sending their Test and limited-overs teams in distinct directions too. But Brendon McCullum, the red-ball head coach, and Ben Stokes, the Test captain, figure that their best chance of becoming competitive again in Test cricket is to exploit their greatest strength, which they think is their white-ball batting. So someone such as Harry Brook is regarded as a first choice in all formats, but he can’t be on two different continents at the same time.
It means that Ben Duckett and Brook will miss England’s tour to Bangladesh, which begins the day after the New Zealand Tests end, just as Joe Root is missing South Africa to be in New Zealand. It was reported this week that Alex Hales is likely to miss Bangladesh too – the first T20s England will have played since their World Cup win in Australia – given that he is due to earn a six-figure salary in the Pakistan Super League. Hales is not an England contracted player and would earn only a match fee, which is significantly less. Others will follow suit.
Other than the inexorable decline of the primacy of, and interest in, international cricket, there are other potential knock-on effects here, particularly around the nature of ECB central contracts.
A small number of high-value 12-month deals, with a high basic retainer and relatively low match fees, more and more looks to be an anachronism in this changed landscape, when a large number of players will be required. The nature of central contracts was another strand of the high-performance review that has yet to be tackled, but surely will be before long.
Stokes’s premature retirement from ODIs was prompted by the realisation that to do everything at his age and stage is impossible. When Wisden’s Twitter account asked a simple question on January 27 – “What is England’s biggest issue in ODI cricket?” – Stokes responded: “Begins with ‘S’ ends with ‘E’ and has ‘chedul’ in there as well.” Whether Stokes rescinds his retirement for one 50-over World Cup lasting six weeks only, followed by another retirement, remains to be seen.
Before Wednesday’s match against South Africa, England had lost five ODIs in a row for the first time since the summer of 2014, and had not won a series since Jos Buttler took over from Eoin Morgan. As the subtle change in definition of “world’s best” suggests, the latest series defeat in South Africa is not something those in charge will be stewing over, with priorities clearly skewed to the big Test series and World Cups.
But, of course, there is a crossover between form and the 50-over World Cup. Unlike the T20 World Cup, historically a random event that is not always won by the best team, the 50-over World Cup has generally gone to form.
Taking the past five World Cup winners, England had a 75 per cent win record in the 12 months prior to 2019; Australia were 72 per cent in the year before 2015; India were 59 per cent before 2011 and Australia’s two wins in 2007 and 2003 were prefaced by a 12-month period when they won 62 per cent and 75 per cent of their ODIs respectively.
England are at 35 per cent over a 12-month period – which includes a 3-0 defeat of the Netherlands – with 10 ODIs to go before the real thing. As reigning dual world champions in limited-overs cricket, only a fool would write England off.
An XI now might include: Jonny Bairstow, Jason Roy/Dawid Malan (who played beautifully on Wednesday for his third ODI hundred), Root, Brook, Buttler, Stokes (if unretired), Sam Curran, Moeen Ali, Adil Rashid, Mark Wood and Jofra Archer.
That looks to be a tasty team but winning is a habit. It is one in 50-over cricket that England must reacquaint themselves with soon.
The Times
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When Sir Andrew Strauss’s high-performance review – at present languishing somewhere in the long grass between combative county members and an enfeebled ECB – was being discussed, the rationale was clear: England’s performances over a lengthy period across the formats were not as good as a well-resourced system would expect or demand.