Interim head coach Marcus Trescothick has said that the current domestic structure is “not helping” England’s new generation of white-ball cricketers.
At the Kensington Oval, Barbados, England fell to a third consecutive one-day series defeat and 13th ODI loss in 20 matches, as West Indies thrashed them by eight wickets.
England’s squad in the Caribbean is severely inexperienced with several Test players missing due to a crammed schedule, meaning Jordan Cox made his international bow at No 3, despite only playing four 50-over matches in his career before his call-up, while Dan Mousley, 23, had not played a List A game in more than three years.
Currently, England’s one-day cup directly overlaps with The Hundred, meaning the top white-ball players in the country do not have any domestic 50-over cricket available for them to compete in.
“Well, it’s not helping because you’re not getting the volume of games that players would like to get and really build an understanding of the game,” Trescothick replied when asked if the lack of domestic 50-over cricket was hampering England’s young players.
“But you kind of know why that is and that is the structure we’re given to play and we’ll make a fist of it and make it work as much as we can.
“I’m not going to speak against any other competition,” Trescothick said, referencing the one-day cup’s clash with The Hundred. “But of course we’d want more 50-over cricket somehow.”
This week, Phil Salt referenced his desire to have more one-day opportunities at home, having not played a county one-day game since 2019.
“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,’” Salt said to TalkSport before 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.
“I don’t think there’s many people that can just walk in and do it after not playing for a while. 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.”
Adding in one-day opportunities for England players over the summer would take a major restructuring of the calendar, with one potential option being to move the 50-over competition to the beginning of the season in April in order to not clash with The Hundred.
“It’s really challenging,” Trescothick said. “We know how important Test cricket is in England and obviously having the domestic T20 competition and The Hundred, that’s vitally important to our game.
“How do we get that balance right? That’s for the powers above to look at, but it’s not going to be easy.
“There’s not a massive amount of experience in this current team right now. Of course, there’s not. But part of the reason for bringing that youth across was to get the experience into them. It’s not always going to be easy to get games into them. There’s not a massive amount to play back at home, and most of the white ball cricket played now around the world is T20. So that is a challenge, and we’re aware of that.”
