Comments on: Why England’s March tour of Bangladesh doesn’t count… but also does

By: Howe

Howe — Sat, 04 Feb 2023 13:56:34 +0000

Also it’s bugging me that ‘Alex Hales has opted out of the Bangladesh tour’ is the headline story just because people are somewhat likely to have heard of him compared to Sam Billings or Liam Dawson. Hales hasn’t played a 50 over game in four years. He wasn’t going anyway.

By: Howe

Howe — Sat, 04 Feb 2023 13:54:59 +0000

This happened because we’re still seeing scheduling aches and pains floating about from the time the scheduling took a sledgehammer to the knees that was COVID.

England were originally meant to play Australia in July 2020. That was cancelled because England had to reschedule the test series against Pakistan, so they played it in September. Then they were supposed to play India, but that was rescheduled to March 2021 because there wasn’t time to play it between the end of the rescheduled Australia series and and the start of the rescheduled IPL. And so on and so on and so on. England have just played a series in SA that was rescheduled from origianlly being in early 2020, and this Bangladesh series was postponed from September 2021 owing to a squeeze between the rescheduled 2021 IPL and the rescheduled 2020 (now 2021) world T20 tournament.

All they’re doing now is cleaning up the dregs of obligation that were set up by the ODI Super League, which was ambitious, an actually good idea for giving ODIs context and oppertunities for lower ranked teams, and completely screwed over by COVID. And the reason we’re seeing players skipping out is because ‘dregs of obligation’ is a less than stellar billing.

My point is this mess isn’t an omen of doom from the future, as anything that involves T20 leagues is usually framed as, it’s an irritating knock on from the past, and it’ll stop soon.

By: sam

sam — Sat, 04 Feb 2023 12:40:14 +0000

In reply to King Cricket.

Very similar.

‘Tom, you must be delighted with your first England call-up, give us your thoughts?’

‘Pfffff. Gonna cost you, mate.’

By: King Cricket

King Cricket — Sat, 04 Feb 2023 11:28:51 +0000

In reply to sam. Like a car mechanic sizing up the cost of repairs?

By: sam

sam — Sat, 04 Feb 2023 09:55:24 +0000

Good to see Tom Abell get an international nod. Decent player, terrible interviewee. Takes a big deep breath in through his teeth before every answer.

By: The Smudge

The Smudge — Thu, 02 Feb 2023 20:20:34 +0000

If they are Inigo Montoya, do we expect lots of switch hits?

By: King Cricket

King Cricket — Thu, 02 Feb 2023 07:20:50 +0000

In reply to John. Pithy.

By: John

John — Wed, 01 Feb 2023 23:52:18 +0000

Love the Raid films. Less so the haphazard treatment of international fixtures.

By: King Cricket

King Cricket — Wed, 01 Feb 2023 19:27:30 +0000

In reply to A P Webster. Essentially the second with series and tournaments waxing and waning to some degree according to recent history and context.

By: A P Webster

A P Webster — Wed, 01 Feb 2023 15:51:13 +0000

Is the situation going to come to a head and provoke an active solution from the ICC and individual boards, or are we just going to carry on like this until we have a morass of interchangeable T20 leagues, the Ashes, whatever format India are best at in a given moment, and then everything else being relegated to the international equivalent of the Second Division of the County Championship or the Royal London Cup?

Seems increasingly like it will be the latter