Because of The Hundred, a lot of the batters tend to focus on T20 cricket back home. And you’re getting a lot of batters now who are declining county contracts and want to just play franchise cricket around the world because it can earn more money. It is something that is a bit of a concern for England as they may end up producing T20 batters and not batters for ODIs
What do you think has gone wrong for England in the Champions Trophy?
Probably the strategy. They didn’t prepare a proper second spinner to support Adil Rashid and they just went with fast bowlers. They thought having four or five 90-plus miles fast bowlers would help them win games, but that didn’t help on pitches in Pakistan.
We have seen England succeed with an all-attacking approach from 2015-19 in ODI cricket but in the last few years, it has not given good results. What do you think has changed?
Yeah, because they had batsmen who could bat for longer periods and now they relied just on (Joe) Root. They could have possibly had another batsman there, like maybe Harry Brook, thinking right, these are the two batsmen who are going to bat longer period while the others can attack a bit more. They were just missing another batsman. Root came into the team because he can anchor the innings but then yesterday, all Root needed was a batsman to bat with him and they probably would have beaten Afghanistan. That didn’t happen and from that point of view, they were missing one batter to support Root because all the other batsmen are quite attacking. Eoin Morgan’s team just had batters who could bat time. I think here, they have batters who have impact but they don’t look to bat time.
What do you mean by batting time and Morgan? They too have posted some very big totals in their time and played many innings of impact.
Yeah, but then the roles were a bit more clear as well. Look at someone like Jason Roy, he did really well. Jonny Bairstow did good as well. There were two key batters. There were two or three batters who could actually just hit the ball and bat time. But now they only have one, Root, who actually had to come in because they didn’t have a batsman who could bat the whole 50 overs because they all just sort of hit the ball and played more T20-style cricket. So I think what they should have done was set the innings up for the 35th or the 40th over, have wickets in hand, and then tell the guys to go hard. And that’s what Morgan’s team used to do. They would bat until 35 overs and then they’d go hard. Now, they’re just going hard from ball one. And I don’t think that strategy has worked for their batting.
India changed their approach in white-ball cricket after they lost to England in the 2022 World Cup semifinal in Adelaide. Rohit Sharma has led from the front but India continue to get the tempo right in ODI cricket. What do you think they are doing right?
Yeah, I suppose, when you’ve got Rohit Sharma and Virat Kohli, you have probably one of the two best batsmen India’s produced in ODI cricket. And they’re playing together and they’re in good form. It helps the rest of the guys. Shubman Gill is another one. He’s world-class, he’s the world’s best batsman. So India has batters who can attack but also these three batters, they can bat for long periods and they can keep the tempo going. India has more batsmen similar to Root’s style. And England need a couple of batters like that. Rohit, Kohli and Gill are three batters who bat through the innings. And that allows someone like Hardik Pandya to come in and just play impact innings. He can whack it out of the ground. And then, you know, it allows Axar Patel to come in and whack it as well. So they’ve got a lot more all-rounders but they’ve got good, proper batters who can just bat long periods. And I think that’s the difference.