Trophy doing little to abate 50-over threat

The editor of Cricket Statistician analyses recent events

It has been muttered from time to time in recent years that three formats is too many for one sport to maintain, and that the format most likely to disappear is the one innings 50-over game. How does the current Champions’ Trophy fit into that narrative and, indeed, what part might it play in bringing it about?

In the women’s game, the long format of the game is dead or dying.Women’s Test matches have been a fragile form for some time. In the last ten years, England have played seven Tests, six against Australia and one against India. Apart from that, India have played South Africa once, and that’s it. But the women’s Test match was never very common in what was always a very amateur game, and it went through a long period of three day games played at funeral pace which can have inspired nobody.

In the men’s professional game, the first-class (usually four-day) game is the basis of the sport and all domestic cricket in Full Member countries relies on a competition of this format, which is also seen as a preparation for Test cricket. That will continue whether or not anyone watches it, because while Test cricket continues the firstclass game will continue, which is why we now see new first-class competitions in Ireland and Afghanistan.

So the threat hangs over the 50-over format, and at an early stage the Champions Trophy indicates why. With a ball that won’t swing and pitches that won’t turn, the competition so far has seen virtually every side drop a spinner and go for fastish bowlers all the time. And after 38 overs the score is 200-2 and the game starts in earnest – will they make only 300 or soar to 350? Captains have tried to attack early on in an innings, placing a couple of slips, but it hasn’t had much effect.

The top batsmen – Tamim Iqbal, Hashim Amla, Joe Root, Kane Williamson – have started by ticking off really quite routine hundreds. Virat Kohli didn’t quite have time to complete his and Steve Smith only had time for 8* in his first game when it rained. Fast bowlers resign themselves to the fact that what wickets they do take will probably be from catches at long on.

Eoin Morgan complained bitterly that in England’s third game against South Africa they actually had to bat on a pitch against a moving ball (with the result they got to 20 for 6), but surely we can have some deviation from the flat bowler-killers we have seen. The game has become something less than three dimensional in this competition so far, and needs some rapid restoration of the balance between bat and ball.

And no more mystery spinners, because they’ve all been accused of chucking.

This may all seem like carping, with the crowds at Edgbaston for the India/Pakistan game so large, so enthusiastic, and so well behaved. Those spectators and their children are a good part of the future of English cricket

One view is that T20 may be the cuckoo in the nest, and is threatening to throw its fellow nestlings over the side. But wholly predictable ODIs may throw themselves first.