England team’s wage fears after ECB axes 62 jobs
Hosts target rivals’ mental scars in hunt for decisive win Smith set to play after coming through concussion protocols
England players could be the next to feel the impact of £100 million losses this summer after the England and Wales Cricket Board announced a round of “unthinkable” redundancies.
The reality of huge losses incurred by the game because of coronavirus hit home yesterday when Tom Harrison, the ECB chief executive, revealed that 62 jobs would go at the board. He also warned that losses could double to £200 million if next summer was played in similar circumstances.
Contracts in the Hundred tournament have been cut by 20 per cent and players will be worried the board will now look to make savings within the England set-up when central-contract deals are decided at the end of the month.
Chris Woakes, a dual-format cricketer for England, so on the highest bracket of payments (£925,000), accepted yesterday that the players could face pay cuts.
“We need to see what happens with regard to these contracts coming up, we’ll know more in the next few weeks and we’ll reassess at that point,” Woakes said. “As players, you’re not going to sit here and say ‘we’re exempt from it’, you just have to wait and see what the hierarchy have planned.”
It will not be so entertaining as the World Cup final last year – and no cricket match, perhaps no sporting encounter, will ever have such a prolonged climax. But the third and deciding one-day international between England and Australia could be almost as much fun as last year’s semi-final clash in that same tournament.
In any event, the quasi-final at Emirates Old Trafford will make a fine end to the international schedule in a summer that might never have been, before cricket makes way for the Indian Premier League’s various qualities – not all questionable – which will dominate the autumn. And next week will see the inaugural first-class county final, between Essex and Somerset, to be held at Lord’s.
One of last year’s World Cup semi-finals was between England and Australia at Edgbaston, where on a fast, true pitch England swept Australia’s cricketers aside as if they were Nullarbor flies, Steve Smith alone standing in their way with his 85. The second semi-final, between India and New Zealand, was played at Old Trafford, wherein some pointers lie for this climax of England’s international summer.
The third and final one-dayer, between the current and previous World Cup holders, is going to be staged on a fresh pitch. It is four strips away from the one on which both England and Australia have struggled to score whenever the bowling has been straight and of “a heavy length” so the batsman, whether on front or back foot, cannot throw his hands at the ball.
Strange concoctions have been throw up by 22 yards of Mancunian turf this summer and last. If the bowling has been wayward, the pitches have yielded huge totals, such as England’s 400 against Afghanistan in the World Cup. If the bowling has been accurate and “heavy”, any decent total has been hard to chase.
First-innings totals of 294 and 231 in the first two internationals proved more than adequate. Even though the winning margins were only approximately 20 runs, the team chasing the target did not truly come close. It was the same in the World Cup semi-final at Old Trafford: New Zealand scraped together only 239, yet the target was too much for India’s batsmen against their expert seamers, by 19 runs.
So, it seems that, whatever the pitch on Old Trafford’s square, the toss is going to be highly influential, bequeathing as it will the right to bat first in broad daylight – cloudless sunshine predicted – instead of batting at twilight, before the flood
lights take full effect, on a pitch that is tiring and wants to go to bed. However, on a relatively fresh pitch, the game is less weighted towards the side batting first.
England, having come back from 1-0 down, have three hree Australian weaknesses to exploit: ploit: their middle-order batting or the lack thereof, their death h bowling, which is not so adept as England’s in taking ng pace off the ball (both Currans,
Sam and Tom, did a fine job on Sunday), and possibly mental scarring after Australia’s batting collapse in the first T20 was followed in Sunday’s second ODI chase with a target of just 232.
Smith’s return would go a long way to rectifying any Australian defects. Their head coach Justin Langer has recounted how the incident that ruled Smith out of the first two ODIS happened (when there is no way in lockdown of any media monitoring what goes on at net practice).
At the end of a characteristically long session, Smith ducked into a short ball that failed to rise off one of the increasingly worn net pitches, and was hit on the side of his helmet last Thursday. But now, after all the new concussion protocols, Langer says that Smith “has ticked every box”.
Smith at No 3, instead of Marcus Stoinis who was blown aside by Jofra Archer, would invigorate Australia’s batting, whether or not Archer disposes of David Warner for the fifth time out of five. Smith would then be followed by his likefor-like replacement, Marnus Labuschagne – more formidable with every innings – and together they would minimise the likelihood of Australia’s tail – made up of specialist bowlers – having to bat at all. “We are wary of the impact Steve Smith could have,” Chris Woakes said. It was Woakes and Archer who ran through Australia Australia’s s S Smith-less batting at the tipping point on Sunday, when Eoin Morgan sounded the call for gamechangers and m match-winners. Woakes (le (left) has not swung the new w white balls at Old Trafford, bu but when it mattered most he w was quick and straight.
“We k know he [Smith] is a worldclass pla player and we’ve bee been on the receiving end of his performances perf a few tim times in the past. W We know h he can affect g games, bu but at the same t time it can be tricky coming in having not much cricket un under your belt and having to perform from ball one in a decider. We’ll prepare for hi him to play and if he does, we have our plans for him.”