England’s domestic white-ball structure not helpful for ODI cricket: Trescothick
England’s domestic structure is not helping the new generation of English white-ball cricketers.
An extremely inexperienced England squad lost their 13th one-day match and their third straight ODI series since the 2023 World Cup in Barbados.
Only Jordan Cox and Rehan Ahmed from the team that toured Pakistan are in the Caribbean, meaning that several first-choice players are absent because the series coincides with England’s Test obligations. Despite only playing four List A matches prior to his selection, Cox batted at number three in the ODIs, whereas players like 23-year-old Dan Mousley hadn’t participated in a 50-over contest in more than three years before to making his debut.
When asked if the lack of domestic 50-over cricket was hindering England’s young players, Trescothick said: “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.
“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.”
Since the Hundred and England’s One-Day Cup now coincide, the nation’s best white-ball players are unable to participate in domestic List A cricket.
“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. How do we do that? That’s not up to me to try and work out.”
Phil Salt, who scored 74 in the last ODI, said earlier this week that England’s domestic structure should provide more one-day opportunities.
“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. “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.”
“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.”