Are England compromising India Test series preparations for The Hundred?
Less than a week before the start of England’s highly anticipated five-match Test series against India on August 4, the hosts are yet to regroup and resume their red-ball training.
Most of England’s prominent Test cricketers are busy playing for their respective teams in The Hundred, with no clarity yet as to when they’ll be asked to reassemble for the start of the next World Test Championship (WTC) cycle.
Captain Joe Root (Trent Rockets), Ben Stokes (Northern Superchargers), Jos Buttler (Manchester Originals), Jonny Bairstow (Welsh Fire), Zak Crawley (London Spirit), Sam Curran (Oval Invincibles) are some of the Test squad members engaged with The Hundred, who are yet to get on their Indian series buildup.
And with the County Championship also on pause mode midway through the summer, even those Test players not involved in The Hundred are not getting any red-ball preparations going for the challenge against touring Indians.
Only Haseeb Hameed from England’s Test squad for the first two India games has had any sort of red-ball cricket under his belt in the last two weeks. Hameed struck a fantastic century in the drawn three-day warm-up match facing the visitors in Durham.
England Test team members are yet to reassemble and start training for the India series
The Hundred has its widely celebrated launch, but is it also leaving England Test team underprepared for India series?
While the Test squad members could assemble by the end of the week in Nottingham, they are still guaranteed to have a shortened build-up towards the India series, which is not ideal since it assumes huge importance for England. Apart from the crucial WTC points at stake, the series offers England a final opportunity to ascertain their line-up and squad for the Ashes tour later in the year. Historically, Ashes tours to Australia have tended to decide the longevity of captaincy tenures and playing careers in English cricket.
Joe Root maybe in danger of losing England Test captaincy if the Ashes goes wrong.
The last thing Root and company would want is for the Indians to catch them cold, with better preparations behind them. Unlike their English counterparts, the Indian team have had an extended period spent focusing only on the red-ball game in the last few weeks.
They played the WTC final against the Kiwis in June and got back to training on July 16 after a two-week break. One of their players, off-spinner Ravichandran Ashwin, has even featured in a Championship fixture for Surrey.
After losing to New Zealand earlier in the summer, hiccups against India could leave England precariously placed heading into an Ashes series Down Under, with their skipper potentially feeling uncertain of maintaining his job and the players under him not sure which dismissal or bad spell could bring about an end to their stint with the Test side.
This points to one major question that England seems to be ignoring: are they leaving themselves underprepared for an important Test series to make sure The Hundred has its big, widely celebrated launch? And will a shortened preparation window become the norm for every second Test series in the summers to follow? If so, the Test match game in England is bound to suffer badly, if it hasn’t already.