England don't have a white ball problem

They have problem understanding the demands of each format, drivers of success, selection and innings construction...

England’s downturn in white ball cricket has been something to behold. Rarely in the history of the sport has a team been so dominant and then struggles to beat even relatively mediocre opposition.

People might point to Manchester United as an equivalent in football (post Sir Alex Ferguson) but even then they have never been in any danger whatsoever of being relegated. England’s white ball results recently could be termed ‘relegation form’.

Make no mistake, this isn’t due to a lack of quality in the English player pool. Having worked in English cricket for a number of years, I can say with certainty that the English white ball batting player pool is extremely strong. There are young players such as Jamie Smith, Jordan Cox and Will Smeed who can develop into regular international cricketers, and there’s the likes of Will Jacks and Harry Brook a little further along the age curve who are already getting established.

Then, with the ball, there is the future talent of Rehan Ahmed and John Turner, to name just two examples. Rehan is already establishing himself in the England set-up, although I’ve been disappointed not to see Turner get a game so far in the West Indies. I’ve been extremely impressed with what I’ve seen from Turner so far in English domestic cricket, and he looks to be equipped with the tools to succeed at a high level.

However, England appear to have a strong preference to have batting depth over frontline bowling quality in white ball cricket, apart from a complete about-turn during the World Cup when they jettisoned that approach temporarily with David Willey batting at seven and Adil Rashid at eight against South Africa. Kneejerk changes rarely work out well.

These are just a handful of examples of the talent coming through the English system. There are plenty of others besides these names. However, a selection issue, in my view, seems to stem from a failure of the decision-makers to understand the age/decline curve, and difficulty comprehending that a player’s current or future expected ability is not the same as their level of past performances in years gone by.

The make-up of England’s ODI squad was a good illustration of this. The majority were over 30 years of age, and plenty being 33+. How many of these players went into the tournament having shown recent form around their peak level, yet they were all trusted to ‘roll back the years’?

Unless you’ve lived under a rock for the last few months, you’ll know that the tournament didn’t exactly work out well. There seems to be a potential bias for selection decisions to be made which ‘double down’ on previous calls, in an attempt to vindicate the original decision.

The difficult part of it is understanding whose responsibility it is. Is it head coach Matthew Mott, captain Jos Buttler, selector Luke Wright, or managing director Rob Key? No-one really knows, which is why I’m reluctant to agree with the growing number of voices on social media calling for Mott’s head.

Unless Mott has a major, or the final say in decision-making, it’s unfair to lay the blame at his door. The head coach having that major or final say isn’t necessarily a given, but it’s unlikely that supporters will ever find out whether this is the case.

Going back to the ODI set-up, a number of observers (usually with an agenda which has bias towards county cricket and against franchise T20/Hundred) blame the current results on a lack of top players in England playing 50 over cricket. I’ve long advocated for the 50 over domestic tournament to be played in April, which would ensure all but the players heading to the IPL would be available. Such a solution would alleviate any potential problem right there, but would require compromise on the number of red-ball fixtures. It seems that such a compromise would be difficult for traditionalists to stomach.

While the lack of high quality players featuring in domestic 50 over cricket isn’t ideal, it’s far from an insurmountable problem with excellent talent ID in conjunction with understanding the differing drivers of success between that and the other two main formats. Indeed, many of the top players in other countries, rarely, if ever, play domestic 50 over cricket. When did Virat Kohli last play in the Vijay Hazare Trophy? February 2010. Almost 14 years ago.

Further, the gap between formats - particularly between 50 over cricket and T20s is only growing. T20 is now becoming a hyper-specialised format with very clear skillsets required, plus different starting XI construction and balance. These don’t necessarily replicate those required in 50 over cricket.

The art of innings construction is important in T20, but vital in ODIs. Clarity in shot options, avoiding a scrambled mindset, is critical. On Thursday night in the T20 match against the West Indies, I saw some poor options taken by the England batters, who on a number of occasions tried to hit leg side, into the wind, with three fielders on that boundary.

This was also potentially due to the lack of left-handers in the top order (Sam Curran was promoted to number four, with the other five in the top six right-handers). This was always likely to be a big problem for England in this match, given that West Indies picked two left-arm orthodox spinners, which I tweeted about in advance of the start:

England choosing a pretty unbalanced batting order was always likely to cause such issues. Having left-right hand combos would ensure that at least one player was always hitting with the wind behind them. On a general basis too, it enables potential continual targeting of a short boundary.

When you throw in the potential for left-right combos (or potentially left-left with a different XI selected) to be match-up breakers against the West Indies left-arm spinners, my view is that England were strategically naive last night in Grenada. The omission of Ben Duckett seemed strange. I saw a potential explanation being that England wanted to pick additional six-hitters because they got out-hit in match one of the series, but if they didn’t know what they were going to get in advance of playing the West Indies, then they didn’t do their research.

Not only this, but one of the best hitters of left-arm spin in the world in T20, Moeen Ali, was left to bat at number seven, which to me seems utterly bizarre. In my opinion, a number of the tactical decisions taken were rather odd, and difficult to explain.

Does this strike me as a regime who aren’t necessarily as driven towards looking at match-ups and data as some others? Possibly. It’s tough to remember England with Eoin Morgan as captain making such relatively basic errors on a regular basis.

As it happened, the left-arm spin duo of Gudakesh Motie and Akeal Hosein wreaked havoc on England’s right-handed dominant top order:-

Moving on, I want to throw this chart out there. This again illustrates a potential problem with England’s innings construction at the recent World Cup:-

The data in this chart is extremely relevant to the innings construction points raised. With more than 30 dismissals of their top 7 batters for 15 runs or less in the recent World Cup, England had major issues with early dismissals in the tournament.

Time and again England’s main batters were dismissed early in their innings. Have they lost the art of innings construction in 50 over cricket? Were the batters dismissed playing ultra-attacking shots too early in their innings prior to getting set? Or did England just pick the wrong players for the format at the current time? All explanations could also be applicable, and the recent central contract decisions have potentially compounded such question marks.

Whatever the reason, though, a team isn’t going to win much when their top 7 is much more frequently dismissed for 15 runs or less compared to any other team in the tournament, particularly when their bowlers failed to inflict the same pain on the opposition.

While I’m not minded not to give England what I consider to be clear solutions to the problems identified here without some sort of commercial agreement, there are all sorts of analysis which can be done which would highlight the major issue their white ball teams currently face. This includes solutions focusing on the required skillsets for success in formats and gap analysis. Further analysis would focus on adopting a different approach to selection and the balance of the teams picked, in addition to some different players being considered for selection given their more applicable skillsets to that specific format.

As I mentioned earlier in this piece, the difference in formats is only getting bigger, and picking format specialists in their best format (or formats if applicable) is making more and more sense. The additional benefit of this is that player workload - a hot topic right now with players often being required to continually travel and play matches - would be reduced by looking at different pools of talent for different formats. Such an approach might put some players noses out of joint in the short term when they’re not selected for a specific format, but it’s a necessity when considering how cricket is evolving.

With the talent that England have in their group, and their current squad arguably more suited to T20s than ODIs, it can’t be ruled out that some individual brilliance tonight will reduce the series deficit against the West Indies in the third match of the series, but in my view it doesn’t hide that some decisions have been taken which in my opinion aren’t close to maximizing expected value.

Concluding, anyone interested in discussing how I can help their team with strategic consultation and data-driven analysis, or contribute to any media work, can get in touch at sportsanalyticsadvantage@gmail.com.