The Art of the Deal

Analysis of England's central contracts decision-making

Likely every person reading this will have needed at some point in their lives (and probably multiple points) to negotiate. For example, the price of a new car, a house, or the salary for a job. Obviously there are plenty more examples of this for the average person as well.

The key in these negotiations, particularly when the deal requires a long-term relationship between several parties, is that both can walk away happy from the deal but conversely, not having to take a deal while feeling completely backed into a corner. Should this occur, there is considerable scope for resentment and regret from one side and such a situation will rarely develop a healthy working relationship.

Regardless of several wins in the last couple of matches in the World Cup, I want to bring the points in the first couple of paragraphs round to the England cricket team.

I fear for England that they’ve been backed into such a corner due to the potential fear of multi-year contracts or offers of big contracts from T20 league teams owned by IPL franchises. It’s certainly interesting to note that one player who it was well-known had a big offer, Mark Wood, got a three-year deal at the age of 33 (and not far off being 34) despite his injury record.

On the flip side, several players who had regularly played for England in white-ball cricket in recent years, Phil Salt, and even more notably given that he is in the current World Cup squad, David Willey, were not given a central contract. Prior to the Netherlands match when I collated this data, they had played 29 times and 31 times for England since the start of 2022. Will Jacks (12 appearances) was another player who could consider themselves unfortunate, particularly given the data below which shows the appearance levels and age of players offered a full central contract (data correct prior to the Netherlands match earlier this week):-

Salt (27 years of age) and Jacks (soon to be 25) would have been on the left-hand side of this chart. Indeed, should he have been given a deal, Salt’s position this chart would have been situated somewhere between Ben Duckett and Sam Curran, both of whom have picked up two-year deals.

The lack of a contract offer can affect people in different ways, but it would be easy to have sympathy for players such as these who made the decision to prioritise franchise cricket instead, and it’s obvious that both Salt and Jacks would command significant interest from various franchise league teams should they be consistently be available, as opposed to some others on this chart who would be much less likely to be attractive to T20 teams. Did England miss a trick here with those two?

This is particularly relevant when you consider the oft-quoted threat from franchise leagues - these are two players who are at a good place along the age curve of selected players and would be in demand from franchise leagues.

As for Willey, it is difficult not to feel sorry for him as the only member of the World Cup squad not to have received a central contract. Finding this out either prior to or during a tournament clearly wouldn't have been ideal and anyone in this situation would, in my view, find it tough to avoid such a situation breeding resentment and for a player to feel under-appreciated. A question which I think would be worth asking to the management is why he was considered less likely to be picked than others further along the age/expected decline curve.

Such a scenario brings into question about the decision to deal with central contracts prior to/during a major tournament which takes place every four years. Contract discussions often have the potential to become a major destabilizing impact (whether in sport or not), but as importantly, England have an aging squad (in several recent matches every player has been aged over 30) and teams frequently go through some form of evolution, if not revolution, following major tournaments.

How could England know whether they wanted to keep faith with certain aging players before a major tournament? Surely it would have been better to enter into the negotiations with the additional information of tournament performances.

Of course, the public don’t know the thought processes behind such decision making, which is a shame. In a different sport, there are a growing number of Directors of Football offering transparent insight on their decision making either in the media or on Linkedin, and such accountability would be a refreshing change to see in cricket.

Moving on to another player, Ben Stokes. From reports, Stokes was offered a three-year deal but decided to only accept a one-year deal with a potential explanation being that a one-year deal coincides with a renewal of a TV rights deal. I would be amazed if there were many examples in sport of a player being offered a three-year deal, turning it down in favour of one year and the administrators seemingly just saying words akin to ‘ok then, one year it is’. Could England have played more hardball with that negotiation?

This does hint at a subject which has been referred to slightly more by the media in recent times - player power. It potentially goes back to the art of the deal conversation again, where both parties have to 1) enter into negotiations with the potential to either be happy or to walk away, or 2) one of the two parties concluding a deal when feeling backed into a corner.

Despite a stellar reputation, largely warranted, of being a match-winner, which we saw in evidence again this week, Stokes’ overall numbers don’t stack up as being in line with the truly elite players in the world. Would a different player able to offer a 90%-95% version of Stokes at this World Cup - particularly given the injury issues (both short-term and long-term) and lack of bowling output - be such a bad thing? Further, I’m not convinced it’s a great look to retire from the ODI format (which many sage observers would suggest he is better at than T20 - a format he hadn’t retired from), and then prior to a major tournament reverse that decision and walk straight back into the team.

England, and other countries too, could enter into these negotiations with more power if they arrived willing to jettison senior players and/or big names. Would Salt, Jacks, Ben Duckett or Sam Hain have been expected to produce significantly less at this World Cup than those players selected? I don’t think so - they are extremely talented players who are getting better and better. Not only that, but Duckett and Hain in particular are strong non-boundary run contributors, which is a useful innings construction dynamic for players to have in ODIs as opposed to the dot/boundary dynamic which batters can often get away with more in T20.

There’s little doubt that England have a ridiculously strong talent pool which contains probably 4-5 teams worth of players (certainly batters) capable of competing well at international cricket. In the next part of this two-part article, I’m going to look at that talent pool and attempt to create white-ball depth charts for England moving forward following this World Cup, focusing on younger players with high ability.