If you've read my blogs before you'll know that I have a preference for Test cricket. More of a challenge. Real cricket. Or am I just showing my age?! Of course one-dayers can be thrilling, witness my nostalgic piece on the first World Cup Final. I am looking forward to the tournament in a few weeks' time, and there have been some great ODIs recently, too. So why is Andrew Strauss complaining there are too many of them?
I suspect that behind the sentiment expressed this week is the excuse of having been thrashed 6-1 by a resurgent Australia. He and his squad enjoyed a fabulously successful Ashes series so anything else was likely to be an anticlimax. However, I wonder if, had the situation been reversed and England had lost the Test series and mauled the opposition in the 50-over matches, he had been quite so negative. Then it would be "The lads have put the Ashes behind them and shown they are in tremendous form and going all out to win the World Cup". Wouldn't it?!
Perhaps I'm being a bit harsh. Actually I think he does have a point. In comparison with an Ashes series, ODIs are a bit like a dessert following a delicious main course. Quite sweet on the palate but not really as filling and easily forgotten. A seven-game sequence when you are losing and suffering injury after injury comes to seven games too many. Seven is definitely too many for a World Cup warm-up. Strauss and Andy Flower want more say in the scheduling of tour games and I do tend to think that having three or four ODIs to whet the appetite for the Tests is a better idea. Nevertheless, in this case, Strauss would have been insisting on having more 50-over practice in the lead-in to the World Cup, so the tour would probably have been just as long. You can't win!
Yes, the whole business of Tests, ODIs and other practice games should be reviewed, but in the end it's more about money: sponsorship and TV revenue. Strauss and Flower should reflect on the positives from the tour Down Under. Almost all the players increased their world standing, making England one of the most feared teams in world cricket - and when was that last true? They can bat, bowl and field and showed the will to win. Nobody likes to lose but one-day defeats are not so bad. They can turn on just a few balls, unlucky incidents, a dropped catch, a misfield. England can do extremely well in the World Cup - so long as they remember the team spirit that brought them such success just a few months ago.
