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• A look at changing nature of international calendar ahead of Cricket World Cup

  The World Cup gets under way on Thursday with the status of one-day internationals dwindling as Twenty20 continues to take precedence.

  England have played fewer ODIs heading into this tournament than for any World Cup in almost 30 years and here, the PA news agency looks at the changing nature of the international calendar.

  Has the ODI bubble burst?

  The first two World Cups, in 1975 and 1979, were played with ODIs barely yet an established format – the first fixture took place on January 5, 1971 but only 53 were played all decade outside of those tournaments.

  Post-1979, England’s 42 ODIs in the four-year cycle leading up to this World Cup marks their third-lowest total and their fewest since the 1996 tournament, when they had played only 38 in between World Cups. They played 40 leading up to 1983.

  The picture is similar for the other leading ODI nations, with India’s 66 ODIs also their third-lowest in a World Cup cycle in that time and exceeding the four-year periods up to 1996 (63) and 1983 (27).

  Australia’s 44 is their lowest excluding the 1970s tournaments, with 64 leading up to the 1983 World Cup and at least 75 on every other occasion since.

  The four-year cycle was briefly broken by a switch to even-numbered years in the 1990s. There were five years between the tournaments in 1987 and 1992 and only three up to 1999, when the regular pattern was re-established.

  Twenty20 vision

  The decline of the 50-over game has been brought about by the rise of the shortest format and this cycle is the first time T20 internationals have made up the largest share of England’s fixtures.

  With 68 games, excluding those abandoned without a ball bowled, T20 accounts for 40.8 per cent of England’s games since the 50-over World Cup final against New Zealand on July 14, 2019.

  They have played 58 Tests in that time (34.3 per cent) and only 42 ODIs (24.9 per cent), the lowest share of England’s fixtures for the latter format since the years leading up to the 1975 World Cup when they played 50 Tests to 17 ODIs.

  T20 was only introduced for the first time in 2005 and made up just 2.8 per cent of England’s games between the 2003 and 2007 World Cups. That had jumped to 20.4 per cent in the next cycle and has doubled in the years since.

  Feeling the squeeze

  With all three formats battling for their place in the calendar, something has to give.

  Ben Stokes, the hero of England’s 2019 World Cup win, shockingly announced his retirement from the format last year with a warning that “there is too much cricket rammed in for people to play all three formats now”.

  He has returned for this World Cup – but as a specialist batter, with knee problems inhibiting his bowling – but his prolonged absence hinted at a wider trend.

  Eight of the 2019 World Cup-winning squad also appear in the group this time around – captain Jos Buttler, Stokes, Joe Root, Jonny Bairstow, Moeen Ali, Adil Rashid, Chris Woakes and Mark Wood.

  They had played an average of 74.1 per cent of England’s games between the 2015 and 2019 tournaments, with Rashid at 94.3 per cent, but none have even reached that average mark in the years since.

  Moeen’s 73.8 per cent is the leading figure, with the average down to 48.8. Wood has played just 19 per cent, below even Stokes’ 31 per cent.

• England’s summer ends in soggy fashion and prompts a call for innovation

  Gloucestershire chief executive Will Brown has called for more innovation to combat the elements after England’s summer ended in soggy fashion with an abandoned one-day international against Ireland at Bristol.

  Ben Duckett’s maiden century in this format underpinned England’s 280 for four off 31 overs but their innings in the final match of this Metro Bank series was interrupted by brief but torrential rain.

  The players walked off the field at 2:48pm but the umpires’ decision to announce there would no further play at 3:21pm caught England captain Zak Crawley and Ireland counterpart Paul Stirling by surprise.

  Several puddles formed on the outfield within minutes while the ground staff’s attempts to get the covers on were delayed – by umpires Mike Burns and Paul Reiffel hesitating before ushering the teams off – then hindered by gusts of wind, which meant a significant amount of water got on to the square.

  Gloucestershire brought in more ground staff for the game but this was a fourth abandonment in a row in a men’s ODI at this venue, which has more basic protections to guard against the weather in contrast to its Test-hosting equivalents.

  While the match extending past 30 overs meant no refunds for the paying public, Brown, who revealed rain the previous night had already left the ground with a high water table, believes more needs to be done to avoid a repeat of this situation at a venue which will host a men’s ODI on September 29, 2024.

  “In some respects we were lucky to start when we did on time,” Brown said. “We always had the sense that if we had something similar to (Monday) night, 20-30 minutes of rain could be what killed it off.

  “It is just gutting. We’ve had our fair share of rain offs such as in World Cups and you wonder if we give it a bit longer maybe it can dry out, but it is what it is.

  “It worries me greatly that this is a sign of things to come. We’ve got a lot of cricket being played in September next year and with climate change we’ve seen heavy rain in June and July.

  “I think the game needs to be thinking innovatively about how we get games on or prepare pitches and surfaces using different things to get cricket away.”

  England celebrated a 1-0 win but the recriminations at a hasty and unsatisfactory conclusion continued, with the wisdom of holding international matches in the UK in September only increasing.

  Just one of the three matches in this series – England prevailing by 48 runs at Trent Bridge on Saturday – reached a conclusion and Crawley confessed he was startled by the swift ending.

  “It caught everybody by surprise,” Crawley said. “I was in the lunch room when the (umpires) said it was abandoned, I didn’t know. It caught us all by surprise when they came in to shake our hands.

  “The ground was already a bit wet after the rain (the night before). It didn’t need a lot more to get abandoned. A lot of rain fell in not a long space of time. There was nothing anyone could do about it.”

  Duckett’s unbeaten 107 from 78 deliveries came after Phil Salt had laid the foundations with an astonishing blitz, thumping seven fours and four sixes in his pyrotechnical 61 off 28 balls.

  Crawley also contributed 51 off 42 balls and even though Craig Young was able to stifle England, taking three for 31 from seven impressive overs, Stirling was relieved that Ireland were saved by the weather.

  “We were all pretty happy that the rain came but we weren’t expecting it to end the game,” he said.

  “We thought we might get a bit of a rest and regroup, try to get out there and change it up a little bit. We weren’t expecting the game to be called off.”

  Crawley took charge of a second-string side for this series as England’s World Cup stars are resting ahead of the defence of their crown getting under way in India next week.

  “I’ve enjoyed it,” he added. “It was only really the one game I had to do anything but I enjoyed it and it made the fielding go quicker. It was a great honour.”

• Marcus Trescothick says Andrew Flintoff ‘sprinkling gold-dust’ on England team

  England assistant Marcus Trescothick has enjoyed witnessing Andrew Flintoff “grow back into Freddie” during his Ashes-winning team-mate’s stint with the national team.

  Flintoff had been out of the public eye since a serious car accident while filming for Top Gear last December but earlier this month he was coaxed into joining England’s backroom staff in an unpaid capacity.

  Several players have savoured being at close quarters with such a recognisable figure but Trescothick was already intimately acquainted not just with Freddie the cricketer but Flintoff the person.

  While he has frequently been the butt of Flintoff’s jokes, Trescothick has watched on with admiration at the 45-year-old slowly regaining confidence and “sprinkling a bit of gold-dust around the team”.

  “He hammers me more than anyone else,” said Trescothick with a smile. “I’m the first target for his banter at the moment but having him around has been superb, it really has. He’s been brilliant.

  “Seeing him grow back into Freddie… obviously he’s been away from cricket for a long period of time but this is where it all starts and where it belongs for him. The guys have really taken to him.

  “The couple of times he’s spoken in the changing room it’s been like ‘wow’. You can see the difference and I’ve seen the progression of him as a character, the way he talks and delivers messages to players has been superb.

  “To have him sprinkling a bit of gold-dust around the team and having the younger players working with that has been invaluable. You can’t put a price on it.”

  Flintoff was initially enlisted for four ODIs against New Zealand, after which the former England captain’s spell was expected to end, but he has hung around for the ongoing Metro Bank series versus Ireland.

  England have selected a more inexperienced band of players for this series and there were four debutants in the second ODI on Saturday – effectively the opener after last week’s Headingley washout.

  Tom Hartley had the distinction of being given his maiden cap ahead of England’s 48-run win by Flintoff, who told his fellow Lancastrian in the team huddle: “This will change your life forever.”

  “You become more comfortable, don’t you,” said Trescothick, who was an England team-mate of Flintoff’s between 2000 and 2006. “This is what we know, this is what we’ve grown up with for so many years.

  “Once you come to your comfortable environment, you know what goes on and you understand the place, people have respect for what he has done and enjoy seeing him improving.

  “That’s really good from our point of view. If we as players and squads and cricket in general keep doing that for people who have fallen on tougher times then great, we’re doing something right.”

  Trescothick and the rest of the England coaching staff will oversee the final ODI against Ireland at Bristol on Tuesday before embarking to the subcontinent for the World Cup on Wednesday evening.

  England resting the squad that will travel to India for the defence of their title, starting in less than a fortnight, has offered those on the fringes a chance to push their case for more regular spots.

  Teenage leg-spinner Rehan Ahmed continues to make waves in an England shirt, impressing at the weekend with four for 54, ripping the heart out of Ireland’s middle order at Trent Bridge.

  “I like the way he keeps relishing opportunities and keeps doing the business,” Trescothick added. “As a younger player there’s a lot more scrutiny on him, obviously the style of cricketer he is.

  “He comes into the Test team and gets five wickets (against Pakistan in Karachi last December), he comes into this format and does well. Hopefully that carries on.

  “Rehan is entertaining in the changing room, enjoyable in and around it. A little bit cheeky at times which is good.

  “I think you can see that coming through when he bowls. It’s part of his persona.”