England are confident Ben Stokes remains “100 per cent committed” to international cricket, despite turning down a three-year central contract in favour of a 12-month extension.
The England and Wales Cricket Board has introduced multi-year deals for the first time in a bid to guard against the growing influence of franchise leagues but Test captain Stokes has rejected an offer that would have tied him in until autumn 2026.
Instead of taking the long-term security of an offer that would have been worth in the region of £3million – no small matter given his fitness issues in recent times – he has agreed another annual retainer and plans to renegotiate again next year.
Director of men’s cricket Rob Key, who has overseen the revamped system, is relaxed about the decision and believes Stokes is merely gambling on raising his future value at the bargaining table.
“Ben was offered three, but he’s actually turned around now and said: ‘No, I think I’ll be in a stronger position next year’,” explained Key.
“You might have more power if you have a good year to negotiate what you want. But he’s 100 per cent committed to playing for England, so I wouldn’t read into it the fact he signed one year that he’s not.
“By no means is it Ben Stokes saying: ‘I don’t want to play for England’. All he talks about is being completely committed to playing for England and also captaining that Test team – planning for India, planning for the Ashes, planning for West Indies and Sri Lanka next summer. I don’t think it has crossed his mind not playing for England for the next four, five, six years.”
A total of six three-year deals were offered – with Joe Root, Harry Brook and Mark Wood signing up, while white-ball captain Jos Buttler and injured seamer Jofra Archer have gone for a middle ground by taking two-year options.
There are 26 deals in all, spanning the age range from 19-year-old Rehan Ahmed to 41-year-old James Anderson. Fifteen are on two-year options, with eight on traditional 12-month terms and top-up payments handed to seam trio Matthew Fisher, Saqib Mahmood and the uncapped John Turner.
Nobody has refused to sign, but several may have been disappointed not to make the cut. David Willey is the only member of the World Cup squad in India not to make the list, highly-rated all-rounder Will Jacks was also omitted despite being capped in all three formats over the last year and Jason Roy is out after terminating the remainder of his previous deal to play Major League Cricket in the United States last summer.
Key was speaking in Bengaluru, where England will be hoping to boost a dreadful World Cup campaign with victory over Sri Lanka on Thursday, and admitted having a tough conversation with Willey.
“It’s fair to say David wasn’t best pleased, as you can understand, being the only one out here not to get a contract,” he said.
“It’s bloody tough, to be honest. We’d love to live in a world where you can just say we have a pot of extra cash and you can just give him something because he’s come out for the World Cup.”
Key believes the new raft of contracts have effectively safeguarded England’s interests at a time when the sports tectonic plates are shifting fast.
The spending power of the biggest Indian-backed T20 brands means international boards are struggling to compete and there has been a real fear at the ECB that its most prized assets could be lured away from the national set-up entirely.
“You don’t know what the future holds with franchise cricket; you don’t know when the first year-long deal for an English cricketer is going to be offered from a franchise,” he said.
“So I’m pretty pleased because I think for the first time in this changing landscape for cricket we start to see what players really think and what they really do. And we’ve seen that everyone’s committed to English cricket.
“I don’t want a world where you see your best players going off and (only) playing franchise cricket. I want to see them playing for England.”
Three-year deals:H Brook, J Root, M Wood.
Two-year deals:R Ahmed, J Archer, G Atkinson, J Bairstow, J Buttler, B Carse, Z Crawley, S Curran, B Duckett, L Livingstone, O Pope, M Potts, A Rashid, J Tongue, C Woakes.
One-year deals:M Ali, J Anderson, B Foakes, J Leach, D Malan, O Robinson, B Stokes, R Topley.
Development deals:M Fisher, S Mahmood, J Turner.
IPL: Mumbai Indians condemned to last-place finish after 18-run defeat to Super Giants
Rohit Sharma's half-century was not enough for Mumbai Indians as they slipped to an 18-run defeat to Lucknow Super Giants at Wankhede Stadium.
The defeat consigned Mumbai to bottom place in the Indian Premier League for the second time in the space of three seasons, after losing 10 matches this year.
LSG were also left to lament their misfortune, as despite reaching 14 points, they did not qualify for the play-offs.
KL Rahul's 55 got the ball rolling for Lucknow, but their innings was ebbing out until Nicholas Pooran's dazzling 29-ball 75 took them to 214-6, despite the efforts of Nuwan Thushara (3-28) and Piyush Chawla (3-29), who stepped up in Jasprit Bumrah's absence.
Rohit's 38-ball 68 set the tone for what looked set to be a promising Mumbai chase, as he struck 13 boundaries around a short rain delay.
However, Mumbai went from 88 without loss to 120-5 in the space of six overs, leaving the tail with too much of a mountain to climb.
Data Debrief: Lucknow miss out
While Mumbai sit bottom of the pile yet again, it is a case of what might have been for LSG, who for the first time in their three-season history, failed to make the top four.
Fourteen points is often enough to get over the line and into the play-offs, but their poor net run rate of -0.667 means they miss out.
Tape ball programme can help England find unorthodox talent – Richard Gould
The England and Wales Cricket Board hopes to unearth a new seam of talent beyond the game’s traditional league structure with a national tape ball scheme that allows players to thrive without “whites, willow and leather”.
The practice of using a soft ball wrapped in electrical tape to aid swing and variable bounce is a common one in Asia, where it has helped produce express pace bowlers like Haris Rauf, Shaheen Afridi and spinners such as Rashid Khan and Shakib-al-Hasan, but has been slow to enter the mainstream conversation in the United Kingdom.
The Chance to Shine charity has long pioneered tape ball cricket as part of its engagement hubs and now, with the ECB keen to live up to its lofty aspiration of becoming the most inclusive team sport in the country, it is at the heart of a new core cities programme designed to engage ‘diverse communities in urban areas’.
Speaking at a launch event where games were hosted in a warehouse space in Birmingham, ECB chief executive Richard Gould was optimistic about reaching out to those with an interest in cricket but limited access to the pavilions and prepared pitches in the club setup.
“We talk about clubs with picket fences around them. In the past that has been seen as the preserve of the ECB. We’ve missed a complete trick on that,” he said.
“When we talk about the recreational game we’re not just talking about Premier League clubs and village cricket clubs now. We’re talking about all forms of cricket that take place.
“You can play the game anywhere, any time, with anybody, in any environment you want. You don’t have to have whites, willow and leather to do it. You can just pick up a bat and a ball and have some fun.”
As well as fulfilling its remit of reaching out to all comers at a grassroots level, Gould also believes there are benefits to finding cricketers with different styles who have learned the game outside the traditional, private-school heavy pathways.
“Without doubt there are,” he said. “We have to get out and try to find the talent. More to the point, we have to try and find talent in areas that we haven’t normally looked for it.
“I do think county pathways will be looking to make sure they don’t miss out on this talent. It’s just about punching through all of our normal procedures and finding ways to both get people in the game and unearthing that talent which may be unorthodox and great.”
Meg Lanning: Exercise obsession and not enough fuel led to Australia retirement
Former Australia captain Meg Lanning revealed her “obsession” with exercise and not eating enough precipitated her surprise international retirement late last year.
Lanning was at the helm of one of the most dominant eras the sport has ever seen but she missed last year’s Ashes for medical reasons and pulled the plug on her Australia career in November.
She opened up about her hidden health issues on the Howie Games podcast, explaining that running up to 90 kilometres a week coupled with eating two small meals a day led to her dropping from 64kg to 57kg.
View this post on Instagram“I was over-exercising and under-fuelling,” the 32-year-old said. “It wasn’t a physical thing. I’ve always been really physically active and liked that side of it, but it became a bit of an obsession.
“I’d maybe eat a couple of meals a day if I was lucky but they weren’t significant. Initially it didn’t start off as a deliberate thing, it just became a bit of a new normal.
“But it slowly crept into conscious decisions because essentially I felt good.
“I wasn’t getting injured like everybody was telling me I was going to do. It sort of just spiralled and I was in denial, even though everybody kept telling me something wasn’t quite right.
“I was not in a place to be able to go on tour and play cricket and give the commitment levels that were required for that Ashes series, mentally and physically.”
Lanning, who led Australia to five World Cup titles in total and Commonwealth Games glory in 2022, said her struggle was not officially diagnosed as an eating disorder.
“It wasn’t labelled as that but I was exercising a lot and I wasn’t eating enough to fuel that – it was a bit out of whack,” Lanning said.
“It was a bit of control because I felt very out of control with what my future looked like. I felt like I was in control of that and that made me feel better.”
Lanning sought help from medical professionals after also struggling with insomnia and continues to play domestically, while she has been signed for London Spirit for The Hundred this year.
“I dreaded night time because I knew I would go to bed and not be able to sleep,” she said. “That would make me so mad. I would just get more angry with myself. If you can’t sleep, you can’t do anything.
“I feel like I’m in a good spot now. Cricket is still part of what I do. But I wasn’t cut out for the international touring schedule and what came with all of that.”
SportsMax is the Caribbean sports channel of choice, committed to providing sporting content of the highest quality to the Caribbean, delivered by a team of highly innovative, passionate and qualified professionals.
(876) 619-7629
digitalmedia@sportsmax.tv
