Mike Atherton: Ben Stokes shows folly of international cricket schedule, a lesson that may not be learnt

Thankfully, it will not be the moment in 50-over cricket that he is remembered for. Best recalled for his monumental, match-winning performance in the 2019 World Cup final, when he dragged his team over the line by force of personality and his will to win, Stokes will bow out in this format on his home ground in Durham after Tuesday’s match and has a chance, therefore, to go out in style. He will leave a huge hole to fill.

He made the decision to retire from 50-over cricket last Thursday after the ODI at Lord’s, when he informed Rob Key, and he told the rest of the players after the match at Old Trafford. He is not old. He is only 31 years of age, but being an all-rounder in modern cricket across three formats is the most punishing role of all, in a schedule that is totally unrelenting and ridiculous.

Not even the thought of defending the World Cup in India in a year’s time — possibly the most prestigious and commercially rewarding of all events — was enough to keep him going, which tells you all you need to know about how little thought the administrators have given to the way their greed is impacting upon the game and its players.

By adding another format to an already unsustainable schedule, England’s showed they are no better.

Stokes had taken a break for mental health reasons last summer, partly Covid and bubble-life induced, partly a hangover from his inability to grieve his late father’s death properly and partly due to his finger injury.

This summer, he had been given the T20 series off against India and South Africa and had announced that he would miss The Hundred. So there were clear signs of how unsustainable it had all become for this high-octane cricketer who does little by halves.

Stokes has realised that he simply cannot do it all and therefore, by announcing his retirement from the 50-over format, he has decided to prioritise Test cricket and T20 cricket.

Stokes has always insisted that he loves the five-day game most of all and, as captain, he is determined to lead a revival in that format. There is only so much energy to go around, and international cricket can be thankful the Test game can still retain the interest of a player of his status.

This is a wise move on his behalf, before staleness sets in. It is possible to see, in the recent struggles of Virat Kohli, for example, who has not scored a hundred in international cricket since late 2019, and in the decline in form of Kane Williamson, in the Indian Premier League and the recent Test series against England, how mentally tiring it must be for these elite players who are in constant demand.

Towards the end of his captaincy, Joe Root used the T20 format to build a break into his calendar and his batting continued to flourish in Tests. The decision to remove James Anderson and Stuart Broad from white-ball cricket after the World Cup in 2015 has undoubtedly helped prolong their Test careers. It is to be hoped that retiring from 50-over cricket will give Stokes some breathing space to maintain peak form and fitness for years to come in Tests and T20.

His retirement does suggest, though, how difficult it will be for even a well-resourced country such as England to get to No 1 across formats, one of the aims of the “high-performance review” being led by Andrew Strauss. In an early interview Rob Key was optimistic about England’s chances. “The sort of rhetoric we have in this country at the moment is that for one thing to succeed, the other has got to fail,” he said. “I don’t agree with that. I think we can have it all in English cricket.”

English cricket is better resourced financially than any country bar India, and has greater playing resource than countries outside the subcontinent. With an 18-team professional system, fully resourced, English cricket should be able to compete across formats better than most, but the two recent white-ball series against India, both lost, demonstrated the scale of the challenge in an unrelenting schedule where there is no time to rest.

Having missed the T20 series against India, Stokes had little impact in the recent 50-over games, scoring only 48 runs from three innings. Others who had done more than anyone to fuel England’s early-season revival in Tests fared badly as well: Jonny Bairstow and Root made 56 runs between them. Each must have struggled after the euphoria of the Test wins, and the intensity of their performances which, in the case of Root and Bairstow, were at world-class level.

Stokes’s retirement, alongside the present injuries to Jofra Archer, Mark Wood, Chris Woakes and others, highlights that challenge and is a warning sign about the schedules more generally and about the place of bilateral 50-over cricket more specifically. The World Cup will still hold mass appeal, broadcast appeal and appeal for cricketers around the world, but the endless diet of international matches in the past two decades has undoubtedly lessened the attractiveness of bilateral games.

South Africa, remember, recently pulled out of their 50-over series in Australia next year, imperilling their chances of World Cup qualification. They did this in order to set up their own franchise T20 competition, for which they want their premier players to be available. That, increasingly, is where it is at: franchised T20 competitions and ICC events, leaving bilateral series between nations in the most vulnerable place of all.

After the Indian Premier League arrived, it was always doubtful that the game could reasonably sustain three formats, without damage, and Test cricket was the most likely to head into a slow decline. No administrator has given these fundamental issues any thought. They simply look at the bottom line, try to shoehorn as much cricket into the calendar as possible for as much money as they can get, and they never stop to think for one moment that less might be more.

Maybe Stokes’s abrupt retirement from 50-over cricket a year away from a World Cup could be a moment for them to reconsider. Don’t hold your breath.

– The Times