Yes, it does sound like sour grapes for an Englishman to be writing a blog with that title.
England’s most recent white ball debacle has seen them exit the Champions Trophy with a record of played 3 lost 3 including a final match shellacking at the hands of South Africa.
AI generated image created by Microsoft Co-Pilot
However, the side’s decline from 50-over World Cup winners back in 2019, to laughingstock in 2025 started much earlier. In fact, since 2022, England have won just 4 x ODI series with 3 of those wins coming against the mighty Netherlands, Bangladesh and Ireland who they beat 1-0 in a heavily effected series just before the last World Cup! During that tournament, they were heavily beaten by most of the top sides, recording just 3 wins in 9 games which came once again in fixtures that featured the Netherlands and Bangladesh.
It’d be fair to say then that England were pretty fortunate to even feature in the Champions Trophy, contested by the top 8 teams in ODI cricket and that their performance in the tournament was in keeping with their form over the last few years.
For a long time, England’s failings in the 50-over format was put down to a perceived lack of interest in the game with coaches, players and administrators seeing ODIs as a proving ground for the ultimate step-up to Test level.
When England exited the 2015 World Cup, yet again in disgrace, the fallout of that failure led to a fundamental shift in the way that the ODI side was picked and required to play. Led by new captain Eoin Morgan and coach Trevor Baylis, the England side reinvented themselves, almost overnight, into a team that smashed multiple ODI records on their way to eventually winning the 2019 World Cup.
Is such a resurrection possible in the current climate?
It seems very unlikely…
The post-2015 rebuild was possible largely because the talent was available in England it simply wasn’t being utilised.
A quick look back at the squad that failed in the 2015 World Cup underlines the issue previously mentioned.
England's 2015 World Cup Squad source
It contained, Ian Bell (playing as an opening batsmen), Gary Balance and James Taylor. Steady batsmen who all, to a varying extent, had or who England hoped would have, good red ball careers. However, next to the line-ups that other sides were putting out, it left England woefully outgunned in the batting department.
As for the bowling, England were relying again on the tried and trusted Broad and Anderson combo with back-up from Woakes and Finn. Their primary spin option was Moeen Ali with James Tredwell also in the squad. It was essentially a Test Match bowling attack plus Chris Jordan thrown in for good measure.
Not to belittle the job that Morgan and Baylis did in reshaping England’s 50 over team 10 years ago but as far as change management goes it was pretty easy to see where a difference could be immediately made. Low hanging fruit and all that…
Anderson, Tredwell, Bopara, Bell and Balance never played ODI cricket for England again following the 2015 World Cup while Broad, Finn and Taylor were all long gone by the time the 2019 World Cup rolled around.
England had effectively slashed over 50% of the squad that failed in that tournament and replaced them with talent capable of succeeding in the white ball game.
In came the likes of Bairstow, Roy and Hales whose explosive power at the top of the order helped England become one of the most feared batting line-ups in world cricket.
England demolish Australia and smash their own world record score in an ODI
Hales would of course go on to miss the 2019 tournament for being a massive coke head non-cricketing reasons. However, had he not have then they might well have started the World Cup with him at 3 and Root, England's best red ball batsman of his generation, left out of the side altogether, the ultimate indication of the sea change in approach.
Ben Stokes came into replace the likes of Ravi Bopara. I always had a bit of a soft spot for Ravi but in ODI cricket he was the archetypal ‘bits and pieces’ cricketer that England had tried to bank on in limited overs cricket for decades. A player picked to do a role with both bat and ball but in reality, not good enough to carry out either.
As for the bowling, England picked a wrist-spinner! Adil Rashid has taken 200+ ODI wickets in the last decade and has been the linchpin of the English white ball bowling attack every since. Previous captains and selectors didn’t fancy him (face-palm).
Rashid formed a very effective partnership with Liam Plunkett who had started his international career as a traditional seam-up, swing it around from a full-length kind of operator (10 a penny in England), before being reintroduced as a bowler whose modus operandi was to bang it into the deck at a variety of paces and get batsmen hitting square of the wicket. That type of bowler has become less effective in recent years as batsmen have adapted to hit straight even from back of a length but on his return to the side post-2015, Plunkett was exceptional taking 96 wickets in 59 ODIs.
England also brought in pace in the form of Archer and Wood who of course are 2 of the survivors of that great 2019 squad still plying their trade although injuries and rotation (a massive problem I’ve not got time to cover in this blog) mean they’ve hardly developed into the kind of stalwarts you’d expect.
It was a side that had it all, hitting power, runs, variety in the bowling attack and great depth to the XI – England would routinely field a team with Plunkett at 10 who could hit a very long ball if needed and Rashid, a player with 10 First Class centuries coming in at 11! They were genuinely in a position to attack from ball 1 and feel confident that they could continue to do so almost regardless of the wickets column.
At the end of the 2015 World Cup, England were accused of being dinosaurs of the ODI game. They were a side that believed 280 was still a competitive score when other teams were routinely passing 320.
4 years later, England were the innovators! They were the team who had shifted the goal posts from 320 being a good score to an average one at best. During the 4-year period between those World Cups they passed 350 in an innings on 18 occasions! They’d only ever managed a score in excess of 350 twice in their entire history before that.
Of course, as tends to happen in elite sport other sides caught up and/or innovated themselves. England could or perhaps should have responded but they didn’t or more accurately from a cricketing perspective they couldn’t.
It’s no great surprise that England’s hopeless 50 Over form of late coincided with the downgrading of the format at domestic level. Over the past 2 summers, the Royal London Cup which is the 50 Over tournament in which the 18 English counties compete has been held at the same time as The Hundred tournament. In essence, it means that the top white ball players in this country have not played 50 Over cricket for what after this year will be 3 summers, except when they appear in ODIs.
Surrey's scorecard from their last Royal London Cup match last season includes 6 x 2nd XI players, 4 x squad players and Dom Sibley, hardly renowned for his attacking style of play
Even watching my own county side, Surrey, play in the 50-over domestic competition often involves me Googling the names on the team sheet. Surrey are, particularly with the recent issues at Yorkshire, the dominant force both economically and in pure cricket terms in this country and even they can’t put out a half decent XI due to players either going for the big bucks in the Hundred or being away with England on a central contract.
There are some talented young cricketers who do benefit from extra game time as a result but unfortunately the standard of opposition and teammates they are playing against and with is charitably described as ‘List A’ and is certainly a mile off international level.
It means that any idea that England can just re-set in the manner they did a decade ago by dipping into untapped or previously ignored talent on the domestic circuit is very unrealistic.
There will be arguments that players within the current England set-up should be replaced by x, y, z but I wouldn’t say that what is waiting in the wings is much better than what is on the pitch at the moment in either skill or experience.
The lack of both experience in the 50-over game by the country’s top players is perhaps best summed up by Harry Brook, a man touted as being England’s next white ball captain. He has played just 41 x 50 over matches at first class level or above. 26 of those have been ODIs meaning he’s played in just 15 x 50 over games for Yorkshire in his career! That’s a tiny amount of cricket for a player who debuted for his county in 2016!
By contrast, Shubman Gill, a player who is 9 months younger than Brooks has played 109 x 50 over matches in his career.
One of those batsmen is playing in the Champions Trophy Final, one of them is watching it at home.
Critics might argue that even Gill’s 109 matches is a relatively small amount of 50 over cricket by the standards of the previous generations. Virat Kohli, arguably the greatest ever 50-over batsmen the game has seen, has played in over 300 ODIs alone. Both he and Gill debuted for India in ODI cricket at the age of 19 but with the international schedule as it stands, Gill would need to play well into his 40s to clock up 300 ODIs (he currently has 54 caps).
The 10 most capped ODI players in history, most of whom all retired well over a decade ago. Of current players, only India's Kohli, Rohit and Jadeja have 250+ caps
Other nations are likely to have similar issues going forward. Take Australia for example, a nation that tends to favour sticking with experienced players. That policy means that at present, they still have a core of cricketers who played a good chunk of 50 over cricket, particularly in the first half of their careers.
Will the likes of Glenn Maxwell, Mitch Marsh, Josh Hazlewood and Mitch Starc, all players with at least 150 x 50 overs matches under their belts, be playing in the next World Cup in 2027 (they’ll all be 36 to 38 years old by then )or will they follow Steve Smith’s lead and retire from the format?
Coming up through the ranks for Australia are players like Jake Fraser-McGurk considered a very bright white-ball prospect and a player who made a massive impact on the IPL in 2024. He has played 6 seasons of domestic cricket and appeared in just 27 x 50 over matches both List A and ODIs (he has 7 caps).
By contrast, Smith had already gained 31 ODI caps by the same age and had played in 24 domestic 50 over matches by then too despite being fast-tracked into the Aussie white ball and red ball teams. Fraser-McGurk barely gets picked by in domestic 5-day cricket in Australia. He is a T20 specialist masquerading as a 50 over player which is much the same problem that England currently face.
Perhaps India, with their resources, will have enough to keep churning out half-decent 50 over cricketers and while they continue to win as well as control the global sport then the 50-over format will be safe in the short-term.
However, I don’t fancy its chances in the long-run and neither it would appear do England’s cricket administrators who rightly or wrongly have hitched their wagon to the future of short-form cricket in The Hundred. Therefore investing limited resources into rebuilding our 50-over hopes might not be possible or ultimately worthwhile.
Never the format for the true purist and looking obsolete in the face of T20 and it’s even faster offspring in the Hundred and T10 leagues, 50-over cricket doesn’t really seem to have a place in the future of the sport.