Ashes tour - Winter 2021/22

It's the same ol', same ol' story repeated over and over again.

If England are roundly beaten in the Ashes, the same arguments and reasons are thrust forward as if
these are the solutions. They are not.

Playing plenty of International short format cricket brings in the money, so the Tests can be financed and
go ahead. And England have done pretty well in recent years winning the 50 over World Cup and reaching
the semis of the T20 World Cup. Therefore, that is not a sound argument.

Unlike Australia, England cannot find a balanced team between the long and short formats. A majority
of the new batsmen emerging are geared up for the shorter form and only a minority for Test cricket.
The shorter format is where the money lies, so you can't blame them.

Test cricket is a dying game, for apart from Australia and India, what other Test team playing England fills
the English TMGs? And as for other countries, far less so. The younger people today are only really interested
in watching the Ashes, while the mainstream media are only interested in covering the Ashes. That's it.

International cricket today is a balancing act and when you throw in Covid and lack of match practice, this
only pushes England to fall off the tightrope as they have done in the present Ashes series.

Agreed, it is an embarrassing spectacle, but history shows England have been here many times before.

Time for all the ECB management to be sacked on the grounds of incompetence. They have turned English cricket into a joke. What illustrates just how incompetent they are is that they cannot even produce a set of county cricket fixtures which even a the most incompetent person on the planet could manage.

Why are the ECB paying Tom Harrison a £2.1m bonus? After this latest epic failure he should made to pay back his bonus. He got it for implementing the Hundred! He should have been hit over the head with a cricket 2.1m times for coming up with such a stupid competition. Look what it has produced in Australia! Joke cricket will produce joke cricketers!   

The Championship needs to change to survive I think. I don't like KP's franchise idea, not necessary, but I do like his condensing idea. Much shorter tournaments needed throughout formats, gotta move with the times. They could make plenty of room by playing T20 stuff every other day too. No need for the longer breaks in between, it's only 40 overs a day - they do 90 overs five days consecutively in tests.

As someone says in that article, there's really only room for two short form comps. Money and greed all day long.

One body running three different sports - red ball, 50-over and T20 - not to mention The Hundred. It needs at least two organisations to run these two sports; there is then more chance of cooperation. I don't know if the current Test team debacle will mean a lurch back towards red ball cricket, but it's hard to imagine with the ECB knee-deep in The Hundred mire. I don't see any way you can keep the two camps happy (red ball v white ball) as things stand, let alone a Test side. The only thing keeping red ball cricket going is the crowds who are willing to pay inflated prices for Test matches at Lord's and the like. If the Test team becomes so poor and the public turn their back on Test cricket, it's T20, T10, T5 and T1 in the future.

Bangladesh beat NZ away from home.

Wonders will never cease.