Andy Zaltzman: One-day internationals are not dying – they’re being killed

As England were flaying West Indies for 400 in Thursday’s series-opening one-day international at Edgbaston on Thursday, you may have felt a pang of nostalgia. Admittedly, as a current resident of this out-of-form planet, pangs of nostalgia for times past might be an hourly occurrence for you, but supporters of one-day international cricket are known to experience them more frequently than the average human.

England hit 50 boundaries in 50 overs, and became the first team in more than 6,000 men’s and women’s ODIs (and only the second in 30,000 List A one-day matches) whose top seven all scored at least 30. As they clattered along, your mind may have wandered back 10 years, to the start of the Eoin Morgan one-day revolution.

Morgan had taken over as captain the previous winter, shortly before England’s latest entry in their persistent catalogue of dismal World Cup campaigns, but the 2015 summer began with a new-look team, its personnel and depth of batting designed to attack throughout a 50-over innings. In the opening one-dayer of the summer, also at Edgbaston, against a New Zealand team who had reached the World Cup final earlier that year, England pummelled a national record 408 for nine.

Morgan’s team jolted English men’s one-day cricket from its seemingly eternal mediocrity. In the 2015 to 2019 World Cup cycle, England had a win-loss difference of plus 39 (65 wins, 26 defeats). In every other World Cup cycle since the birth of ODI cricket in 1971, England’s win-loss difference has been no better than plus six, and no worse than minus six.

(Their win against West Indies took England to a record of Won 5 Lost 13 since the 2023 World Cup, and, allowing for the quality of the opposition, who failed to qualify for that last World Cup, it offers promise that, by 2027, England should be within their traditional minus 6 to plus 6 range.)

England’s three top scorers in that 2015 era-launching demolition of New Zealand were Root (104 off 78), Jos Buttler (129 off 77) and Adil Rashid (69 off 50). All played again in the latest Dawn Of A New Era 10 years later, but their ODI numbers reveal much about the recent history of the format.

They were fixtures in the 2019 World-Cup-winning team – Rashid played 94 of England’s 99 matches, Root 89 and Buttler 87. Since the 2019 final, in almost six years, England have played 69 ODIs before today’s match in Cardiff, of which Rashid has played 51, Buttler 46 and Root 35. England’s annual tally of matches almost halved.

Since the 2019 World Cup, they have averaged under 12 ODIs per year, just over half their yearly figure over the previous decade and a half, pruned back to a 1980s and early-1990s level. Rashid has dropped from 180 ODI overs and 33 wickets per year, to 76 and 13. Root scored 12 centuries in the 2015-19 cycle, and has just one since. Buttler is facing under 40% of the ODI deliveries per year that he once did.

Form, rhythm and averages suffered accordingly. England ceased to have a discernible XI. Aggravated by Covid and injuries, but predominantly due to crass scheduling and shifting priorities, Morgan’s team simply, at first imperceptibly, evaporated.

As they celebrated at Lord’s after that nerve-macerating final in 2019, English men’s ODI cricket had never been in better condition, after four years of sell-out crowds and bold, dynamic cricket. And then, after one of the most striking periods of success English cricket had ever experienced in any format, ODI cricket was told that it was grievously unwell, could never be the same again, needed to adjust to its newly enfeebled state, and should probably start to gather its thoughts and say its farewells.

ODI cricket has thus perhaps graduated from overkill – the years when the calendar proliferated with bilateral series that passed from memory almost as quickly as a mid-range T20 franchise league does today – to underkill. The format possesses no discernible narrative between its tournaments, series are plonked into the increasingly sporadic crannies in the calendar, stripped of anticipation, context and reflection, and players’ techniques and decision-making skills are honed for the shorter and longer versions of the game. Other teams have adapted better. Australia’s ODIs per year also plummeted, from 20.0 in the 2015-19 period, to 12.6 up to the end of the 2023 World Cup, which they won.

Time will tell how long the format survives in a relevant condition. But do not believe those who say one-day international cricket is dying. It is not. It is being slowly killed.