When one door closes, another supposedly opens. Alex Hales and Adil Rashid will be hoping that idiom rings true after they announced they would be turning their backs on red-ball cricket.
First, the Yorkshire leg-spinner confirmed he would be focusing on the limited overs formats of the game. Days later, he was followed by Hales as Nottinghamshire confirmed his new contract does not include the option to play County Championship matches.
As England internationals, they have effectively acknowledged that they have little hope of a future at Test level.
Rashid has featured in 10 Tests, the last of which came in December 2016 against India. The 30-year-old’s omission from the Ashes squad was heavily scrutinised, perhaps even by the player himself. He missed out in quite different circumstances to Hales, who wasn’t cleared to play for his country until early December due to his part in September’s nightclub incident in Bristol.
Regardless of that situation, the Notts batsman has not done enough to convince when opening alongside Alastair Cook and is under significant pressure to improve his fielding after a few more blips in the ODIs against Australia. His failure to attract any bids in the Indian Premier League auction must have set alarm bells ringing in his mind.
However, it’s their counties that will really feel the brunt of their decisions to give up the red ball. Unsurprising, it may be, that the pair want to focus on their strengths – and for Hales, in particular, limited overs is where those strengths lie, scoring 187 in last year’s Royal London final – but they will not be the last to rebuff the opportunity to feature in next season’s County Championship.
The worrying question for the directors is not why these two players only want to play in the one-day cup and T20 Blast, as well as the other similar competitions in other parts of the world, but who will be next?
Is Liam Plunkett also considering his options having been overlooked Down Under? Maybe the Championship’s only appeal is now for international hopefuls to make an impression over four days.
Money, or lack of it, has long been at the heart of the domestic game’s problem. English cricket will almost certainly never have the financial allure of the IPL, and its number of ‘crisis’ clubs seems to be increasing all the time. Among the most well-documented are the plights of Durham and Northamptonshire, but even Yorkshire face serious challenges to fund the upgrading of Headingley.e ECB, reluctantly it often seems, subsidise so much of these counties’ works, yet what needs addressing is how the County Championship can maintain fan interest and even more urgently, convince its biggest-name players of the merits of persevering with it.
If the Championship is indeed dying, then ought it to be a slow death, or should it be allowed time to recover? The exits of Hales and Rashid are so worrying, because they are just another nail in the coffin.
