Heaping more cricket on players weighs heavily on their mental wellbeing | Andy Bull


Chris Woakes benefited from taking a break from the game and England’s winter schedule will test how far cricket has come

It has been 15 years since England played in Pakistan, a stretch that feels, nowadays, more than half a lifetime ago. They may go back there again in January. Wasim Khan, the chief executive of the Pakistan Cricket Board, has invited them out to play three Twenty20 games in the new year. And given the efforts Pakistan made to help the England and Wales Cricket Board fulfil its own fixture list by touring here during lockdown in the summer, the ECB is bound to agree. The difficulty is England are also supposed to play two Tests against Sri Lanka around the same time, and have a five‑Test series against India lined up soon afterwards.

So it’s going to be a long, busy winter. And unless the ECB’s research department is about to announce some radical new advances in quantum mechanics, it may be that the only way through it is going to be for the ECB to send separate squads on simultaneous tours. It wouldn’t be the first time.

Related: England ready to return a favour and play in Pakistan after 15 years away | Vic Marks

England will go back into the bubble next month for a Twenty20 and one-day international series in South Africa. England’s first tour since the Covid-19 pandemic began will be played amid biosecure plans agreed with the South Africa government. The squad will fly out on 16 November with the three T20 matches and three ODIs staged in Cape Town and Paarl. England will pay for their own flight and are expected to take up to 24 players. 

Continue reading...