West Indies, England mull over series

The staging of England’s home Tests against West Indies in June is looking “less and less likely”, according to director of cricket Ashley Giles.

There will be no professional cricket in the United Kingdom until at least May 28 because of the coronavirus crisis, while the first Test of the three-match series at The Oval is due to begin on June 4.

“We have to look at alternatives,” said Giles.

“We are looking at how far back into the summer we can push cricket.”

Cricket West Indies chief executive Johnny Grave has suggested that “the most likely outcome” is the West Indies tour now taking place in July.

Moving the West Indies series to July would impact on the viability of the Hundred, which it has been suggested could be postponed until 2021. In an interview with the Caribbean Cricket Podcast, Grave said that “the tour to England is still on”, ahead of further talks with the ECB, which could have the knock-on effect of delaying New Zealand’s limited-overs tour of the Caribbean.

“We’ve agreed with the ECB we’ll sit down after Easter to see how the world looks and when we think we can get that series on,” Grave said. “The only good thing is the three venues – Oval, Edgabston and Lord’s – are prepared for international cricket at a moment’s notice, therefore in a relatively short period of time we could prepare for those matches.

“We would certainly want to have a minimum preparation period for our players, to do themselves justice as we look to defend the Wisden Trophy. But at the same time it’s hugely important for the ECB to get those games on, they are in a new broadcast deal with Sky, so they’re very keen to get that series on to keep their broadcast revenues flowing.

“I think probably the best-case scenario for us, although we’ve not discussed it yet, is we would have one four-day game leading into what would almost certainly be back-to-back Test matches, starting Wednesday, Thursday, Friday. And possibly look to play those in July and shift our summer accordingly. The easiest matches for us to rearrange would be the six games against New Zealand. We are blessed that we can host cricket any time of year.

“The most likely outcome being optimistic at the moment is that we would go to the UK in July, we would then host South Africa and then have the CPL as currently planned, and then look to rearrange those New Zealand games. But it’s a very dynamic situation and it’s changing all the time,” Grave said.

Australia’s Test series in Bangladesh, scheduled to be played in June, was postponed today.

After the West Indies series, England are due to play limited-overs matches against Australia, Tests and Twenty20s against Pakistan, and three one-day internationals against Ireland.

The last day of international cricket in the home summer is currently scheduled to be September 15.

“We’ve got to look at trying to fulfil those current fixtures, just in a different place, if we can,” said former England spinner Giles.

“We have really good relations with these boards and we’re doing whatever we can to look at scenarios where we can push our cricket back, which would give us the best chance of playing as much international cricket as possible.”

The prospect of separate England Test and limited-overs teams has been raised, with wicketkeeper Jos Buttler saying it would be possible to field two different teams at the same time.

Giles said it was “feasible”, but that it was more likely that matches of different formats would take place on consecutive days.

“You could have a Test match running and play a T20 or an ODI the day before or the day after a Test match,” he said.

The 47-year-old said England would look at all options for getting the players match-fit after the nationwide lockdown, including playing an intra-squad match, similar to how Australia warmed up for last summer’s Ashes series.

Sussex chief executive Rob Andrew said county cricket would still be played in the final month of the season if that was the only time it was safe to do so.

“It’s a blank piece of paper. Nothing is ruled in and nothing is ruled out,” he said.

“We would love to be playing cricket June, July, August and September.

“But even if we could only get September, we would still want to play some cricket this year. As ridiculous as that may sound, that is the situation we are faced with.”