England Test skipper Ben Stokes who retired from ODI on Tuesday, has urged the cricket administrators to not treat players like ‘cars’ by packing the calendar with plenty of games, calling for a sustainable schedule of matches.
Stokes on Monday announced his sudden retirement from ODI cricket, saying that the rigours of playing all three formats of the game were “unsustainable” for him and he was not able to give his 100 percent to the team in the 50-over format.
Notably, England have been playing continous cricket in the last couple of months, with as many as 17 cricket days in July alone, followed by a three-match Test series against South Africa next month.
“We are not cars. You can’t just fill us up and we’ll go out there and be ready to be fuelled up again. We had a Test series and then the one-day team had a series going on at the same time — that was a bit silly,” Stokes told BBC’s Test Match Special.
“I just feel like there is too much cricket rammed in for people to play all three formats now. It is a lot harder than it used to be. I look back to when I used to do all three and it didn’t feel like it was as jam-packed and all that. Obviously, you want to play as much cricket as you possibly can but when it is making you feel tired, sore and you’ve got to look towards five or six months down the road for what you’re doing in the here and now it is probably not the best thing.
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England are currently playing a three-match ODI series against South Africa where they lost the first match by 62 runs.
