Trent Bridge’s duo of Royal London One-Day Internationals in 2016 come at a time when white ball cricket is a bigger priority for England than ever before, according to the team’s Director Andrew Strauss.
The 38-year-old former captain insists that the days of limited-overs matches carrying secondary importance to the five day arena are over, with a home ICC Cricket World Cup on the horizon in 2019.
“Our game in our country is relatively well set-up for Test cricket,” he said.
“We’ve got to number one in the world, we’ve won the last four Ashes series at home, but the one-day stuff has been a constant thorn in our side over a long period of time.
“That’s the area that we really need to do things differently. If we don’t do things differently we won’t get a different result.
“That World Cup in 2019 is a massive opportunity and we really want to grab that opportunity with both hands.”
White ball performances against New Zealand and Australia during the recent summer were encouraging.
Eoin Morgan’s men won seven and lost five of their 12 matches in 50 and 20 over cricket combined, with the Nottinghamshire duo of Alex Hales and James Taylor to the fore with the bat at various times.
The new look England passed 400 in a 50-over fixture for the first time - at Edgbaston - and chased down 350 at Trent Bridge during the 3-2 ODI success over Brendon McCullum’s New Zealand.
With attacking cricket very much at the heart of Strauss’s blueprint - as well as focus on players specialising in certain formats of the game - supporters can expect to see plenty more explosive action during the current World Cup cycle.
“We’ve seen last summer a very different style of one-day cricket and that’s exactly the right direction to go in,” said Strauss.
“We’ve got to be much more dynamic than we have been in the past. We’ve got to put pressure more on the opposition than we have in the past.
“Last summer it worked pretty well for us and we need to continue that over this tour (against Pakistan in the UAE) and into South Africa.
“We’ve also got the T20 World Cup in India in March so there is a lot of white-ball cricket ahead of us and hopefully we can keep that momentum from the summer into the winter as well.
“I think the only way for us to perform well in both forms of the game is to have more separation between the sides," added the former Middlesex and England man.
"That gives us flexibility to work on improving our one-day cricketers and giving them opportunities to sample different competitions around the world, but also to focus their attention on a particular format.
“There’s always going to be some people in the middle who are good enough to be playing in both forms, but hopefully we’ll have a fair amount of separation between the sides.”
How that part of the strategy affects the futures of James Taylor and Alex Hales, both of whom have all-format ambitions, remains to be seen.
It also provides an interesting backdrop to the ongoing development of Jake Ball, Luke Wood, Matthew Carter and Tom Moores, all of whom are currently involved with Strauss’s England setup at either Lions, Performance Programme or Under 19s level.
Strauss afforded some words of encouragement for the young cricketers involved in those squads during the current winter.
“When you are putting together a strategy it is really important that you bring in the different elements at our disposal,” he siad.
“The role played by the Performance Programme, the England Development Programme and Loughborough in general; they can do a lot of work in preparing guys that might not be ready to play for England now, but hopefully will be in two or three years’ time.”
England are returning to the scene of their Ashes triumph in 2016 for Royal London One-Day Internationals against Sri Lanka and Pakistan.
Don't miss the opportunity to watch some of the best players in the world go toe-to-toe in the unique surroundings of Trent Bridge and secure your seats now.