England’s back-room staff are relaxed about travelling to Australia with only one organised hit-out, a three-day run against the Lions at Lilac Hill that starts on Thursday. Assistant coach Marcus Trescothick believes that is simply “the way of the modern game”, even if some former players have looked at the calendar and winced.
A generation ago, Ashes tours were front-loaded with several state fixtures, allowing visitors time to ease jet-lag out of their legs and learn local conditions. These days, in a maxed-out global schedule, most sides land, train hard, squeeze in an internal or invitational match and get straight into the series proper. Since Brendon McCullum and Ben Stokes took charge, England have leaned right into that approach – and, so far, started overseas series quickly, winning the opening Test on their last five trips abroad.
“It’s the way that the series are generally done – for us and for other opposition teams – around the world nowadays,” Trescothick said in Perth on Tuesday. “With the volume of cricket that’s played [elsewhere], you don’t have the time for preparations like potentially playing two or three first-class games, which has happened in the past.”
The truncated build-up has not convinced everyone. Michael Vaughan, Trescothick’s old opening partner, wondered aloud about the value of a club-ground warm-up that might “bounce really low” when the first Test at Optus Stadium is expected to be sharp and steepling. Ian Botham went further, arguing the slim schedule “borders on arrogance”.
Trescothick, though, sees plenty of merit in what England have lined up. “We’ve had facilities here with the nets, and obviously then the nets out in the middle, and then we’ve got the preparation game here as well,” he said. “In my day, playing at the Waca was very unique and very different, but you prepare yourself for those sorts of changes in facilities and pitches as you go along. We’ll have three days of prep at Optus, just to get used to pitches and we go along with that, and we’ll go from there. We’re very happy at the moment.”
That satisfaction is helped by the make-up of the touring party. Most of the Test squad either played county cricket deep into September or featured on the recent white-ball visit to New Zealand. A handful, including Harry Brook and Jonny Bairstow, also spent early November in a short-form league, keeping their batting rhythms fresh.
Ben Duckett, pencilled in to open during the first Test, is comfortable with a nets-heavy approach. “I don’t know what the right answer is,” Duckett told the Willow Talk podcast. “We play a lot of cricket at the minute, and we’ve obviously just come off the back of our summer. We’re certainly not lacking any gametime. I don’t make those plans, but I’m pretty happy getting ready in the nets. If we’re facing Jofra [Archer], Woody [Mark Wood] and those guys every day, I think that will be pretty good prep.”
From a purely physical standpoint, keeping the schedule light also reduces the risk of pre-series niggles. Bowlers, in particular, prefer to arrive at the first Test feeling fresh rather than over-cooked. Yet there is a trade-off: competitive overs are hard to replicate in training, and Optus Stadium can be unforgiving to batters who mis-judge the extra bounce.
Australia, for their part, have slipped straight from their domestic Shield into Test mode, with 14 of their 15-man squad already several first-class matches deep. Whether that edge matters will become clear next Friday.
For now, England have settled on quality over quantity. They trust their methods, and recent evidence suggests the strategy can work. If the first morning at Optus goes badly, the critics will say they told us so; if Stokes’s men start well, another slice of accepted cricketing wisdom will look a little dated.
