Michael Vaughan has laid the blame for England’s woeful World Cup campaign squarely at the door of the ECB’s handling of the allocation of the central contracts from 2023 onwards, calling it “a complete and utter distraction”.

England, defending champions and among the pre-tournament favourites, have won one and lost five of their first six games, and while not mathematically out of semi-final contention, their campaign is all but over after being skittled for 129 by India.

The team management have been at a loss to explain the side’s struggles, with England’s international and domestic schedules and preparation all under scrutiny. However, Vaughan has drawn a different link, suggesting that the ECB announcing the central contracts for 2023 onwards during the tournament has derailed their tournament.

This year has seen a change in the way central contracts operate, with multi-year deals introduced for the first time to help stave off the threat of franchise cricket. Notably, Test captain Ben Stokes turned down a multi-year deal, instead taking up a 12-month offer, with white-ball captain Jos Buttler also reportedly opting for a contract shorter than the original length offered. Among those who have played for England at the World Cup, just one – David Willey – did not receive a contract. Vaughan, speaking on the Club Prairie Fire podcast, feels that this confusion has had an impact on England, and that it should have been handled either before or after the World Cup.

“When contracts aren’t right, and there’s so many of them, in terms of three years, two years, one year, the talk at the breakfast table… They’ll say there’s been no talk,” he said. “There’ll have been talk every single day about those contracts: ‘Who’s got what? What have you got? How much are you getting?’ It’s a complete and utter distraction, and it should have been sorted before, and if it wasn’t sorted before, we’ve got to leave it until the end of the World Cup.”

While admitting that England might not have been one of the top teams in any case, Vaughan added that the contract situation had stopped them from being able to “frighten” teams.

“You cannot be doing contracts midway through a World Cup, particularly in a part of the world… we don’t have all the skillsets to be really competitive in India, we don’t. But we have enough to frighten teams, and we’ve frightened no one with the way that we’ve played. I’ll let them ring me up and tell me off and say, ‘Rubbish Vaughany, that’s crap’, but I’m going to say the contract situation is the reason that England are playing the way that they are. Contract situations, it never, never helps.”

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