In an interview with Sky Sports, ECB CEO Tom Harrison admitted that the current schedule that has seen some players go into this India series having not played a first-class game since the winter, “is not ideal”.

Speaking to Michael Atherton during the lunch break on the first day of the Lord’s Test, the former England captain posed the question that if he were Joe Root he’d feel as if he was being asked to captain the Test side with one arm tied behind his back, such are the restraints of the current schedule.. Harrison responded that whilst the current schedule is not ideal and hasn’t been for many years, it is impossible to separate the current situation from the background of having had back-to-back seasons impacted by COVID-19.

“We understand that there have been real issues with the schedule for many years,” said Harrison. “This is not a new issue that we are facing. The reality is that we have a group that is put together to examine the schedule. We have also, this year and last year, had to put the COVID overlay on this. It is not straightforward to run a section of a county competition against an international programme and keep everyone safe in a COVID environment and also guarantee the sanctity of those fixtures. We’ve fallen into the trap a couple of times this year with that at domestic level by losing a couple of county games and at the international game where we had to replace a one-day squad at late notice due to COVID issues.

“I think it’s impossible to separate the COVID argument from the schedule this year. We understand that starting a Test series in the early part of August without having an immediate set of County Championship cricket or four-day cricket in preparation is not ideal. But moving into this summer we have had ten rounds of County Championship cricket, we had a further two rounds in early July which has not been sufficient for people to feel prepared for this. We had to cancel the India-A tour in England because of similar concerns over the stresses and strains it was putting on our infrastructure, to ensure that everyone was safe and to ensure the integrity of this series and the integrity of the preparations of the England team and the India team. I don’t want people to underestimate the complexity of putting this season together and that one of the results of that has been that the preparation for this series hasn’t been ideal.”

Pressed by Atherton as to whether Joe Root has complained to him about the current scheduling issue, Harrison stated that this hasn’t been the case.

“No, Joe hasn’t complained to me about it. I know that Joe understands the issues but we will be talking about this come the end of the season as part of the review process. I also know that there are issues and people obviously want to feel properly prepared going into a Test series. Let’s remember in a normal year, where we’re playing Test cricket at the start of June when many players are coming from playing short-form cricket in other parts of the world.

“I guess if you’re comparing it to preparation many years ago in pre-IPL years, it’s a different set of circumstances. But by and large players want to be multi-format cricketers. They want to be part of England squads across the formats and that creates its own knock on impact across the schedule.”

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