Mo Bobat, the performance director for men’s cricket at the ECB, has cautiously welcomed the possibility of Australia’s Steve Smith honing his skills with Sussex in the County Championship before the start of this summer’s Ashes series, suggesting the benefits of the move would outweigh any disadvantages.
Discussions between Smith and Sussex are said to be advanced, and though Ben Stokes, England’s Test captain, reacted coolly to the idea Bobat was considerably more enthusiastic.
“Any good player coming over to our domestic system, he’s going to raise the standard of it,” Bobat said. “In many ways it’s good – it’s good for our bowlers to bowl at Steve Smith, and it’s good for the young batters to see him play and get a chance to bat with him.
“You could argue that it helps him prep and that might represent a disadvantage to England. I don’t spend too much time thinking about that. We tend to just worry about what we can control. If we play to potential we’re a match for anyone and we can challenge anyone.”
Bobat also proposed an extensive shake-up of the central contract system to reflect the changing face of the modern game and in particular the number of players now representing England in various formats. England have used more than 40 players in full men’s internationals in only two of the last 90 years: 2021 and 2022, with the number reaching 50 for the first time last year.
“A few of us need to get our heads together and really think about what central contracts look like moving forward,” he said. “We need to think about the value of Test contracts, relative to other opportunities out there; we need to think about white-ball being contracted. We need to think about the balance between retainers and fees and what that looks like; we need to think about the volume and number of players that we need to contract because we’re using so many more of them.
“We need to be very cognisant of the earning opportunities of players and how we best manage their workload and their schedules. We’ve got pace-bowling development contracts and we’ve seen real value in those, and it might be that we can do something like that with disciplines that aren’t just pace bowling. Why couldn’t we be doing that with the young spinners or young batters? But we haven’t really started that piece of work.”
The coaching team for the forthcoming Lions tour of Sri Lanka has been finalised, with the head coach Neil Killeen – who was named men’s elite pace bowling coach this week – leading a group that also includes Ian Bell and Min Patel. Graeme Swann will again join the squad as a mentor, having performed a similar role on the trip to the UAE last November.
“When [director of elite men’s cricket] Rob Key first started, he and I spoke about trying to get some of the right personalities around our players, people who really embody the type of cricket we’re trying to play, and he was someone that certainly came to mind,” Bobat said. “He was always aggressive, had an impact with the way he batted and approached things in the field. It’s infectious. He brings great energy as well and you want to have that in the environment.”
Nottinghamshire’s Haseeb Hameed will captain the side in their two Tests against Sri Lanka A, while Somerset’s Tom Abell will lead them through the three-game ODI series.
