Only 57 days since England’s Cricket World Cup surrender began with a thrashing at the hands of New Zealand, and less than three weeks after they finally found sanctuary in the form of a flight home, a 50-over regeneration that, with hindsight, should have been initiated at some point in the previous four years begins on Sunday.
The new cycle starts with a three-match series against the West Indies, suitable opponents as the one country to have had a comparably poor World Cup, albeit by virtue of not qualifying for it at all.
This was a tour always pencilled for experimentation, at first because of its proximity to the World Cup and then, as England faltered, because of a growing appetite for wholesale change. In the end, something of a middle ground has been struck and, with a view to the future, this series has grown in importance.
Several more experienced white-ball operators — Chris Woakes, Adil Rashid, Moeen Ali and Reece Topley — are being saved for the T20 leg, with eyes on another World Cup defence next year, while the multi-format stars — Joe Root, Jonny Bairstow, Mark Wood and Ben Stokes, fresh from surgery — are resting ahead of the Test tour to India in the New Year. The protagonists in their absence, then, can be split into three distinct groups.
The first is those with the profile to last through to the next World Cup, but most to prove after dreadful showings at the one just gone.
They start with Matthew Mott as head coach and Jos Buttler as captain, who must now mould a team in their own image, having spent their first 18 months as a partnership, understandably, trying to continue Eoin Morgan’s work. Sam Curran and Liam Livingstone, hugely talented all-rounders yet to transfer their T20 output into the one-day game, have plenty of convincing to do, too.
Then there are the bowling ranks, where, with an ageing attack in need of almost entire overhaul, England have for now punted on potential, the likes of John Turner, Brydon Carse, Gus Atkinson and Matthew Potts forming a quartet of quicks highly-rated but, in the cases of Atkinson and Turner in particular, notably unexposed.
"Mott and Buttler must now mould a team in their own image, having spent their first 18 months trying to continue Eoin Morgan’s work"
That Rehan Ahmed is, at 19, effectively the senior spinner, says plenty, with left-armer Tom Hartley another England have plucked for what they think he could deliver, rather than what he already has.
But most exciting is surely the first crop of batters to have emerged into an era of white-ball excellence, the Bazball stars and franchise whackers who have been forced to bide their time on the fringes as victims of England’s success and the brilliance of their predecessors.
So it is that Zak Crawley, Ben Duckett and Ollie Pope all come in to join Harry Brook as already established Test players about to earn a first prolonged shot at the 50-over side.
Will Jacks, the strangest omission from the central contract list announced in the midst of the World Cup debacle, has been earmarked as the Jason Roy-esque tone-setter for the new era and was last week re-signed by Royal Challengers Bangalore in a round of Indian Premier League retentions that saw plenty of more senior English players let go.
Phil Salt, unlucky to be dropped by Delhi Capitals after a fine maiden IPL of his own, plays with the same aggression and already has a T20 World Cup winners’ medal to his name.
Each of those batters are short on experience in this format, at this level, but none are novices, all well into their twenties and carrying no illusions about the approach they are expected to take into what is being billed as a reset but certainly not a revolution.
“We have watched how England have played cricket over the past eight years and one bad five weeks does not define a team,” Duckett said on Thursday. “If we can go and play how they have played over the past eight years, or even half as good, that will be an achievement.”
