Derek Pringle column – Last chance to land this unwanted prize

England have yet to win a 50-over global tournament but if they do happen to clinch the 2017 Champions Trophy, played at Edgbaston, Cardiff’s SWALEC stadium and the Kia Oval this June, they can probably keep the silverware as it will be the last one ever played.

In a world of diminishing attention spans and in the hopeful pursuit of new audiences, T20 is set to replace it and fill the void with the World T20 being increased in frequency to once every two years. Aside from 50-over cricket being seen as the humdrum old uncle, it is what broadcasters want and in a cash-strapped game what they want tends to follow.

Will the Champions Trophy be mourned? I doubt it. Having strayed from its initial objective of raising money specifically to develop cricket in non-Test playing countries, an ideal that also saw the first two tournaments take place in the backwaters of Dhaka (this before Bangladesh’s adoption as a Test-playing country) and Nairobi, it quickly morphed into a self-serving adjunct to the main World Cup. That said, it did possess a direct charm, being both short and to the point, unlike recent World Cup tournaments.

The early Champions Trophies, the first of them in 1998, were fun, the novelty of the big teams playing in unfamiliar territory a major part of the allure. Watching New Zealand prevail in the 2000 final at Nairobi Gymkhana, a ground I’d played on as a schoolboy, was a curio that will never be repeated as international cricket dispenses with missionary work and aims to maximise its financial worth instead. As a sport-loving friend said to me the other day, cricket is trying to go down the route which, for him at least, ruined English football, where money is at the heart of every decision.

The Champions Trophy had been discontinued before, in 2009, on that occasion to make the necessary room needed for a Test Championship. To many, that was a laudable and justifiable sacrifice. But the broadcasters got cold feet, along with the logistics people, and it was reinstated forthwith in 2013.

England, under Eoin Morgan, have a good chance of winning this one. Twice before, in 2004 and 2013, when the tournament has been played on home soil, they have been losing finalists – the first time to an inspired West Indies side and the second to India, on a pitch that could not have better suited their opponents had it been flown direct from Mumbai.

The squads for this tournament have yet to be finalised but in a stark illustration of how England’s approach to white-ball cricket has changed in the past 18 months, only three players who figured in that final, Morgan, Joe Root and Jos Buttler, are likely to play in this one.

Compare that to India’s team, which could have at least nine of those who played in 2013, and you could have a classic face-off between youth and experience should the teams, in different groups for the first round, meet in the knockout stage.

Whatever the match-ups, Morgan’s team has raised expectations and England expects, in this, the final Champions Trophy.

This piece originally featured in The Cricket Paper, April 7 2017

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