James Anderson urges ECB to 'redress the balance' between Tests and limited-overs cricket

While England have been a force to reckon with in the shorter formats of the game, the same can’t be said about their performances in the longest format of the game. It wouldn’t be an overstatement to say that they have struggled in red-ball cricket for the last 12 odd months. Their recent performances in the ongoing Ashes 2021-22 has led to them being severely criticized.

Thus, the veteran pacer James Anderson has called for England to ‘redress the balance’ between red- and white-ball formats. He even agreed to his captain Joe Root’s claims of the reset required in Tests, just like they had one in 2015 for limited-overs cricket. While speaking to reporters at England’s optional training session in Melbourne on Thursday, he admitted that his team’s performances of late have been inconsistent.

“What I will say is, I think that there has been a big push with white-ball cricket since the 2015 World Cup. So I just would like to think that maybe the balance between red- and white-ball cricket is there, going forward. At the minute, it’s tipped slightly towards white-ball, and it has been for the last few years,” said James Anderson.

Our Test performance has been pretty inconsistent: James Anderson

“If you look at our performances in Test cricket over the last few years, they’ve been pretty inconsistent. So, from that point of view we can hopefully just redress that balance a little bit,” he added. Nevertheless, the 39-year-old did go on to speak about the supposedly deteriorating standards of country cricket.

However, according to him, that wasn’t the case. The pacer felt that the standards haven’t dropped but the pitches have become more result-friendly. However, he did acknowledge the fact that something can be done about that.

“I don’t think the standard has dropped. There’s a bit more cricket now, I guess. There are more competitions to think about. I think that the one thing for me is that potentially the wickets aren’t as good as they used to be. You see a lot more result pitches now in county cricket. So perhaps, with the bigger picture, that’s something we can think about in the future,” he said.