Reports: England Cricket Board to scrap dual contract system from 2022

After a lot of deliberation, England and Wales Cricket Board (ECB) have finally decided to scrap their current contract system of individual central contracts for Test cricket and limited-overs formats from the 2022 season. The existing contract system became a hindrance for a few selectors and management as they had problems selecting teams as per their demands.

Talks were revolving around the same, and the ECB were pondering over a solution that was more of a permanent to end their contract woes. And now it seems, the new contract system presents an opportunity to have a core group of players playing all the formats with the same contract clause.

If reports in Sportsmail are to be believed, then this contract development will see ECB handing out central contracts to 25 players, which also includes few youngsters being handed over developmental contracts. During the last year, only 12 players were handed the red-ball and white-ball contracts. While four players- Jack Leach, Dom Bess, Dawid Malan, and Chris Jordan got developmental contracts for the season 2020-21,

James Anderson, Dom Sibley, Stuart Broad, Ollie Pope, Zak Crawley, and Sam Curran were the players who got the red-ball contracts, and Joe Root, Chris Woakes, Ben Stokes, Jos Buttler, and Jofra Archer were the remaining ones to have got Test and white-ball contracts.

While few exclusive limited-overs players comprised Jason Roy, Mark Wood, Adil Rashid, Moeen Ali, Eoin Morgan, Tom Curran, and Jonny Bairstow. England head coach Chris Silverwood, who expressed his displeasure in the existing contract is finally a happy man in seeing this new contract system in place by ECB.

Chris Silverwood is satisfied and content with the new contract system

Test players got a huge amount of £6,50,000 while in stark contrast only £2,50,000 was given to players playing the limited-overs format. This current contract system has been in place since 2016 and the sole motive of ECB in putting this dual system in place was to make white-ball formats a priority.

Talks of a new contract system surfaced late in 2019 but the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020 put those plans on hold. Head coach Chris Silverwood is the happiest as often he was in a tight spot of bother of picking the white-ball players in the Test team owing to few Test specialists non-availability. Now in the current contract policy that won’t be an issue and he will get a wide pool of players to choose from.