London: England all-rounder Moeen Ali wants the country’s cricket board to pay more attention to red-ball cricket in the aftermath of the Ashes series debacle, and cited the limited-overs revolution which led to the team winning the 2019 World Cup.
On Tuesday, England lost the third Ashes Test and also the series after their innings and 14-run demolition by Australia at the MCG. England are now 0-3 down in the five-Test series.
Moeen, who retired from Test cricket three months back to prolong his white-ball career, said the way the debacle in the 2015 Cricket World Cup in Australia and New Zealand had spurred England’s rise in limited-overs cricket, a similar template could be prepared for red-ball cricket after the Ashes.
England had failed to make the quarterfinals of the 2015 ICC Cricket World Cup, but four years later they turned in a sterling performance to lift the Cup in 2019, defeating New Zealand at Lord’s on boundary count-back rule after the Super Over failed to produce a result. The match had ended in a tie with both teams scoring 241 runs.
“It has obviously worked because we won the (50-over) World Cup (in 2019) and we’ve done really well in white-ball cricket,” Moeen told BT Sports on Tuesday after England’s capitulation for 68 runs in the second innings.
“It has worked. I just feel that now the white-ball cricket is so set and strong — the foundations are there, the players are there, we know what we’re doing, Eoin Morgan leads that amazingly well — I think we need that in red-ball cricket now as well,” added Moeen.
Moeen, who played a key role in Chennai Super Kings winning the IPL 2021 title, called for changes in the country’s first-class game to get results. The 34-year-old also said that he had seen the Ashes debacle coming.
“I don’t think we’ve been good enough. I think it has been coming, actually. I’ve been part of this team. It’s not long ago that I was in that side. You just felt that sometimes we were papering over the cracks at home, where it does do a bit and we’re kind of used to those conditions.”
