Central Contracts and English Test Cricket

In this post I looked at the performance of the England men's Test team using ICC rankings extending back to 1952 and came to the conclusion that "I think we have enough (my bad stats excluded) to conclude central contracts probably had a beneficial effect on England's test match performance."

It's two years (and a lot of England Test defeats) since I wrote that and I thought it would be interesting to revisit the evidence on the impact of central contracts.

Firstly here is the graph from that article extended to cover 2020 - 2022.

The vertical line marks 2000, the year central contracts were introduced.  2021 and 2022 have seen a  sharp decline in ranking points and the 2022 ranking of 88 is the lowest since central contracts were introduced and fourth lowest since 1952.

Although it's pretty hard to spot with the naked eye, performance has been better post 2000 with an average of 103 ranking points compared to 101 points in the period 1952 to 2000.  But not a massive improvement and one that might be down to natural fluctuations rather than anything to do with the introduction of central contracts.  

I still think central contracts do aid performance.  As well as the small improvement in ranking points there are some good reasons to expect central contracts to incentivise performance and allow player workloads to be managed to maximize performance in Test matches.

But there's still room for scepticism.  By my reckoning England have the following fast and fast medium bowlers on either central contracts or fast bowling contracts: James Anderson, Jofra Archer, Stuart Broad, Sam Curran, Ollie Robinson, Chris Woakes, Mark Wood, Saqib Mahmood, Olly Stone and Craig Overton.  Of those 10 bowlers only Anderson, Broad and Overton are playing in the current Test  / county championship fixtures.  Which doesn't really support central contracts helping to keep the best bowlers available for the big games.  Of course this is only one moment in time and might not reflect the long term impact.

Andrew Strauss is conducting a review into English cricket.  (He also conducted a review in 2018 which I would have thought begs the question - but still).  There's been a lot of focus on the issue of reforming county cricket but perhaps Strauss would get more bang for his buck (and more use for the money paid to David Brailsford) if he concentrated on the ECB's use of central contracts.