We Will Blame The IPL And The Hundred But The Reason Is Lack Of Quality in County Cricket, Opines Dominic Cork
Jan 26, 2022 at 12:13 PM
Former England pacer Dominic Cork opined that the IPL has become a soft target for England. Notable that former England captains like David Gower and Michael Atherton pointed out that the cash-riched league is one of the main reasons for England’s humiliating defeat in Australia.
Since that outrage, the all-rounder Ben Stokes has decided to opt from this upcoming IPL season while Joe Root who was also reportedly interested to play this season, decided not to give his name for the auction. England lost the Ashes by 0-4 as they could hardly compete against the hosts. In all 5-test matches, England failed to cross 300-mark even once while only in the final test match at Hobart where they could pick 20 wickets in the match. They haven’t won a Test down under since January 2011.
However, Dominic Cork has a different opinion regarding the matter as he believes that it’s the lack of quality in county cricket that hurt England cricket more than anything else.
“We will blame anything. We will blame the IPL, The Hundred. The reason is that we just took the eye off Test cricket,” Cork spoke to The Hindu.
“We don’t have the quality we had back in the 1990s when we had top overseas players. We used to have Mohammed Azharuddin, Sachin Tendulkar, Michael Holding, Brian Lara, and many others. They could bat all day. I was lucky to play in that generation,” he added.
Cork also pointed out how IPL and MRF pace academy helped India to have a long pool of fast bowlers.
“India has come along greatly in fast bowling. Dennis Lillee and the MRF began it all. Then Duncan Fletcher as a coach ensured that India had the firepower,” Dominic Cork said.
“I have seen them in the IPL and then developing into fine bowlers, like Navdeep Saini. With spinners like R. Ashwin and Ravindra Jadeja and all the pacers India could bowl any side out,” he added.
Dominic represented England between 1995 and 2002. He took 131 wickets in 37 Test matches which included five fifers while he picked 41 wickets in 32 ODIs.