Angelo Mathews questions points system for tour of England

Julian Guyer 04:41 07/05/2016
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  • Hesitant: Angelo Mathews.

    Sri Lanka captain Angelo Mathews has questioned plans to introduce a points system for his side’s upcoming tour of England.

    The proposal is, as happens with the women’s Ashes, to aggregate the results of all the international fixtures this season between England and Sri Lanka. A similar scheme is envisaged when Pakistan visit for the second half of the English season, with the England and Wales Cricket Board (ECB) holding talks with their counterparts in Sri Lanka and Pakistan.

    “I don’t like to move away from the traditional game but whatever the administrators decide we’ll have to go with and move on,” Mathews said at Lord’s. “We have to experience and see whether it’s good or bad.

    “I don’t like to move away from the traditions of the game. I like the good old five days,” he said.

    Mathews’s views were echoed by former England captain Michael Vaughan, who labelled the proposed system a “nonsense”.

    “It’s an over-complication that is not needed,” Vaughan was quoted as saying by the BBC.

    The main complication is the weighting of the points system. If, as expected, more points are given for winning a Test match than a white ball fixture, it may be that the overall winner is decided before the limited overs matches start.

    In the case of both Sri Lanka (three Tests) and Pakistan (four Tests), the long-form fixtures of both men’s international programmes in England this season are due to take place before each of the touring sides takes on their hosts in five one-day internationals and a one-off Twenty20.

    With England among several sides increasingly utilising one-day specialists, Vaughan said: “I think it is nonsense. Sometimes too many brains around the room complicate it. What you are going to have is 45 players on a podium at the end of the series.”

    Sri Lanka’s previous tour of England in 2014 saw them win series in all three formats – Tests, one-day internationals and Twenty20.

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