Vaughan slams England’s “silly” Test preparation as ECB’s schedule questioned

Former England captain Michael Vaughan has slammed England's preparation for their ongoing Test series against India as "silly", with many players coming into the series off the back of little to no first-class cricket.

Like the vast majority of the squad, England captain Joe Root had not played a game of red ball cricket since England's last Test match against New Zealand two months ago.

Root has instead being T20 cricket for Yorkshire, ODI cricket for England and featured in the Trent Rockets' first two matches in The Hundred.

Jonny Bairstow, Jos Buttler, Sam Curran and Moeen Ali, meanwhile, had not played a first-class game since England's winter tours of Sri Lanka and India.

The ECB have come under fire for the way their schedule the domestic season for a number of years now, with the County Championship, England's domestic first-class competition, increasingly finding itself bookending the season – leaving players with little opportunity to play red-ball cricket during the peak of the Test summer.

As a result, many members of England's squad are unable to fully prepare themselves for the rigours of a Test series and there are not an abundance of in-form replacements ready to step up from domestic cricket, given the majority of first-class games are played in April, May and September.

Speaking on BBC Test Match Special, Vaughan stated that it was "silly" that there have not been at least "one or two games" of red-ball cricket played in the lead up to England's series against India.

Vaughan also suggested that some players should not have been allowed to play in The Hundred and instead focused on red-ball cricket.

"It is silly that we don't give our players one or two games facing the red-ball to prepare for a Test series," he said.

"It is about management, and you might have to say to players 'you can't play in The Hundred'.

"Maybe in hindsight Joe Root and Chris Silverwood could have organised a game against a County XI to give them a three-day game to lead into the first Test.

"In the last four or five weeks there should have been four or five rounds of County Championship cricket so players that are just Test players like Dom Sibley and Haseeb Hameed would have been playing cricket.

"It is also important to have that cricket while Test is going on so people can makes centuries, and take five-wicket hauls, and put pressure on the people that are playing in the Test team and not delivering."

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