Oppo Camp How would you fix England's ODI side?

[Hellgood]

They would dearly love to have a versatile, battle hardened natural leader like Paul Collingwood around these days.

Trott coming back into the setup (both tests and ODI's) could be a potential option. They'd be reluctant after having a similar case in Trescothick end badly, but he is seemingly on the right track leading the Lions side to South Africa. Clearly that's nowhere near as stressful as carrying the sides hopes with a crazed Mitchell Johnson attempting to humiliate you at 150km/h in front of a packed crowd baying for blood, but perhaps reintroducing him to international cricket through an ODI leadership position is the way to go.

 

[Phone]

Need to limit the foreigners more too, at least in the FC and List A comps.

They need to go in the opposite direction. They decided to limit the foreigners and increase opportunities for English players about 5 years, via making it basically impossible for a typical Australian player to get a county deal and by offering cash incentives to county teams for playing young Englishman. It has not made things better, particularly as it's not like the 'added' spots have led to a new generation of state schooled kids getting county gigs. (I made this post 18 months ago in the midst of the depression that hit Australian fans during late 2012-2013 Ashes so obviously this is something of a hobby horse for me)

 

[Phone]

The funny thing is, around the same time they made those changes, the IPL came in and all of a sudden county cricket wasn't the number 1 destination for an overseas cricketer anyway

 

[Mr Meeseeks]

I wouldn't fix shit, I love that they're suffering...

Saying that, for me its pretty simple. They just haven't got the depth of talent, they're just not very good.

As someone who lived in the UK for 8 years until recently, its a grass roots issue. Cricket is increasingly being seen as a sport for 'the posh'. The ECB make no effort to quell this image in their class driven society and pretty, blonde little private school boys like Broad and Root behaving like petulant twats all the time only reinforces it. Most of the working class 'football crowd' hate cricket over there, its an us vs them thing.

Stemming from that they dont have players who have lived their life 'mucking in' and therefore have no bottle when it gets tough. Even their 'comman man' Swann had no fight and ran home because he couldn't be bothered sticking it out and carrying drinks. India is a similar class driven society, perhaps even more so, but they have a billion people who all love cricket, it doesnt matter.. God help us all if they give the lower/slum class a fair crack...

In Australia, NZ and SAf cricket is - for want of a better word - classless, as in everyone gets behind it and participates. We have the classy players like Smith who can think their way through their game and belligerant bogans like Warner who know how to fight. Literally.

Its no coincidence that the core of their 'golden era' was made up of Pieterson, Trott, Prior. All of tougher South African stock.

An all English XI will always suck and always will.