England all-rounder Moeen Ali said that the ODI format is in critical danger of being phased out and called it a "long, boring format". He also talked about how playing all three formats of the game is not sustainable right now.
Ever since England’s Ben Stokes announced his shock retirement from ODI cricket citing fatigue and workload management, various players both current and former have voiced their concern about the growing cricket calendar with many pointing out ODIs is the format losing its relevance.
"It's all over the place at the minute. You're trying to get a couple of franchise gigs which are decent, but you're going to miss a couple of Test matches or the ODIs - that's the horrible bit, I think because you want to play for England as much as you can. You don't want to be missing… I used to hate resting when I was a bit younger," ESPNCricinfo quoted Moeen as saying.
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"At the moment it's not sustainable in my opinion. Something has to be done because I fear losing the 50-over format in a couple of years because it's almost like the long, boring one, if that makes sense. It's almost like you've got T20s, you've got the Test matches which are great and then the 50 overs is just in the middle - there's no importance given to it at the moment," he added.
Further talking on the same topic, Moeen said: "So yeah, I think there's too much - personally I feel like there's too much going on. It's great in a way, because there's always cricket being played, but it should never come in the way of international cricket in my opinion."
The all-rounder, who recently unretired from Test cricket, said that it is quite possible that more players will do what Stokes did and retire from one format atleast to lengthen their careers.
"International cricket in all three formats is by far the best cricket to play. There's no doubt about that. But I do worry there are so many tournaments out there that players are retiring more now - and you'll see more retiring soon - because of overlapping schedules," said Moeen.
