Image Credit- Getty
According to Mark Wood, the England team’s lacklustre
results in this year’s World Cup cannot be justified by the timing of the
release of central contracts. But, having signed a rich three-year contract, he
is already focused on the 2025–26 Ashes tour rather than this weekend’s match
against Australia in Ahmedabad.
With five losses in a row, England is currently bottom
of the World Cup standings, therefore the timing of the announcement has drawn
a lot of criticism. This week, former England captain Michael Vaughan said in a
podcast that he found it “disgraceful” that David Willey, a teammate
of Wood, had not been included in the ECB’s 26-player roster. Willey has since
announced his retirement from international cricket as a result of this snub.
But Wood, who will be turning 36 by the time of the
next Ashes tour, feels that the three-year contract he received—along with
those offered to Joe Root and Harry Brook—is the best way to manage his
workload in the face of the T20 franchise circuit’s competitive temptations and
guarantee that he can give it his all for England’s most high-profile matches.
“I’m delighted obviously,” Wood said.
“It is security for me as an injury-prone lad. I had to think about my
family, going forward. If I ever have trouble, I’ll be well looked after by the
England physios. If you’re effectively self-employed, you go to these [T20]
teams and say ‘who wants me?’ But if I have a bad season or you get a bad
injury, who then looks after you? So now I’m looked after by England, and
employed by England.”
Wood is one of eight 2019 World Cup winners in
England’s current squad, and like most of his team-mates, he has fallen well
short of his highest standards in their title defence, claiming four wickets at
69.75 in six matches to date. “Everyone’s trying their nuts off,” he
said. “It’s just not clicked the way that we want.”