T20Is’ depleting playing field a red flag

Australian pacer Mitchell Starc quitting T20I cricket adds to the growing list of absentees from the World Cup, six months away

Mumbai: Mitchell Starc is good in any form of cricket. He just looks so much more threatening in whites only because fewer bowlers can do things he can with the red ball and the pink. To set pulses racing on juicy home decks in the Ashes, to try trapping Indian Test batters with reverse swing all over again, the Australian left-arm quick has decided to relieve himself from T20I duties, calling it a day from the format on Tuesday.

Australian fast bowler Mitchell Starc announced his retirement from T20I cricket on September 2, 2025, saying he wanted to focus on his Test and ODI career. (AFP)

International retirements don’t surprise any longer. Test retirements have become most common with the growth of a parallel short-format league universe. Faced with a choice, many cricketers abandon ODI cricket, first. Marcus Stoinis, Steve Smith, Glenn Maxwell all went down that route.

But the growing trend of players giving up on T20Is should concern the authorities the most. Starc’s announcement comes six months ahead of the 2026 T20 World Cup. In an ideal world, this should be countdown time to promote the marquee event of a format which is the present and the future, the game’s revenue driver. An appropriate time to tease Starc’s toe crushing yorkers on what to expect in India-Sri Lanka.

Instead, Starc decided to move away. So did Andre Russell. Nicholas Pooran before him. Heinrich Klaasen before all of them.

These are not stray retirements. But crowd pullers, match-winners, players capable of generating peak viewership moments, saying no to the big stage. Starc’s banana swing in the Powerplay will be missed in next year’s T20 showpiece. There will be none of Russell’s muscular power-hitting, Pooran’s eye-catching bat swing or Klaasen’s immaculate ability to pick length early and send the ball sailing deep into the stands. The World Cup will be poorer for their absence.

This is not how it was meant to be when the ICC redesigned their events’ calendar, reserving a place for a white-ball world event every year. Clearly, these well-marketed high-value events don’t appeal to all the top players anymore.

And it’s not a question of club-country schedule clashes alone. A lot of cricket boards have become more accommodating of players to pick and choose bilateral white-ball series that feed into marquee events. Is preparing and turning up for world events also becoming a chore, then? That can happen when you have a new T20 World Cup winner, every alternate year.

With Starc, the demands of a fast bowler to flip formats; segue into a T20 event, then rebuild workload for a Test series may have become tougher. Russell, Klaasen and Pooran’s case is different. Russell is 37, but his powers haven’t waned. Klaasen is 34, Pooran only 29, and both are capable of blistering performances. These are top players making a considered career choice. In the absence of clear playing windows for formats and tournaments, they are picking and choosing where, when and for what price they want to ply their trade.

They may all be capable of triggering a bidding war in the IPL auction. But they won’t be released by their respective franchises. Individual cricket boards have lost that power.

That it doesn’t pinch cricketers anymore to miss out on playing for the country in a World Cup, itself should raise an alarm. Even in football, where club salaries pay all the bills, leading players take pride in playing the World Cup. But it is played every four years. The Olympics come every fourth year.

Does cricket have a problem of excess? It’s time someone read the room, because the franchise calendar, now fuelled by strong team ownership portfolios across leagues, is beginning to impact even the T20 World Cup - a tournament, every ace T20 player should yearn to excel in.

If the next Future Tours Programme (2028-31) cannot provide for viable solutions, future big competitions will continue to see depleted playing fields. That may even leave the Indian viewerbase, at the heart of cricket’s revenue chain dissatisfied. That will certainly move the needle.