David Willey believes this shortened summer could be the perfect time for some of Yorkshire’s talented youngsters to shine.
There is now increased optimism amongst the counties that domestic cricket can get back up and running in 2020 and start in August.
And if it does, there has to be the likelihood of games being more tightly packed, hence the need for squads to be utilised more.
There is also the fact that a raft of overseas player deals have either been cancelled or deferred by 12 months.
Yorkshire, for example, agreed to cancel their contracts with Championship spinners Keshav Maharaj and Ravi Ashwin along with Vitality Blast star Nicholas Pooran.
That, says Vikings’ Blast captain Willey, can work to the advantage of domestic players.
“I think we were only lining up one overseas player for T20 in (Nicholas) Pooran,” said the all-rounder.
“He would have played a massive role for us in an area where we need a bit of strength, but we’re lucky enough that we’ve got a lot of very good players.
“We might have to shuffle things around a bit in his absence, but it creates opportunity for others who wouldn’t have played.
“What a great chance to put your hand up, and who knows what that can lead to in their career moving forwards with things like the Hundred coming into play.
“It creates opportunity for domestic players, which can only be a positive for our game.”
All-rounder Willey, chosen in England’s 55-man ‘back to training squad’, will return to the nets at Emerald Headingley this week.
He says of whatever shortened domestic schedule is drawn up by the England and Wales Cricket Board: “I think everybody on and off the field will just be happy to have some sort of normality back.”
Though he added: “T20 without any crowd will be strange, so the perfect scenario would be that we get back to some sort of T20 competition with a Finals Day where there’s some sort of crowd.
“Whether I’m being optimistic with that, I don’t know.”
Once the summer is over, attention will switch to winter cricket – be it players thinking about playing grade cricket in Australia and New Zealand or looking for contracts in the plethora of overseas T20 leagues.
Willey has been a regular on that circuit in recent times, most notably playing for Perth Scorchers and Chennai Super Kings.
But what knock-on effect will Coronavirus have on those leagues and overseas player participation?
“I don’t know is the honest answer,” added Willey.
“There’s the Caribbean competition in a few months and then the T10 League, which I played in last winter. Then, over Christmas, there’s the Big Bash again.
“I imagine they will all start up again at some stage, and there may be travel restrictions for some players from certain countries or a quarantine period.
“There’s no doubt they’ll be trying to get these competitions back up and running. For domestic cricket around the world, T20 is massive.
“The Caribbean one is due to overlap what would be the end of our season in normal circumstances.
“I’ve put my name in for that auction on the basis that we don’t know for sure whether we will be playing any cricket over here yet.
“But is the Caribbean one going to get put back to closer to Christmas? It’s a bit of an open-ended book at the minute.
“Nobody really quite knows what it’s going to look like, and it’s changing very quickly.
“But fingers crossed we get some normality and domestic cricket in the UK. That’s the first priority.
“Hopefully that leads into a more consistent winter of cricket around the world leading into a normal English summer from the start of next April.”
