Why the England cricket team won't scrap football warm-up despite injury fears

“We love playing. It sometimes makes our day.” So said Moeen Ali after England beat Sri Lanka in Saturday’s Fourth ODI to seal the sodden series with a game to spare.

No, he was not talking about cricket – the day job. Moeen was talking about English cricketers’ favourite competitive extra-curricular activity: football. England’s players – and their county counterparts love it (even more than they love golf), and it is a daily ritual on tour and at home, whether training or at matches. On this tour of Sri Lanka, they even played on a day off. Many of them – if not quite all – are really quite good.

Moeen was discussing that issue because Jonny Bairstow was ruled out of that Fourth ODI with a right ankle ligament injury picked up in the pre-training football session on Friday. He has been ruled out of the Fifth ODI and one-off T20 too and – wearing a moonboot and using crutches – appears to be in a race to be fit for the First Test on November 6.

There are no tackle rules, and this injury was not picked up in a tackle or contact, but tripping over himself – a general sport’s injury, not a football injury, if you will. Eoin Morgan, the captain, was pretty adamant that football is going nowhere (and they played on the morning of the game in Kandy, even after Bairstow’s injury). By then, Michael Vaughan had joined the voices calling for it to be ditched by the World Cup, where such an error would seem silly.

Some reckon it is the return to the England squad of Joe Denly, after nine years away, that cursed the game. He was infamously clattered by Owais Shah in his first spell as an international, the last of a series of injuries – others included Ian Bell, Matt Prior and James Anderson – that saw football banned for some years in warm-ups. It was replaced by touch rugby and other games, but injuries are no less likely there.

Denly, despite once playing for Charlton as a youth and claiming to have a prolific goalscoring record with his county Kent, sits out these days to protect a groin injury picked up some years ago. Bairstow, who also played representative football as a youngster, very often does the same, to work on his batting or keeping. You sense he might give it the boot permanently now.

There are so many arguments against England’s cricketers playing football before playing cricket.

For starters, imagine – just for a second – Harry Kane, Jordan Pickford and Harry Maguire settling in for a net before playing at Wembley? A ridiculous notion, obviously.

Another is the sight of England’s coaches waiting patiently for 15 or 20 minutes each day while the players sprint around, scoring, celebrating and berating the referee. Surely there time could be better – and more safely – used?

And yet. Following England in Sri Lanka, a tour beset by rain and full of frustration for players, has given an insight into the role the game plays as a release. Fifa is played constantly and one rainy day, Paul Farbrace and Ben Stokes took it further, drawing up Fantasy Football-style ratings for each England player, with Stokes (often a goalkeeper) right at the bottom of the ratings and Moeen and Jos Buttler towards the top. The next day, they were auctioned off to teams captained by Farbrace and Olly Stone, who also does not play due to previous injuries.

As Moeen explained: “I know there's people who don't like it but it's probably the first injury we've had in three years or something. It's a big part of the way we are as a team. It brings a lot of banter into the dressing room and we probably talk about the football more than the cricket sometimes.”

With rain ruining golf too, football is just one of a few imaginative ways they have wiled away the hours away from families. Moeen (nicknamed “the Grandmaster”) has been taking on – and beating – Buttler at chess, while Joe Root has been teaching Mark Wood the ukelele. The gym has been even more busy than usual.

All these things are better than other ways in which England players have been known to let their hair down in recent times and, as Moeen said, playing football is part of what has brought a team of rare unity together.