Why does England still have 40 over cricket?

If the 50 over game is going to continue on the world stage, and not get replaced by a mountain of T20, then why does England still persist with 40 over cricket domestically, instead of 50 overs? Surely the best way to go about improving the standards of our ODI cricket would begin by ensuring the domestic one day games replicate the ODI game as much as possible?

40 over cricket doesn't encourage batsmen to carry on and make big scores. You see a lot of batsmen making pretty 30s and 40s before throwing it away. Hardly surprising then that the same thing happens with English ODI batsmen on a regular basis.

For some reason we were playing 45 overs domestically for years.

The 40 overs is going to be scrapped next year.

Still don't think that it is going to be make England a very good JAMODI side. Need some good OD bowlers.

Well India seem to do okay with their 20 over domestic competition.

Only when they're fixing.

And for whatever reason, all England's ODI bowlers these days (with a couple of exceptions) have no idea how to keep the runs down.

Imo the yorker is still the best option at the death. Or at the very least, bowling one side of the stumps with a field to match. We just seem to scatter it everywhere with a field change every ball these days. We could do worse than get Goughie on board to give some advice about death bowling.

You already have the best defensive bowler in the world as your ODI coach.

Not sure 'still' is right - didn't we give it up for a while, then go back to it?

Either way, as beams said, it's going next year. Along with a condensed T20 programme, which is to be replaced by a Friday night = T20 night, across the season.

We all said how stupid it was when they scrapped 50 over county cricket by merging the old 50 over trophy in with the 40 over former Sunday League. They've realised the mistake a few years too late.

My guess would be that they anticipated ODI cricket largely disappearing and T20 expanding to fill the gap, and decided 40 over cricket was more marketable in terms of fitting into an afternoon game like the old Sunday league or an evening day-nighter. It may have done lasting damage to England's one-day cricket resources though.