To the present England team, money is becoming a bit like sex was to an earlier generation - the great unmentionable. First there was the Stanford week, which was not about the prize-money of a million bucks a man, but preparation for an important winter of cricket. Now there's the Indian Premier League (IPL), the lure of which, to listen to the comments coming out of India, is not money but knowledge. Twenty20 cricket and the IPL have, apparently, taken one-day cricket to a new level and our players are in danger of missing out.

It's a cunning argument but a false one. Those who recall Sri Lanka's stunning World Cup triumph in 1996 will know that a fearless approach at the top of the order has been the way on the sub-continent for a decade or more. That tournament turned one-day tactics on their head, namely that it is easier to score quickly at the beginning of an innings - when the ball is hard, the pitch fresher and the fielding restrictions are in place - than at the end, when none of those conditions exists.

This is not the case in England, where the white ball nibbles around often in early or late-season dampness and when the technical prowess of players such as Ian Bell or Alastair Cook, both of whom look about as comfortable at the top of the order in India as a classical pianist in a bordello, is worth its weight in gold. In England, teams look to keep wickets intact and score quickest at the end of an innings, which is the opposite of what is needed in India.

But it is difficult to understand how the IPL is going to help England to turn around their one-day fortunes. On form, who would be a potential buy for franchise owners feeling the chill winds of recession? Andrew Flintoff and Kevin Pietersen, for sure, and maybe men such as Ravi Bopara and Samit Patel. Agents may have sore knuckles from knocking on the door of franchise owners, but other clients have not exactly made a compelling case for inclusion this past month.

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The majority of English players will not be playing in the IPL next season, or the season after that, so England must look to their own one-day competitions to bring about an improvement in standards. Fewer matches, leaving more time for rest, planning and preparation; better pitches, so that batsmen can learn to hit length bowling over the top from the outset; and a change of mentality that says what works in England does not necessarily work abroad would be a start.

Playing in the IPL would not be a bad thing for English players - quite the opposite - but it is wrong to suggest, as Hugh Morris, the managing director of English cricket, did last week, that they are not getting as much Twenty20 experience as other teams. England have played 14 Twenty20 internationals to India's ten and Pietersen has played 28 Twenty20 matches in his career to Mahendra Singh Dhoni's 30. The excuse that England do not do well in one-day cricket because they do not play as much has, like nudgers and nurdlers at the top of the order, long since passed its sell-by date.