Australian limited-overs player James Hopes says he fears the new split-innings format for the Ryobi One-Day Cup will hurt his chances of taking part in the World Cup.
Hopes has been a regular member of Australia's one-day international side since making his debut in 2005, having played 84 matches, but he said the changes to the domestic limited-overs competition this year have seriously dented his chances of keeping his place.
The 32-year-old all-rounder said he was worried he'd struggle to be picked for March's One-Day International World Cup because the domestic format doesn't give him a chance to prove his form.
"It's very tough. I'm doing a variety of roles to try to fit into this team, like me bowling four, five or six overs a game, which isn't doing my chances any good, I would have thought," Hopes said.
"The role that I fill in 50-over cricket is to bowl in the middle overs and that role virtually gets taken out in this form of the game ... it's frustrating."
"It's a shame, playing ODI cricket is a whole lot different to playing split-innings cricket."
The biggest aspect to the rule changes was dividing each team's innings into two stages, the first being 20 overs and the second 25, but Hopes said that wasn't the only rule having a negative influence on him.
"They need to tinker with it a little bit, and the easiest way to do it is to have one ball. If you have one ball, you bring the spinners and the medium pacers back into the game," he said.
"Ben Laughlin played for Australia because he was very good at bowling with an old, white ball. They've bought in the change of ball and his style of bowling doesn't work anymore."
Hopes has endured a frustrating one-day season as captain of Queensland, who have lost six of their seven games after falling to Western Australia at the WACA Ground on Friday, but he said they're not far off.
"We've only been comprehensively beaten in one of (the losses) and other than that, they've all gone down to the final couple of overs ... there's six games we should probably have won, and we've won one, which is pretty poor," he said.
"We had an interesting makeup for the team, I'm not sure whether it's right or wrong, but as a captain I find it hard to have four front-line quicks, a spinner and two all-rounders in 45 overs."