Twenty20 Championship in England
I wanted to talk about this when the news broke - I wasn’t able to, but better late than never! If you don’t know about the what where and when, go read the bbc report, then come back here for my view.
Allan Stanford, the American Billionaire looks keen to invest in a tournament that would give England a good IPL rival twenty20 competition. It looks like this is a great idea for a number of reasons, and I think that Stanford has given all the right noises that he seems like the right kind of guy to be a driving force in its conception.
Stanford has had a lot to do with Twenty20 in the West Indies, building his own ground for the competition over there, and bringing a sense of excitement and even innovation in the fact that they use cricket bats painted black in the competition. It is said that he has absolutely no interest in the longer forms of the game, especially Test Cricket, but with the sums of money he can bring in that is not that much of a problem - it will all be money for the game and raise the profile of cricket as an entertaining sport.
I also like the fact that we don’t seem to be rushing too much into this, looking at doing it in 2 years time. This should hopefully mean that when it comes about it isn’t as a knee jerk reaction and is planned out properly with all the relevant interested parties consulted and listened to. Twenty20 in this country currently has a spot in the middle of the summer to itself, so it shouldn’t be that difficult to schedule something in - the only difference really is the marketing and and the rules in terms of players etc. Will it still be counties and will they bring in players even more specifically for the tournament - and will you be allowed more overseas players than currently? Lots of questions, but there is a decent length of time to come up with the answers and as long as the right people are making the decisions I feel positive.
Another good reason for having our own competition like this is to help keep a bit of power in international cricket over here. There is no doubt that India are a very powerful country when it comes to cricket politics, and with the IPL/ICL we have started to see the repercussions of that power - Test Cricket has already lost some of its stars and county cricket is also feeling the pain. Maybe this is a bit selfish, but I don’t think one superpower is healthy as they end up dictating to the rest of the world who can play where and when. Spread the money that players can earn and hopefully it will all be a bit more balanced.
It might be that we end up with too many players that start to try and specialise in the shorter form of the game, and these players might not make the transition to the four and five day games, but that kind of happens now anyway so in my mind this isn’t an issue… yet.
So it all seems positive, and I’m struggling to see a negative side at the moment - anyone out there know anything wrong with this proposal?
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4 Responses to “Twenty20 Championship in England”
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Where there is talk of splitting county teams into regions or having City teams, cricket is going to sell it’s soul like football.
Biased this maybe but Yorkshire has a population of 5 Million people and 15% of club cricket in this country is played in Yorkshire. We don’t even need to merge with Lancashire and Durham. Who would actually support a regionalised team? Who would support a City team if your City is not playing in the EPL?
There is nothing wrong with the twenty20 format. Only thing that can be changed is to increase overseas players to 4 per team and ECB can just flog television rights overseas to generate extra revenue.
Sir Allen Stanford can stick his proposals elsewhere.
James I can understand your argument but you seem to come from the “change is not good” angle on life which if that attitude was taken prior to 2020 being invented by the ECB in the 1st place we wouldn’t be talking about this topic now in the year 2008. Lets be honest something has to be done to preserve some of our power within the ICC if not India will become even more powerful within cricket than they already are, and England won’t have a first choice side due to the ££££ in the IPL!!!
I understand where you are coming from James and the city “franchises” are probably my only reservation on this. However, we cannot just take our Twenty20 and sell the TV rights to the highest payer as the interest wouldn’t be there. It does need a person leading the project with the right vision, but I think the downsides can be answered.
As Andy rightly says, we cannot let one country just take the power of cricket or we would be left with nothing in terms of county cricket. We need to stand up and be counted quickly, but we need to do it the right way.
I reckon the ECB are going about this in the right way. It’s definately best to wait for a little while to see what the impact of IPL is, then to better it with an English version. I’m not sure about everyone else, but I’ve hardly felt flooded with news about it since the first day and many of the games haven’t been particularly exciting from what I’ve read; often dominated by one player…which I guess in a way is the point of T20.
I’m still undecided on whether a regional or county system would be best. Obviously the county version would have to have some sort of playoff round first, cant see a 16team round robin working too well, but then again asking the lads from Yorkshire and Lancs to play together might well destroy the aura around the Roses matches…6 and 2 3s unfortunately! Glad I don’t have to make the decisions anyway.