[jjamez]

Hence they have cut the County Championship down to four days. This tournament is being played in India for the simple reason the big three Australia, India and England now dominant the hierarchy of International cricket, all major tournaments are now to be played in the big three countries down to money not cricketing reasons.

i do think the changes that they have made this summer are a step in the right direction. most of the other cricketing nations have set up their domestic structures to allow for a t20 tournament that is in a compact time frame, we dont and the talent that we get in from abroad really shows that, we are stopping our own players developing in any form whilst we operate a spread out competition.

yes it isnt real cricket, but our younger players who will play in the domestic competition will benefit from playing against and training alongside the likes of ABdV and david warner, atm they are not able to and it is hampering the standard of players that we are producing.

we have to adapt to allow our players to progress better. it will also help our red ball game as these international stars may stay longer as a result, even if they are only staying on for a couple of games. but i guess the red ball game is a different story for another day

[Lord Snooty]

Our weather doesn't really suit a domestic competition like the BigBash or the IPL. Hence the truncated effort that we have now. We will always be behind the rest of the world in this form of cricket, despite winning it a few years ago.

[jjamez]

I dont know snoots. The middle months of summer can be fairly good for it. We are just run by the old guard, a lot of the decision makers are the old boys and they dont embrace change to the game they played, they very rarely want to think outside of the box and it is infuriating, its very similar with the selectors in a lot of ways, the odi world cup farce finally acted as the smelling salts but a lot more is required all across the board and i do think that there is a claim for some naive young minds to join in all the decision making

[Lord Snooty]

To make it work, we would have to shut down everything else, Championship, test matches, and get the competition in and over in a three week period in July/August, when the schools are on holiday. As it is now, and they have tried to compact it, it goes on too long and the finals day is usually in poor weather. The trouble is that if you do compact it into a fortnight, it could be the wettest two weeks on record, or it could be brilliantly sunny. Nobody can tell.
It's like having a winter break in football. You just can't tell when it's gonna be bad.

[jjamez]

Aus play their international games around the bbl. Its same anywhere in the world, weather will always dictate fixtures.

Wouldnt say it needs shutting down, just re jigging in fact it probably wouldnt need to be major

[Lord Snooty]

Scotland out.

[Lord Snooty]

Well the tournament proper got under way and a surprise defeat fro the hosts. Not so much a surprising result, but the manner of it. I saw NZ were struggling but then was shocked to see India were bowled out really cheaply. Looks like a good track for the spinners.

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There's highlights on Cricinfo here.

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And the points table here.

[theo_luddite]

England doing a good job of coming second against the Windies with a combination of poor bowling by us and good hitting by them. Chris Gayle in particular.   

Nowt changed there then.

[jjamez]

That was good...

[Lord Snooty]

182 shudda been big enough. Not seen it yet but that musta been some innings from the boy Gayle.