[Ska'dForLife-WBA]

As you dedicated cricket buffs will probably know, the ECB are currently in the process of planning a new T20 competition for this country to be run along the lines of the Indian Premier League and the Australian Big Bash, which is slated to commence in summer 2018. It's an intriguing idea with its fair share of pros and cons, so probably deserves a discussion thread.

By way of introduction, I'll explain my own interest in this. First and foremost I've always been a footy fan; insofar as I have a cricket allegiance at all, it's to Worcestershire (which is a combination of traditional Black Country man's aversion to supporting any Birmingham-based team, plus a few fond memories of listening to Pears matches on the radio during summer holidays spent in the Worcs countryside). I'm partial to a bit of Test cricket every now and then, and I'm no stranger to one-dayers, but in recent years T20 has increasingly become my summertime fix. This is at least partly due to my increasing disillusionment with football being a closed shop, and wanting to follow a sport which has some semblance of a level playing field and a fair chance for every team to win. Even Worcestershire (though it's not bloody likely).

As I understand it, the proposal for the new competition is along these lines:

1. It will be contested by eight brand-new cricket clubs dedicated solely to the T20 format, all based in cities and playing their home matches at Test grounds.

2. The competition will take place over the course of around four weeks in the summer; probably coinciding with school holidays (i.e. late July to late August). There will be a match played most nights of the week during this period, and it's the hope of the ECB that at least one game each week will be televised on a terrestrial channel.

3. The present Natwest T20 Blast featuring county sides will continue to be contested alongside the new competition for the foreseeable future.


Though the teams are yet to be decided, the fact that Test grounds will be the venues means that we can expect, in all likelihood, two London sides, and one each for Birmingham, Manchester, Leeds, Nottingham, Cardiff and Southampton (it's really a toss-up between them and Durham, but I imagine they'll be preferred). I haven't quite decided entirely how I feel about this. On the one hand, I do value tradition in sport, and cheering for Worcs in a T20 match still carries the weight of history behind it even though the format is so young, relatively speaking. Supporting a new Birmingham Cricket Club wouldn't be the same. However, I do think that T20 in general does have the potential to grow in popularity, especially if there was a terrestrial TV deal, and I think that the current county system is probably an impediment to that.

Of course, I also accept that those of you who are cricket traditionalists may view the whole format as a rowdy upstart anyway, and there's no denying that this could have a major negative impact on the county system and even on Test cricket. But as football continues to disappear up its own money-stuffed arse, I'm really tempted by the idea of any competition that can provide some real excitement and atmosphere for a few weeks of the year, and where silverware isn't monopolised by a few rich clubs.

So: your thoughts?

[Lord Snooty]

Prsonally I think it's a daft idea. And I won't be supporting any team called Leeds.

[Ska'dForLife-WBA]

Could you elaborate on why you think it's daft?

If it's just the city/allegiance thing then I'm with you on that. I probably would lend my support to a Brum team, but I'd rather they were called something else. The historian Tom Holland, who's a huge cricket fan, wants the new teams to be named after the old Saxon kingdoms of England (e.g. Wessex, Mercia, etc), but I think that's just bizarre in a different way! This is part of the thing with this country that India and Australia perhaps don't have: we have some pretty fierce and complex regional identities, and a lot of the time we're more likely to define ourselves in opposition to nearby cities than to attach ourselves to them.

[Lord Snooty]

We've already got enough teams and competitions. I don't understand the reasoning behind this idea.
Why are we even considering it? Who's gonna watch it? I wouldn't even watch Leeds v Manchester on telly. But a Roses cricket match is the game I look forward to most in the season.
I might be wrong but I think if this takes off it'll be played to almost empty stadiums, a bit like the Checkatrade Trophy.
We have a perfectly good t20 competition in this country already. Roses matches play to capacity, as do the Surrey/Middlesex clashes.

[themaclad]

If it's run by the ECB it will be shite, they are also looking at having two divisions in the counties T20 apparently to try and attract a new audience, given that cricket comes way down the list of cool games and is no longer on free to air television they will struggle to attract people, as for the city franchise live 50 miles from Manchester and have little interest in watching cricket's equivalent of baseball

[Ska'dForLife-WBA]

As I understand it, the basic reasoning is:

Economic: The money that counties currently make from T20 is keeping four-day cricket afloat, which in turn is bringing through new Test cricketers. If that revenue can be increased with an even more high-profile competition (and the mooted deal would see £1.3m per season going to county sides on top of what they make from the T20 Blast), then it's to the overall benefit of the sport.

Cultural: Grow the audience for T20 and you'll increase the interest in one-dayers and Test matches over time too, securing a bright future for the sport as a whole.

Of course, all of this is very much dependent on the new competition being a success, and I think the potential problems you've highlighted there are sound. The genuine existing rivalries in cricket are fantastic: I remember watching the Roses match at Headingley in June 2015 which went down to the final ball, and seeing Worcestershire do the double over Birmingham/Warwickshire this summer was really enjoyable. As I said in my previous posts, I think us Brits are real traditionalists when it comes to sport, and we don't tend to flock to the colours of newly-created teams very enthusiastically, which is one crucial way that we might differ from the Aussies and Indians.

I think my general position is that *if* the new competition could successfully draw in the crowds, and *if* county T20 could continue to survive and even thrive alongside it (maybe starting a few weeks earlier and concluding in July, so they don't overlap), then it could work well. But obviously the word "if" is doing a lot of work in both cases. The potential is definitely there for the Premier League to be a disaster, or alternatively for it to be such a success that county T20 withers and dies in its shadow.

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Looking into it a bit more, it seems the ECB have now abandoned the plans for 2018 and are targeting a 2020 start date instead, so whatever happens I've still got a few more happy summers of watching Worcestershire arse everything up

[themaclad]

Thing is these days clubs are struggling at grass roots level, I play in the Westmorland league lost five clubs in three years may club disbanding one team, lack of general interest in cricket, the worry of the new 20:20 league is that it will further sideline the longer form of the game to the margins, this competition is all about money not cricket.

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Worcester cricket ground I have still to visit, it's on the wish list although with Lancs being in a different division will have to be a RLC game

[St Charles Owl]

Don't follow cricket that closely but I don't see the attraction of a team named Manchester or Leeds unless you are from those places!! Why not make it Lancashire and Yorkshire and make this either a competition that you qualify for the previous season and drop the need for it to be at Test Match venues only?? The county set up is too ingrained in most fans to now introduce "new" teams to the mix.

[Ska'dForLife-WBA]

Don't follow cricket that closely but I don't see the attraction of a team named Manchester or Leeds unless you are from those places!!  Why not make it Lancashire and Yorkshire and make this either a competition that you qualify for the previous season and drop the need for it to be at Test Match venues only??  The county set up is too ingrained in most fans to now introduce "new" teams to the mix.

Basically, both India and Australia have had huge success in creating domestic T20 competitions that last for four to six weeks with matches played almost every day during that period. The TV rights alone have brought in a fortune, and both leagues are in the top ten sporting competitions in the world by average attendance (the IPL is currently 5th after the NFL, Bundesliga, EPL and Aussie Rules League with average gates of 32k; the Big Bash is 7th, behind Major League Baseball, with 30k). Understandably, the ECB wants to replicate that success in England; whether it's to get in on the gravy train or to popularise cricket with a new generation, I suppose you have to make your own mind up. It's probably a bit of both.

Until now, it hasn't been possible to have a similar event in this country because we have eighteen counties, and even divided into two groups you can't cram that many fixtures into a month, so the existing T20 Blast between the counties takes place between May and August. As Snoots has pointed out, it's pretty successful, and it does draw in the crowds for some of the big games, but I think the potential is there for domestic T20 to be an even bigger attraction *if* they could get a one-month competition off the ground. However, understandably, if you did it along county lines some would have to be left out, and that's the obstacle. No one wants to lose their status at the top table. That's why the idea of eight entirely new teams has been green-lighted.

What you suggest about having the best counties qualify for the "super league" each year would throw up its own problems. There's the potential that the bigger counties could come to dominate financially while the smaller ones wither away (what's happened with football, basically). They'd also get a monopoly on the world's top players each year, while teams who didn't qualify would end up with the best of what's left; again, like football.

I think the basic idea, on paper, is sound: *if* you could pull upwards of 100,000 people into the major cricket grounds every week through August without damaging or diminishing the existing county system, then it would be a whole new era for cricket. However, I think all of us on here are old enough and wise enough to know that things are never that simple, and that the best-laid plans rarely survive their first contact with the real world.

[themaclad]

Pulling 100,000 into cricket grounds in August may prove difficult football will have started. Also having matches in a block would mean people would pick and choose games for finances reasons, they have already tried playing it in a block did not work.