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County chiefs pleased with increased ‘Hundred’ transparency.
Huw Turbervill.
The Cricketer.
Thursday, 4 October 2018.
PTG 2593-13043.
The England and Wales Cricket Board (ECB) appear to have satisfied the Counties after a fractious meeting last week. Peace in our time (at least for now), for County chief executives and the ECB are said to have had a ‘constructive’ and ‘excellent’ meeting on Tuesday about the future of English cricket, from 2020. It looks as if there will definitely be a new tournament. What the meeting did not determine, however, is whether it will be T20 or ‘100’, but Counties were delighted with the increased transparency from the ECB, with chief executives describing it as a potential ‘watershed moment’.
It followed on from a reportedly fractious meeting between county chairmen and the ECB the previous week. “A bloody nose” was how Mike Atherton reported it in 'The Times’. There had been considerable unrest going into the follow-up meeting amidst concerns about the ballooning cost of the new tournament and scepticism about how much profit the ECB were telling the counties they would be making.
The message from the chief executives now is that there is still some analysis to be done, but that they were reassured that there will be greater transparency for the next few months. County chiefs now feel happier about the viability and vibrancy of the English domestic game from two years’ time. Counties’ fears that they will not be involved in the running of the new tournament, with everything being run from the centre, have also eased. They have also been assured that marketing spend on the three existing tournaments, the Championship, the One-Day Cup and Twenty20 ‘Blast' will not suffer.
The ECB also received the message that there is no ‘them and us’ between chiefs of Counties with Test grounds, and those without. “The Counties are perfectly aligned”, one insider saying: “We all want to take the English game forward”. Despite that there remains some scorn for 'The Hundred' in the game, the feeling being that a new, fourth format is not needed. T20 is hugely popular in India and Australia, but it now seems as if the Counties will not kill the format itself. If the roadmap for English cricket is not revealed by the next ECB board meeting on 28 November, all parties are confident there should be agreement by Christmas.
Clare Connor’s high-performance group, the new tournament development group, the cricket committee chaired by Peter Wright, Wasim Khan’s working group and the Professional Cricketers’ Association, still have plenty to discuss. There remains lingering resentment from some Counties that they will be turfed out of their own venues, be sent to outgrounds bereft of their best players, and be forced to play in a second-rate ‘county lite’ competition.
Traditionalists will be pleased that there is no appetite for a reduction in Championship cricket, however, so it will still be 14 matches. There have been reports that a ‘Kookaburra' ball will be tried in some games, preparing bowlers for overseas. Thankfully the pink ball seems to have been put back into its box. Counties did want 16 T20 ‘Blast' games (up from 14), with eight at home. It does not look as if this will be possible, though. And there is still some debate about if the ‘Blast' will be in a block, or split in two, sandwiching the new tournament.
The ECB will nevertheless be relieved at these developments over the past week, and they hope to focus next year on the next stage of their 'Cricket Unleashed' strategy.
If you don't play each other twice in the Championship then real cricket will have been further degraded - or can't the likes of Lisa Pursehouse and Richard Tennant see this?
ReplyDeleteYes AndrewM1 im sure they can see it, but whether they are really that bothered(as it don't bring the dough in)is a different matter? Very good point to raise though, nonetheless
ReplyDeleteDo you get the impression that the County Championship is viewed by many at the top as an inconvenience as it occupies so much time but has little financial return.
ReplyDeleteAt your Nottinghamshire, do you think that if there was a viable alternative to the beautiful Trent Bridge for low attendance fixtures in the County Championship they will in the future, post 2020, use it for much of those fixtures.
Reading this blog, I get the feeling that the cricket club use the Trent Bridge facility as a carrot to draw in new ambitious players looking for higher recognition, so a move of games away from Trent Bridge is likely to lessen the draw of that carrot.
Perhaps this shift will serve to level the playing field for the non-Test ground counties, making home development of players estential to all counties and not just the poor "second class" majority.
Alarms should be ringing at your club; a larger squad is going to be needed if International call-ups continue and Hundred drafts take their effect. All supporters at all counties dream that their team can be competitive with a chance of winning silverware so perhaps the Hundred will be a force for positive change for most counties, disrupting the "big boys" so that we all might be able to follow Worcestershire's lead.
Excellent observations 'Graham' - yes, the members count for very little and allow the Committee to do as it wishes (invariably supporting the ECB). It is a Member-owned Club with Charitable status but seems to be run as a fiefdom!
ReplyDeleteSo how can Members regain control of their own club?
ReplyDelete