After the announcement of the new format for county cricket from 2020, the ECB may have hoped for encouraging words from the people who watch the summer game.
It is hard to engender enthusiasm, however and even harder to escape the feeling that 2019 is the last summer of the game that we know and love. From 2020 it will be all change, not necessarily for the better.
With the constant drip feeds of information about 'the new competition' changing all the time, it increasingly resembles an anxious parent trying to get a child to behave. Now it 'might' be a franchise affair, privately run. I get the impression they keep dropping scenarios in with the hope that one will excite the media and supporters alike, that format then getting the green light. It won't happen, because the whole concept sucks like an industrial-scale vacuum cleaner.
What it has left us with is a new-style county championship from 2020, with a ten-team division one and an eight team division two. For those of an optimistic nature, that sees three sides promoted next year from Derbyshire's division, something that should rightly be seen as an opportunity, then two will be relegated and promoted each year thereafter.
With teams in the top tier playing only fourteen games, you will play some sides only once and that can only be to the detriment of those who play Surrey twice. While the allocation of fixtures may be based on a seeding system from previous summers, it is lop-sided and messy.
Then again, we will have a fifty-over competition played at the same time as the new competition, which will be missing the best 96 domestic players, as well as any from overseas. The latter, obviously, is so all of them can play in this new sooper-dooper competition that no one wants, but it all means that the fifty-over game effectively becomes a second eleven competition. There is an irony in counties having a warm-up match against 'Minor' Counties, because it would appear that they all will be. Maybe a chance has been missed to have a knockout, one in which the better minor county sides would have a genuine chance of creating a shock or two.
It's only real merit, praise be, is that it will not be geographically grouped. So we won't be playing all the same teams that we play year in, year out in the T20, thank goodness, but it is of scant consolation. There may be a chance to see a few outgrounds used again too, but the crowds won't flock to see second eleven cricket any more than they do at present.
Still, it will all be fine, because this new competition will more than make up for our disappointment in other areas, won't it?
Oh, OK...
What is happening to our lovely game?
ReplyDeleteDo we really need another new format? Nobody much seems to have been impressed by it so far, except those with pound signs in their eyes. How much has it cost the ECB in "sweeteners" to persuade/encourage the counties to back it?
True, the franchise teams will be full of stars and should play quality cricket, but who will really care if, for example, the "East Midlands Wallopers" or the "London Bashers" win or lose?
True, it will be covered on terrestrial TV, which can only be a good thing, but is this not an admission by the ECB that it got it wrong when it deprived lots of people of an opportunity to watch cricket by selling its soul to Mr Murdoch?
The "brains" behind all this are, of course, the same ones who sent our national team to play cricket in the Sri Lankan monsoon season. Say no more!
Yours sadly.
REV KEITH
I thought I read that from 2020 promotion and relegation would revert to two up/two down?
ReplyDeleteMight be wrong though.
Craig
Unless they've changed their minds already (not impossible, I grant you) and you're ahead of the rest of us, relegation after 2019 will still be 2 up 2 down. Not that you'd discount a change to 1 up 1 down a couple of years later if the big boys continue to get themselves relegated, as the direction of travel towards an all test match ground premier league of cricket is pretty obvious. What fascinates me most about this is the distinct possibility that none of our 50 over internationals will ever play another game of non-international 50 over cricket after they (perhaps) win the World Cup next year. I don't think I've ever seen a more perverse piece of decision-making by a governing body.
ReplyDeleteI fully agree Peakfan. For me cricket is not the first call on my leisure time, but the recent announcements mean that there is a reasonable chance that 2019 will be the last that I take out membership. All very sad.
ReplyDeleteYes I got my wires crossed earlier gents and have amended accordingly. Thanks for pointing it out.
ReplyDeleteI can see it going to one in the course of time.
They will want the big clubs in the top tier. Call me cynical or a realist...
Before I wade in, I just wanted to say how much I've enjoyed the blog since I came across it a couple of years ago. Your love for the county game and Derbyshire CCC in particular just shines through.
ReplyDeleteUnfortunately (and here's the but!) I don't think that there are enough lovers of the county game left to sustain the bloated model that we now have. By "bloated" I don't mean 18 counties, but I do mean large squads of full time professionals plus support staffs and the suits in the office. Like you, I remember when the county couldn't afford to keep Edwin Smith on as a coach and players of the calibre of Bob Taylor and Mike Hendrick were only paid between April and September. Forty years on, wages are higher and attendances are down.
Personally I'd be delighted to go back to a stripped down, semi professional model of county cricket, but there are too many well paid careers out there for the ECB to consider it. So the alternative unfortunately, is to find a competition that can be sold to a worldwide TV audience, hence The Hundred. I agree that a consequence of all this is that the 50 overs game (my preferred format) will be no more than a ramped up 2nd XI competition, but as you suggest there is an opportunity for some good to come out of this by abandoning the County Ground for a few weeks and taking the cricket club around the county (and Staffordshire too!). Buxton here we come?