Champions Trophy may give way to more T20

The Champions Trophy could be consigned to history as the International Cricket Council considers beefing up its world T20 programme.

The 50-over trophy, won thrillingly by Pakistan, who beat India by a stonking 180 runs in the final at The Oval early on Monday (New Zealand time), is due to be hosted by India in four years.

But moves are afoot to replace it with another world T20 event.

That would lead to the shortest form of the game having two world tournaments in a four-year cycle.

The Champions Trophy is restricted to the top eight nations and is a cracking tournament for a couple of reasons — it’s short, just 18 days for the edition just ended, and there are no dud games, with all due respect to the lightweight nations.

However, there’s talk of the world T20 enlarging from its format of 10 teams, with two qualifying groups of four to find teams nine and 10, up to as many as 20 to give encouragement to the lower tier nations.

On one hand, that is a laudable idea; on the other, it’s madness.

“World T20s do attract a lot of interest, they generate significant revenue for the television companies, but most importantly from our point of view they provide us with an opportunity to give more opportunities to more teams,” ICC chief executive Dave Richardson said.

The World Cup is due to be trimmed to 10 teams for the 2019 event in England, also a poor move from the ICC. Richardson talked of increasing the competitiveness of matches and the overall standard with that reduction. What that does to incentivise the next tier down is anyone’s guess. The ICC is known to be keen to capitalise on the rise in popularity of the 20-over format. But that shouldn’t be at the expense of a tournament which is popular with the players and eminently watchable.

Don’t be fooled into thinking every T20 game is compulsory viewing. But money talks, so don’t be surprised to see the continued rise and rise of T20.