A good game is a quick game

The England Cricket Bpard is seeking to introduce a new format of cricket in England and Wales, a ‘100 balls’ format that could consist of 15 six-ball overs and a final 10-ball over.

A new eight-team, city-based competition is being launched in England, featuring teams in London, Southampton, Birmingham, Leeds, Cardiff, Manchester and Nottingham.

Twenty20 cricket was introduced in England in 2003 and soon went international.

The format has changed the game of cricket, for better or worse, with batsmen developing new, inventive cricket shots, and bowlers developing skills like slower balls, bouncers and doosras which hadn’t been seen before.

The BBC reported that the new men’s and women’s competitions would run each summer, initially from 2020 until 2024. competition, which will mean test cricket is further ignored. Do we now just have to accept test cricket stays the same and dies very slowly? What a shame.

The ECB will be laughed at by some for this idea. New concepts are always scoffed at. There is a chance they have made a simple format more complicated. Everyone understands 20 six-ball overs. But 15 six-ball overs and a 10-ball wildcard strategic over? That may be harder to understand.

But it will be a point of difference, a novel and fun idea that could work. Why not give it a go?