New T20 jamboree gets the go-ahead

ECB chief Tom Harrison yesterday launched a passionate defence of the new Twenty20 competition that will revolutionise the domestic game and insisted he is not gambling with English cricket’s future.

The last remaining opposition to a new eight-team tournament that will be introduced, appropriately, in 2020 was defeated at a meeting of county bosses in London where the ECB confirmed they will press ahead with their radical plans.

Central to that is chief executive Harrison who, along with ECB chairman Colin Graves, has staked his reputation on convincing counties steeped in 130 years of tradition that the game desperately needs eight new ‘city’ based teams.

‘We have to think differently if we are going to be successful in attracting family audiences to our competitions,’ insisted Harrison after addressing county chairmen and chief executives. ‘This is about growth and creating something dramatically different for English cricket.’

That something will be an all-singing and dancing Twenty20 competition to be staged in eight regions in a 36-game tournament played over 38 days in peak summer, with eight matches planned for terrestrial television.

Today’s full ECB board meeting will be asked to rubber- stamp the rewriting of English cricket’s constitution so that all 18 counties do not have to feature in a competition that is meant to bring a completely new following to the game.

Harrison and Graves — who included the minor counties in the vote and offered them financial incentives to make sure they are successful — need 31 of the 41 available votes to proceed and indications last night were that they could well receive all 41. Even dissenting counties have accepted the inevitable. ‘We’ve done a lot of work in understanding our audience for existing tournaments,’ said Harrison, who wheeled out England one- day captain Eoin Morgan yesterday to address the counties. ‘This is about complementing that and it is very clear we are not talking to as big a cricketing audience as we should be.

‘Our tournaments are not as relevant as they should be and we have to change our thinking on that in order to be relevant to a new generation. We need to create big box-office occasions and grow something that has huge interest.

‘ Counties have been incredibly successful having an audience that is obsessive about the game but our county brands are not cutting through so this is all about creating brands that are relevant to our target audience of families and children. We have to connect to their very busy world.

‘It’s been a very good day and we’ve consolidated a lot of our thinking. It’s not been a huge unveil but more of a significant update on where we’ve got to. This has moved us from development to the bill stage. We’ve had the hard conversations and reached the point where everyone is comfortable about this.’

For all Harrison’s confidence, huge questions remain about the ECB’s answer to the australian Big Bash and the Indian Premier League. not least, confirmation that the new event will run at the same time as Tests, meaning it is highly unlikely the biggest stars such as Joe Root and Ben Stokes will be able to take part.

‘Maybe they won’t be playing in the new T20 but there’s no certainty because I can’t tell you what our schedules will look like in 2020,’ said Harrison. ‘We’d like to find room to breathe but it’s difficult and ultimately we are a market that’s hugely reliant on international cricket. a huge part of that diet is Test cricket.’

next on the ECB agenda is coming up with team names and venues which, with a lot of resistance remaining to city identities like London and Leeds, will present its own problems for Harrison and Graves. The hard work is not over just yet before the as yet unnamed competition finally bursts into being.

“Stokes, Root and other top names will probably be off playing Tests”