CHAOS REIGNS AT THE CRICKET
Root and Stokes won’t play in new 100-ball tournament ++ ECB ditch women’s T20 league ++ Overseas stars priced out by salary cap
The eCB have been warned they must earn the support of sceptical players if their controversial new 100-ball competition is to succeed.
And it emerged yesterday that england’s Test stars — including captain Joe Root (below) and Ben Stokes — will not feature in the tournament. The hundred will also struggle to compete with the IPL and the Big Bash for overseas talent, due to the new format’s salary cap of just £1million per team.
The revelations came after a crisis meeting between the governing body and the Professional Cricketers’ Association at edgbaston yesterday ended with more questions than answers over the eCB’s plan to roll out the competition by 2020.
And PCA chairman Daryl Mitchell made it clear that the 420 male players in the county game will need to be convinced The hundred will work before they give it their full blessing.
‘ There is no competition without players, is there?’ said Worcestershire batsman Mitchell after representatives from all 18 counties, plus england’s Jonny Bairstow and Tammy Beaumont, met with eCB chief executive Tom harrison and managing director of the new competition Sanjay Patel.
‘It’s fair to say opinion is mixed. There’s still concern, that’s for sure, but some fears were allayed. This is a pivotal moment and we all have to get this right.’
Clearly much has to be done before english cricket can be confident that what the eCB still insist is a concept, can be considered as a panacea to the game’s ills. The meeting failed to provide any more detail on The hundred, which came out of nowhere last month with very little consultation, yet is supposed to be a better bet than an english version of the Twenty20 format that is taking over the game. There were talks over how the ludicrous proposed 10-ball over might work, but no discussion about the more outrageous possible gimmicks such as the abolition of lbws. But it is clear The hundred is not exactly going to provide top dollar to try to compete with the IPL and Big Bash to attract the world’s best players, with each team having a £1m budget for wages with top salaries of around £100,000.
The eCB insist that the move to a new format is more to protect the existing county Twenty20 Blast rather than at the behest of TV companies, who insisted on a shorter game in exchange for a new five-year £1.1billion broadcasting deal.
But they did not show the players research that has led them to push through such a radical idea and are determined to introduce it with eight new teams in a six-week peak summer window in direct competition to Test cricket.
‘Another concern is that Test players won’t be taking part,’ said Mitchell. ‘The likes of Joe Root and Ben Stokes will be allocated to a team for marketing purposes but they won’t play. The point was made that the new audience won’t necessarily know who Stokes and Root are anyway.’
Perhaps the biggest loser is the women’s game that the eCB have done so much to champion as the Kia Super League will be disbanded. That will leave england’s elite players with only The hundred at the highest women’s level and not gaining any top Twenty20 experience ahead of internationals.
‘It’s a huge negative for the women, there’s no getting away from that,’ added Mitchell. ‘They need to be playing T20 if there are world competitions in that format. Tammy was here and was given no assurances about any future T20.’