English cricket launches a brave new era
England cricket captains Eoin Morgan and Joe Root have been told to play “brave cricket” with “smiles on their faces” as part of a wider strategy by the sport’s national governing body to grow the game. After five years with little change in the number of regular players at grassroots level, the England and Wales Cricket Board (ECB) is making a big push on boosting participation and yesterday launched a new campaign targeted at five-to-eight-year-olds - and their mums and dads called All Stars Cricket. But as well as trying to “get them young”, ECB chief executive Tom Harrison wants the players and fans of the future to be entertained and inspired by today’s stars. Harrison said: “(Director of cricket) Andrew Strauss and the England team are very clear that part of their responsibility is playing brave cricket - this commitment to playing an exciting formula of cricket every time they go on the park is linked to (the participation strategy). “Joe Root and Eoin Morgan understand their responsibility to play exciting cricket for future generations to connect with and for fans to get behind. “It’s a very deliberate strategy. It doesn’t work every time but we understand you’re more likely to be forgiven for having a bad day if you’ve tried everything to win a game as opposed to trying not to lose it, which is a key difference. “Ever since Andrew took the job as director of cricket he saw the link between successful England teams, and I mean successful by approach as much as results, was key.” This commitment to attacking cricket has been seen most consistently with Morgan’s limitedovers England sides, particularly in the 50-over format in which England now regularly score more than 300 in an innings and last August posted a record 444 against Pakistan at Trent Bridge. Crucial to England cricket’s financial well-being, in Harrison’s view, will be the new domestic Twenty20 tournament he is planning for 2020 - a product that is wholly in the ECB’s control and not subject to the whims of Indian fans or international cricket politics. The basic plan - eight city-based teams of the best players in the world playing each other in a single block of fixtures over a summer - has been much debated already and is clearly heavily influenced by the success of IL and Australian Big Bash. Harrison would not be drawn on giving any more details away, as he said they were still being debated. In fact, he believes there is no rush to finalise the tournament’s teams and venues at all, and they will not be settled before he tries to sell its broadcasting rights in the coming weeks. The former Derbyshire player, who took over as ECB boss in 2015, was bullish on the sport’s appeal to payand terrestrial-TV broadcasters, as well newer entrants to the market, such as Amazon, Facebook and YouTube.