Blasting into view

The T20 Blast was higher on the public perception in 2016

WITH the continual growth of the shortest format around the world, and talk of a Citybased tournament in the UK, a new report suggests the popularity of domestic T20 cricket in England rose sharply during 2016.

The YouGov SportsIndex Report 2017 places the T20 Blast among the top ten sporting events in terms of public perception for the first time, coming in seventh, one spot above Test cricket.

The SportsIndex report analyses the performance of overall recent public awareness and sentiment of news about leading UK and international sports competitions events by interviewing 100 people each day.

Respondents are asked: “Over the past two weeks, which of the following sporting events have you heard something positive/negative about?”

The Olympics topped the list with the Paralympics in third. Wimbledon crept in between the two multi-format events with the Six Nations and Tour de France completing the top five. Football’s Premier League came sixth with the two cricket formats following.

This after the Blast came 21st in 2015 and though it was branded ‘mediocre’ by ECB chairman Colin Graves, ticket sales have actually grown by 63 per cent over the last four years.

The report states: “T20 cricket is English cricket’s 2016 success story, with efforts to re-position and market the game as an allround entertainment spectacle seriously paying off and contributing to its much-improved buzz score.”

Taking centre stage on a Friday evening has clearly proved popular with news emerging that Blast ticket sales may have reached 950,000 in 2016.

ECB figures exclude all sales from games which are subsequently abandoned due to bad weather and declared a figure of 815,609, down from 827,654 in 2015.

There were over double the amount of abandoned fixtures in 2016 with 15 compared with seven in 2015.