It’s a whole new ball game
City-based T20 tournament to get the go-ahead next week!
AFTER years of constant wrangling, negotiations and acrimony, the England & Wales Cricket Board’s plans to revolutionise the domestic game look set to get the go-ahead on Monday .
That’s when the 18 county chairmen will meet to discuss proposals to amend the ECB’s constitution that will allow a new eight-team, city-based Twenty20 tournament to be formed and launched in three years’ time.
Currently the constitution states: “The board shall not have the power to deprive a first-class county of the right to participate in all first-class county competitions authorised by the ECB.”
However, a change to that wording – thought to be inevitable given the £1.3million on offer for those counties who are compliant – will open the way for the new T20 competition that is ready to start in 2020.
A vote involving all 41 ECB members will still need to be passed in April to give the T20 proposals the final sign-off it needs. Yet the discussions on Monday will be the tipping point where all the talk about the new competition will stop and the planning will begin for the new white-ball showpiece.
The proposals, the brainchild of ECB chief executive Tom Harrison, are hugely controversial because they will sideline more than half the first-class counties.
Given the new T20 competition will also co-exist with the NatWest T20 Blast, it will effectively downgrade that hugely-popular tournament to second-class status. It also risks undermining the existing domestic 50-over competition as it is expected to run alongside that, meaning the 100 most high-profile English players will be unable to play in it as they will be contracted to the new T20 teams.
However, Harrison, speaking this week, believes change is necessary if cricket is to survive in the UK.
Part of the ECB’s strategy will be to screen part of the new competition on free-toair platforms to increase its exposure.
Sky’s current broadcasting deal with the ECB runs out in 2019 and Harrison has revealed: “We have no ambition to be the richest, most irrelevant sport in this country.
“Have we been having conversations with free-toair channels? Absolutely. Am I convinced they will be at the table? Yes.”
However, Jason Ratcliffe, the former assistant chief executive of the Professional Cricketers’ Association, has warned the new tournament could signal the death of county cricket.
“There is no halfway house with the strategy,” he told ESPNCricinfo.
“We risk throwing away 130 years of history and alienating our core supporters while cannibalising our existing competitions. If we get this wrong, it could mean the death of county cricket.”