No Twenty20 vision at the ECB
Two reports have emerged relating to the introduction of the new P20 competition next year. Firstly, the Telegraph has MCC Secretary Keith Bradshaw telling us that P20 is a turn-off because investors do not want to invest in a bloated tournament including all 18 counties.
Bradshaw does have some vested interest in this point of view, as it was his franchise proposal that was rejected last year precisely because it did not include all of the counties.
But he has a point. The IPL, supposedly the motivation behind the P20, contains only 8 franchises but still took over a month to complete. An 18 team tournament would simply contain too much cricket for overseas broadcasters to do justice, even if there was a guarantee as to the nationality of players in each team.
The second article, from Laurence Booth at the Guardian, reveals that the counties still do not know what format the tournament is to take, and how it is to be marketed. Apparantly all are agreed that the P20 must somehow be different from the current Twenty20 Cup, but there is no concensus on what this difference is to be.
Attendances for the T20 Cup so far this season has been poor, and now we will be lumbered with another overblown exercise in nothingness to go along with it. The fact that the bigwigs are insistent on two T20 tournaments shows the muddled thinking. Essentially, they are championing change without actually having to change anything.
If the ECB wants to do the right thing, it will abandon the P20 alltogether and start again by restructuring the Twenty20 Cup into a more appealing format. They will not be able to compete with the IPL by bumbling on as they always do and assuming that things will work out.
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