The England and Wales Cricket Board is facing a battle to convince the counties it remains neutral in the debate over the proposed introduction of a Twenty20 tournament to rival the Indian Premier League and Australia’s Big Bash.
A report in the Daily Telegraph on Wednesday outlined details of a proposal for a four-week competition that would be held in the height of summer, featuring newly created city-based teams and run in addition to the summer-long NatWest T20 Blast contested by the 18 counties.
An ECB spokesperson has maintained that, as agreed in March, an executive team are continuing to draw up a small range of options for T20 cricket – including a rejected two-division county tournament – and will present them to the first-class counties and the recreational boards in September, with “no agreed or preferred approach” at present.
However the Guardian has spoken to county chief executives and chairmen who believe the ECB chairman, Colin Graves, and the chief executive, Tom Harrison, are solely set on the one path. One club official described the city tournament proposal as “death by a thousand cuts” and a form of “identity theft”, while another said the leaked details were “highly ironic” given the ECB’s repeated insistence that plans be kept private.
While the ECB intends to hold small meetings with groups of counties over the coming weeks to continue the conversations and allay any concerns, a number of chairmen now believe they must convene independently from Harrison, Graves and the ECB to establish what it is they are looking to get out of a new T20 competition before September’s presentations.
Support from 12 of the 18 counties and 26 of the 39 recreational cricket boards is needed to make such a change but there is at least a growing concession the status quo, while seeing counties such as Surrey thrive – a record gate receipts for this Friday’s Blast fixture with Kent at The Oval – it is not working for all. Durham, for example, are facing a exodus of players at the end of the season amid severe financial difficulties and reported debts of £6m.
The proposed city-based Twenty20 plan would be attractive to many, with counties becoming shareholders in the competition and pooling the money generated. However this incentivewould need to be weighed up against a month-long gap in county cricket and, if the Blast were to be played as a summer-long tournament, whether the new competition would reduce its appeal.
The ECB has a delicate tightrope to walk with its main broadcaster partner, Sky, whose £75m-a-year deal for all international and domestic cricket runs up until the end of 2019. The proposed 2018 start date for the city-based tournament would fall within this period and selling its rights off separately would remain problematic.
The ECB’s live offering will likely attract interest from Sky’s rivals BT Sport and could see its televised cricket split into separate packages. The re-introduction of some live cricket on terrestrial television may also be possible.
