Essex, Sussex and Somerset are trying to persuade the ECB not to reduce the number of T20 matches next season. Essex in particular have been vocal in their opposition – they claim they’ll have to make redundancies if their home matches are reduced from eight per season back to five. So what is the solution? Everybody agrees that the Friends Provident matches had less meaning this summer. Players were complaining of burn out and interest in T20 cricket seemed to be reaching saturation...
The ticket-sales ‘crisis’: blame the ECB, not the IPL
Extraordinary times. Cricket’s ‘ticket sales crisis’ is now a mainstream news story – making the BBC 10 O’clock News, and page 9 of Monday’s Evening Standard. Admittedly, it’s mid-August and newsrooms need all the material they can lay their hands on. They’ve exaggerated the story, which has now taken on its own news-momentum. The more outlets pick up on it, the more others will follow – and a few days’ poor ticket sales snowball into...
Bonzer! Aussies launch new format for one-day cricket
Sometimes it takes the straight talking Australians to get things done. Rather than simply lamenting the decline of domestic one-day cricket, those pioneering Aussies have decided to do something about it. Whereas the ECB have introduced various ineffectual and random reforms, such as cancelling all fifty over cricket and implementing a new forty over competition (whilst extending the T20 league to a gazillion games per week) the ACB have decided to break with tradition and do something that...
The Sunday roast
A quick-round up of some of the weekend’s talking points. Congratulations to new T20 champions Hampshire – and sincere commiserations to Somerset (losing finalists for the second successive year). What a remarkable finish! If you were at the Rose Bowl, get in touch and tell us about what must have been an extraordinary atmosphere for the last few balls. The England selectors have not dropped Alastair Cook, naming an unchanged side on Sunday morning. What a surprise. In other news...
It’s time to give Cook the chop
Let me be frank about this from the beginning. I do not rate Alastair Cook. Never have, probably never will. On the eve of the U-19 world cup in 2004 I had heard rumours that we had unearthed a teenage sensation who was about to take the cricketing world by storm. The experts on TV and in the broadsheets informed me he was not only a prolific run scorer, he was also stylish, intelligent and an England captain in waiting – much like a young Michael Atherton (but left handed). Cook did indeed...
Bring down the price of test match tickets
The cricket media have finally spotted the link between exorbitant ticket prices and poor attendance. Or at least Jonathan Agnew and the BBC online team have – in what’s become a major talking point of the Edgbaston test. Far too often, cricket journalists disparage poor attendance as evidence of uninterest or disloyalty – forgetting that unlike spectators, they not only enter for free, but get paid, a free lunch, and the best seats. Attendance at Trent Bridge was good; so...
