A Statement On The Proposed Introduction Of A City-Based T20 Competition

A Statement On The Proposed Introduction Of A City-Based T20 Competition

by our very own Mr Bransgrove, I would have put this in the '2016 thread but thought it deserved it’s own

Do we know if any stadia/grounds have been propsed yet? He mentioned the possibility of stadia that are not currently cricket grounds, but I’m struggling to see how that would work.

I’m in favour of this in principle though.

I’m sure it’s all still to be fleshed out.

Can’t see it being played at any football grounds mind, maybe Wembley stadium could host 1 but I don’t think Twickenham could…

I’m all for it too, only thing that worries me is the number of overseas players that will be allowed but I’m sure that will be limited.

Definitely needed.

Watching the T20 down here, yes it was exciting at times but it really wasn’t at many others. The IPL & Big Bash also have poor matches but the pointis there tend to be less of them.

There is BIG MONEY in T20, Counties need more money.

BIG MONEY does NOT mean selling the TV rights to Sky it means getting Asian Broadcasters to actually be interested in showing games - which ONLY happens if Asian cricketers are more deeply involved.

Fully understand that the fear of creeping franchises could happen especially for the likes of Northants, but it is the only way to go, get that overseas money into OUR game for a change, it will make our own T20 and production system of cricketers more secure

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Originally posted by @Dubai_Phil

BIG MONEY does NOT mean selling the TV rights to Sky it means getting Asian Broadcasters to actually be interested in showing games - which ONLY happens if Asian cricketers are more deeply involved.

Yup, completely agree with this.

I’m not sure how they’ll do this. It seems to me that it’s going to exclude a lot of the potential market.

For all the assurances we won’t run two T20 competitions. Most of the counties thus won’t host games. So we immediately cut off grounds like Hove, Taunton, Leicester, Canterbury, Chelmsford - ok not huge cities - but which have very good T20 attendances.

How many grounds are likely to be used? Lord’s, the Oval, Edgaston, Old Trafford, Headingly, Trent Bridge definitely. Maybe the Olympic Stadium? Of the newer test grounds I think Cardiff, but not Chester-Le-Street (too far from Newcastle or Sunderland) or, actually, despite Rod Bransgrove being a leading supporter of city-based T20, the Rose Bowl (too close to London)

Ok - maybe the crowds actually at the grounds aren’t so important and it’s all about TV audiences. How do you market the teams? Support has always been on the basis of counties. Going down the city-branding route is ok for Birmingham, as with due respect to Coventry, they’re by far the biggest city there - it’ll be harder to call a team after Manchester as it’ll exclude Liverpool - also true for Leeds (Sheffield, Rotherham, Doncaster, Hull), People from Derby and Leicester won’t support anything called Nottingham. Cardiff I guess they’d brand as Wales. We won’t get one but if we did calling it Southampton would alienate anyone from the PO side of Hampshire

The eight team format fits Australia - 60%+ of the population live in five cities. Allocate two teams each to the two largest cities, add one in Tasmania, Bob’s your Auntie Sheila’s husband. Not so sure that model will work here though

It wasd the same with the IPL - establishing the teams from scratch meant choosing the largest cities and regions (Punjab). Here, because of the county structure it’s a lot more complicated.

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Absolutely spot on SO5. Much like football, its all very well having decent TV audiences, but you need a full, or near-full ground with a proper atmosphere (generated by people who do care which team wins) to help make it worth watching. Lose that and its the start of the end of what is, currently, the best supported form of the game here.

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Been given the green light by the counties, still undecided myself

So its the 2020 2020 competition ?

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