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Do we already have Twenty20 overkill?


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The ECB are desperate to have an English Premier League to rival the IPL but need to find space for it in an already crowded domestic schedule, writes Derek Pringle. More... Do we already have Twenty20 overkill? By Derek Pringle Last Updated: 2:52am BST 23/06/2008 It was just under three years ago, and with the football season six weeks old, that I spotted something on a Norfolk playing field I'd never before seen at that time of year - kids playing cricket. There they were, blithely ignoring the recently painted goalposts, their energies set instead on emulating their freshly-minted Ashes heroes - "Freddie" Flintoff, Michael Vaughan and Simon Jones. That 2005 Ashes series captured imaginations un-steeped in cricket as never before and provided an unbeatable advert for a game long struggling to compete with football's Premier League. The moment, alas, was not properly exploited and that heady connection with the wider public vanished almost as quickly as it arrived. But was the failure to take advantage down to complacency by the England and Wales Cricket Board? Or does the faddishness of the modern world provide a short shelf life for feats even as profound as those? The answer probably comprises both which is why the ECB, scared of missing out again, want to maximise the amount of Twenty20 cricket - the new 2005 Ashes moment and now a globally popular format of the game following the new riches of the Indian Premier League. The ECB are desperate to have an English Premier League to rival the IPL but need to find space for it in an already crowded domestic schedule. The county chief executives, eager to see just how much this cash cow can be milked, will be given a presentation of the proposed changes in July. One idea is a County Championship based on three conferences, not taken regionally as the Twenty20 Cup groups are, but drawn randomly. Conferences, which do away with two divisions with their promotion and relegation, was first put forward, and ridiculed, in 1997, but has been revisited by ECB think-tanks surprisingly often since. This is the latest version and it has its fans. Two divisions may be popular with some teams and players, but many county chief executives, particularly those languishing in the lower division, don't like it. For one thing it forces short-term solutions on teams such as gaining promotion or avoiding relegation, an environment blamed for spiralling wages and the plague of Kolpak players now in domestic cricket. A system based on three conferences would absolve the need for quick fixes but remove the competitive gusto that is presently the County Championship's best feature. It would also complicate an already convoluted fixture list - arguably the biggest bugbear for cricket fans of longstanding - a big PR price to pay for the creation of a four-day window in the season. First-class cricket is hard to sell being mostly played out in front of hundreds rather than thousands, but it is followed widely in the media. Its value lies in grooming players for Test cricket, still the game's best format and still popular in England and Australia as well as with broadcasters for the many hours it fills. Yet valuable though that service is, the return it provides relative to the time taken up in the schedule makes it vulnerable to change. Something has to give if Twenty20's spread is to provide jam today and tomorrow. Indeed, England's captain, Vaughan, has already been consulted by the ECB on how much four-day cricket is needed to keep strong what is essentially a feeder system for Tests. His answer is not on public record but the fact he's played his first Twenty20 games for Yorkshire, suggests he is preparing for a future containing more of them. As an all-rounder I would have enjoyed Twenty20. Of course bowlers of a sensitive disposition might wear a permanently haunted look but as Dale Steyn so succinctly put it when summing up his IPL contributions, four overs a game is effectively a paid holiday. When Twenty20 first proved a success, Rod Eddington, the former CEO of British Airways, marvelled at cricket's capacity to re-invent itself. Yet like BA, there may be perils in becoming too unwieldy. Twenty20 in England has doubled in size since its inception five years ago, its initial tranche of 48 games growing to 97 this season. With this year's crowds apparently down, there are already worries that a saturation point has been passed. Scheduling is part of the problem. The 16-day lumpen mass of Twenty20 games, in which five home and five away games are played, tests fans' loyalties and pockets, especially families, to the hilt. In response, more than one county chief executive has said they would prefer either a Thursday or Friday night set aside for Twenty20 home matches over an eight-week period. That can only be achieved by freeing up yet more time in a fixture list now fuller than Paris Hilton's diary. Something needs to give and the now unloved - save by Sky's programmers - Pro40 would seem the obvious sacrifice.

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