Sky offers £40m for city-based T20 to rival IPL

Posted by John Winn

This morning's posting was to have described my trip to Harrogate yesterday to see Yorkshire Academy give the hosts a nine wicket thrashing and include a  review of the second division of the championship but both those items were put on hold when I turned to the sports section of The Observer and saw the headline which forms the title of this posting.


Both Sky and the ECB have declined to comment on the article, in itself a strong hint that it has legs, and as far back as February, and before he was installed as ECB Chairman, Colin Graves expressed his enthusiasm for a revamped competition based on cities rather than counties and  which by attracting overseas stars would rival IPL and Big Bash.

In today's article, its author Elizabeth Ammon, Leg Side Lizzie to tweeters, says that the ECB says no final decision has been made but Sky is thought to want the tournament to be played in a block in midsummer with evening matches between 8 teams representing cities. Ammon says there will be strong opposition from the counties, especially one imagines from those who are not in the eight and they might include some like Essex and Somerset who draw good crowds for the existing competition. A simplistic solution to the problem of selecting the eight is to say that it would be the existing grounds that host test matches and/or T20/ODIs except there are nine of those.

Amman suggests that the new competition might coexist with the current 18 county Nat West Blast and that space might be made in an already crowded competition by, wait for it, and I have saved the worst till last, reducing the number of championship games to 12, a drop of two home games for each county. If so, could that mean the end of first class cricket at Scarborough? Hard to see it hanging on to one let alone two games a season if Yorkshire have only 24 days to allocate. Other counties that use out grounds would have similar difficult decisions to make.

The new competition is too awful to contemplate although how successful it might be in a summer like the present one is questionable but those who have expressed their horror at the behaviour of some Friday night crowds can, I suggest, only expect worse if cities replace counties as organisations seeking our affections. For pcws who share my distress at this not unexpected news then I suggest if you have not already done so read today's postings from Brian and Tony and remind yourself that there will still be cricket being played in 2017, when the new tournament is likely to be introduced, cricket where every ball is not an event of high drama and where there is time for reflection and conversation.