During the quieter passages of play at Headingley on Sunday the thoughts of the Upper North East cognoscenti turned to a scholarly consideration of the ECB's latest proposals to bring back the traditional variety show, namely their announcement last week that the proposed city based T20 will in fact be a shortened version with each innings lasting 100 balls. Our Hartlepool Correspondent has described the NYSD 15s as a game for those who find T20 too intellectually challenging. Out of the mouths of Oxford graduates ......
Just in case you missed the launch of 'The Hundred' the format is that there would be 15 six ball overs with a final over of ten balls, (6 x 15) + 10 = 100, thus producing a shorter game that would, even if there were delays, finish in time for the ten o'clock news to be broadcast on time, that, with a nod towards the metric system, would be easier to follow and rebuffs the criticism that we don't need another T20 because this is not T20. Get it?
Entering into the spirit of things and keen to see the new competition a success we put forward a number of ideas that at the time may have seemed frivolous but not quite so this morning. One suggestion that I brought to the table but which I had first heard on Five Live Extra and very much aimed at the target audience of mums and toddlers, look out for Andrew Strauss handing out fliers at the school gate, was that the stumps be made of jelly. To add further interest it was suggested that monochrome stumps were too boring so let's have different coloured jellies for each stump and that if somebody is bowled middle jelly then it counts double so the next man is out as well. David Thorpe's best idea was that for the 'super over' each outfielder would bowl one ball which ticks the inclusivity box. Not quite so radical a thought as it seemed on Sunday for the ECB now proposes that three bowlers might share the last over.
From this it is but a short step to crowd participation. Some of you may recall the 'The Price is Right' which graced our screens thirty years ago with its catch phrase 'Come on Down' which was the signal for audience members to become contestants. Imagine the thrill as Joe Pasquale calls you onto the Headingley turf to bowl the last ball of the night to Virat Kohli with four still needed.
Of course I may have taken this a little too far but who thought a week ago that 2020 would not see a new T20 competition but something based on 100 balls per innings and who thought yesterday that the ten ball over might be shared by three bowlers? What else is lurking in the fine print? This morning's papers are reporting that the new proposals have not gone down well with the PCA whose representatives were only given twenty four hours notice and according to The Guardian 'the format is understood to have caused anger and disbelief among committee members of the Professional Cricketers Association.' The ECB will meet players' representatives next month to discuss the proposals.
In the meantime the county championship whose very existence is threatened by the new competition responded in the best possible way with decent crowds watching some competitive matches in for the first two days at least, lovely weather. Yorkshire spared my blushes by finishing off Notts in 40 minutes yesterday but it was late in the day by the time Surrey, Derbyshire and Glamorgan clinched victories. The drawn match, that at Grace Road, was the only one where the home team did not bat first. Another round begins on Friday with four games in each division. Kent and Warwickshire miss out but the former are hosts to the Pakistanis at Canterbury in a game beginning on Saturday. . Given last week's washout it is perhaps surprising to find Yorkshire and Essex in first and second places in Division 1 but Essex are only there because E comes before H and their visit to Southampton is perhaps the most intriguing match in Division 1. In the second tier Warwickshire lead the way and in their absence Middlesex, second, meet Glamorgan, third, in what should attract a few to Lord's.
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