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T20 Franchises won't work in England

howardj

International Coach
Why not? I bet the English (like cricket lovers the world over) yearn for a game between great franchises (or entities/conglomerates) like the South London Super Zebras versus the South West London Super Rhinos. Matches where we can have 15 metre boundaries; sixes every second ball (instead of every third ball, which I find too little). And fortnightly trades and auctions, so we don't get bored watching the same players (or units, as I like to call them) playing for the same franchises. You know, mix and match, bells and whistles.

Get on board. The way of the future.
 

Dick Rockett

International Vice-Captain
Why not? I bet the English (like cricket lovers the world over) yearn for a game between great franchises (or entities/conglomerates) like the South London Super Zebras versus the South West London Super Rhinos. Matches where we can have 15 metre boundaries; sixes every second ball (instead of every third ball, which I find too little). And fortnightly trades and auctions, so we don't get bored watching the same players (or units, as I like to call them) playing for the same franchises. You know, mix and match, bells and whistles.

Get on board. The way of the future.
howardj in anti-market forces shocker? :p

Totally agree with the sarcasm btw.
 

howardj

International Coach
I mean, I have no problem with the domestic T20 comp here in Australia, as:

- it's restricted to a small window of three weeks (therefore there's not an overload);
- we have real teams, with a history, who haven't been just made up for the purposes of the competition itself;
- we have players who haven't been allocated to teams via an auction.

For mine, that's more meaningful than some made up comp that features franchises, and which drags on and on.

I'm sure many people in England feel the same way about their domestic T20 comp.
 

sideshowtim

Banned
I mean, I have no problem with the domestic T20 comp here in Australia, as:

- it's restricted to a small window of three weeks (therefore there's not an overload);
- we have real teams, with a history, who haven't been just made up for the purposes of the competition itself;
- we have players who haven't been allocated to teams via an auction.

For mine, that's more meaningful than some made up comp that features franchises, and which drags on and on.

I'm sure many people in England feel the same way about their domestic T20 comp.
Absolutely agree.
 

slugger

State Vice-Captain
well this is what gripes me.. about this history and tradition thing.... what you should keep in mind whether its league, cricket or football..etc.. is these teams have to start sometime... the line between success and failure is usually money.. some local "well to do" guy buys the field, pays for the uniforms, gets the changing rooms built or maybe the local council help out but in the end there is a starting point to this hisory and tradition... I know Fleming played for canterbury.. thats where he is from.. but he also played for wellington.. gee martin crowe moved around the country .. hadlee played for tasmania as well.. whats the diffence between a franchise owning player to these "local" teams it seems they nor the players cared little about history and tradition.. its all bout whats good for me (inc. said team) at the time.
 

four_or_six

Cricketer Of The Year
Well... I don't know about franchises but they seriously need to do something about the number of teams and the structure of the competition.

At the moment because there are 18 teams they are in three groups which are decided by where they are in the country. That surely can't be the best way - if they can run competitions in Australia and India that aren't drawn out due to distances between teams, they can surely run one in England! I would rather see the best teams play the best. I think if you sorted out this problem, then you could scrap the quarter finals too.

And then for some unknown reason, the finals day is held three weeks after the quarter finals. This strikes me as particularly ridiculous - especially if T20 specialists are used.

In terms of people not wanting to support teams from rival cities, there's something in it. But at the moment the way the teams work, there are huge areas not covered by a county at all, which seems to be forgotten about. Where I live this includes an area covering the counties Bucks, Beds, Herts, Cambs, Suffolk, Norfolk - and there's other parts of the country that are the same.

To be honest... I hope they pull their fingers out and do something out about our county season. I think that's for the good of our first-class game as well as the T20.

And they can start by scrapping the Pro40, which is completely pointless.
 

SJS

Hall of Fame Member
Why not? I bet the English (like cricket lovers the world over) yearn for a game between great franchises (or entities/conglomerates) like the South London Super Zebras versus the South West London Super Rhinos. Matches where we can have 15 metre boundaries; sixes every second ball (instead of every third ball, which I find too little). And fortnightly trades and auctions, so we don't get bored watching the same players (or units, as I like to call them) playing for the same franchises. You know, mix and match, bells and whistles.

Get on board. The way of the future.
:laugh: :laugh:
 

Richard

Cricket Web Staff Member
To be honest... I hope they pull their fingers out and do something out about our county season. I think that's for the good of our first-class game as well as the T20.

And they can start by scrapping the Pro40, which is completely pointless.
Yes agree with that last, there is some hope that the Pro40 might be "junked" (to borrow Matthew Engel's phrase in last year's Wisden) though that won't be happening until 2011 IIRR at the earliest, as the TV schedule is locked-in until 2010. I've always thought the Pro40 an utterly useless competition.

As regards this franchise-league idea... it's certainly not a bad idea, though TBH I kinda cringe at the notion of two of them of such length as the IPL in the same year. If EPL and IPL alternated on a year-by-year basis that'd work brilliantly, but rather obviously that wouldn't be in the plans of the organisers of either.

I've never exactly liked Giles Clarke, as I've mentioned several times, and he comes accross as his usual over-forthright self in that interview. However... in a year or so's time... why not? As he said, market-research is key - if by 2010 the IPL has gone from strength to strength and there is obviously a following for it in the UK, do some more surveys and see if it would be viable. Obviously, it'd be a costly business and the ECB wouldn't want to be spending on it, but if Stanford is interested he'd surely underwrite the costs.

And if it's found that the old 2001-style model (that IIRR was when the survey which resulted in the Twenty20 Cup was done) has been superseded, go with that, and replace the Twenty20 Cup with this EPL stuff.

And hopefully while you're at it, re-instate the knockout cup, and create a merged First-Class and 50-over "league" competition. Which should have been done several years ago. Then devote 3 weeks or whatever in mid-season to this EPL lark.
 

chaminda_00

Hall of Fame Member
Franchises have worked pretty well in South Africa and there massive move in Sri Lanka to change the whole structure of domestic cricket based around 5-6 provinces. Both countries realised having 18-20 teams is too many and you hardly get the best playing the best.

The other thing is the history assoicated to things competitions that significant anymore. With the amount of players movement every year, there not much difference between allocating sides via auction (India) or alloaction (Sri Lanka) or just mergering sides (South Africa and England). Really I would be surprised if many sides in England would have half their sides these days who are locally produced players.

If you do want to have a Twenty20 competition like this you need to have only 6-8 sides for it to be effective. Also long term you can't keep developing a high quality competition with 18 teams, it just spreads the talent too thin. Regardless whether the format is Twenty20, List A or FC.
 

Richard

Cricket Web Staff Member
While I feel that 6-8 teams is probably best from a Twenty20 standpoint (much as I don't care a damn about the standard there) the fact that this country has produced cricketers of calibre with 18 First-Class\one-day teams for about 150 years kinda negates the notion that it's too many under any circumstances.
 

chaminda_00

Hall of Fame Member
While I feel that 6-8 teams is probably best from a Twenty20 standpoint (much as I don't care a damn about the standard there) the fact that this country has produced cricketers of calibre with 18 First-Class\one-day teams for about 150 years kinda negates the notion that it's too many under any circumstances.
Yeah maybe but I still personally think three divisions of six is better then the current set up. There seems to be very little difference between each division with the current set up. Which sort of defeats the intial purpose of making divisions.
 

social

Cricket Web: All-Time Legend
Where this guy has got it wrong is in assuming that it's the traditional "cricket lovers" that will be the only one to turn up to these matches - that is simply not the case.

If Mick Jagger bought the London franchise and you had a similar no. of stars to the IPL (doubtful), ground would be packed with people who'd ordinarily spend their Tuesday night in the boozer
 

Richard

Cricket Web Staff Member
Well - they might be.

However, one would have a better idea about this if they'd undertaken market-research. Which the ECB did a few years ago. I doubt you did, however.
 

Goughy

Hall of Fame Member
If Mick Jagger bought the London franchise and you had a similar no. of stars to the IPL (doubtful), ground would be packed with people who'd ordinarily spend their Tuesday night in the boozer
Im not so sure. It would have a whiff of exhibition game to it.

Ive nothing against Franchise sport but there is a cultural context and its not the format that the British public wants or respects.

Even something like County cricket moved to promotion and relegation. Franchise sport cant really support this system which has such cultural importance in all other important British sports.
 
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social

Cricket Web: All-Time Legend
Well - they might be.

However, one would have a better idea about this if they'd undertaken market-research. Which the ECB did a few years ago. I doubt you did, however.
Market research for 20/20 undertaken "a few years ago" is ancient history
 

duffer

Cricket Web: All-Time Legend
Why not? I bet the English (like cricket lovers the world over) yearn for a game between great franchises (or entities/conglomerates) like the South London Super Zebras versus the South West London Super Rhinos. Matches where we can have 15 metre boundaries; sixes every second ball (instead of every third ball, which I find too little). And fortnightly trades and auctions, so we don't get bored watching the same players (or units, as I like to call them) playing for the same franchises. You know, mix and match, bells and whistles.

Get on board. The way of the future.
:sleep:
 

BoyBrumby

Englishman
Interesting to read Clarke suggest that franchise sport has never been a success in Britain; the Super League goes over to franchises from next season, so rugby league is banking on him being mistaken. The owners of the bigger clubs in the rugby union Premiership have been angling for it for a good few years too.

What Clarke means is that it isn't the way it's done in association football, but footy's so far ahead of cricket in terms of spectator & television appeal as to be useless as a comparison. Cricket has effectively had franchises since the county championship's inception; they were just called "counties" back then. The FC game is a closed shop, albeit one that's rather too unwieldy with 18 teams.

I can see why counties would be anti any, er, streamlining of their ranks (turkeys not voting for Xmas & all), but I think a reduction is not just desirable but inevitable. I'd feel desperately sorry for the fans of the counties who did get the chop, but in other sports some proud old names have been merged or gone to the wall too.
 

Goughy

Hall of Fame Member
I can see why counties would be anti any, er, streamlining of their ranks (turkeys not voting for Xmas & all), but I think a reduction is not just desirable but inevitable. I'd feel desperately sorry for the fans of the counties who did get the chop, but in other sports some proud old names have been merged or gone to the wall too.
The interesting thing is that we already know which teams would go. The controversy would be over whether to start the process rather than which Counties do not become a Franchise.

Maybe its bad for the game at the moment with such obvious differences in size, strength and infrastructure between certain counties. Maybe the fat needs to be trimmed.

If the number of County teams were to be halved then this would be my 9 and the 9 that would lose the 'franchise'.

Kept
Durham
Glamorgan
Hampshire
Lancashire
Middlesex
Nottinghamshire
Surrey
Warwickshire
Yorkshire

I kept these 9 due to a number of factors. Firstly geographical location (3 Southern, 3 Central and 3 Northern), their facilities (Test ground and new stadia), their historical links and success in cricket, and being based at or around large population centers etc. The only really debatable one IMO is Glamorgan, though I do conceed that there are only 2 that should be guaranteed a place (Middlesex- Lords and history and Yorkshire- History, success and player production).

Gone
Worcestershire
Sussex
Somerset
Leicestershire
Kent
Northamptonshire
Gloucestershire
Derbyshire
Essex

Of this lsit I think a case could be made for Sussex (great recent record), Essex (done well over past 25 years and produced a number of quality English cricketers) and Kent (great history and possible wealthy demographics) fighting to take the place off Glamorgan in the 'Kept' group.

Im sure not everyone would agree though :)
 
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