🟠 Key meeting on county schedule 🟣 H*ndred deals set to be finalised 🟢 World Club Champ next Sept in England? 🔴 Surrey sign Indian spinner 🔵 Gloucs lose seamer 🥱 Kookaburra round reviewzzzzzz
I struggle with some of the points you make in the newsletter whilst also finding it a helpful and thoughtful read.
Firlst I don't see the representation of the Blast and the sacrosanct August month as the reality of post or even pre COVID cricket.
Firstly COVID did the knees in of Blast attendance and it is now slowly recovering but it was never a guaranteed cash cow and swallowed a large part of the season. As below I support a reduction in the number of games.
Fixtures wise. My memory of 2019 is of one county championship round and attendances in the blast declining for the August games as families were on holiday. Weekend games suffered most. It was the same when I played under 16s. Whilst my family didn't have the money to go away often it became impossible to raise teams in the school holidays for 50 over games. That's the reality not some glorified myth of families flocking to county games outside the larger cities which can pull by definition larger crowds.
As a county cricket fan of a smaller county I accept my fully retired member fan friends might want wall to wall county championship games but that wasn't the reality in August as the counties scrambled for the scraps of attendance through the Blast to keep the wolf from the door.
Under that model the county was slowly dying despite being one of the luckier ones to have a bit of cash to invest in non cricket businesses alongside boyant pre summer holiday crowds on Friday nights.
So I am broadly in favour of counties actually getting the same home fixtures roughly out of one day cricket in august whilst the Hundred money secures the middle term future rather than going out of business which is a real and present danger.
I'd go further on constraints on the ECB payments to counties but put it into a trust with covenants and ring fence the monies that will be distributed. Also use it as a winding down endowment to create some extra profits over the years it takes to pay out. Simply put the likes of Essex and on occasion my own cointy have shown multiple corporate and governance failings Which mean they should definitely need to show how they are spending it with an eye on viability.
Small points.
There has been a club twenty20 championship in the past. I suspect this one will live or die on the basis of TV deals in India or saudi funding it as much like the FIFA club world cup it may have limited value in the UK. It will involve a small number of English players and will no more decimate the championship than England requiring counties to rest the one day squad players. I suspect it will rather more clash with ECB England fixtures and that will create the political tensions.
The hundred could in the same way as the pcl and IPL actually lead to more competition in the Blast and throughout the wider domestic structures. It's notable the mix of players playing for India and the recent moves to widen the Pakistani professional paid first class / domestic twenty20 teams.
I personally think the proposal Surrey have put themselves behind on fixtures isn't the worst from a small county point of view. Bit I would tie it to parachute payments from a windful tax on Surrey (in principle all counties making £x profites but I'll be honest it's only Surrey that meets the threshold) that offers a small contribution to costs of other counties.
I would like to see the loans system more formalised both on the one hand to encourage more use of loan opportunities for "high ceiling" cricketers being horded but also cap numbers so pathways remain financially viable within the smaller clubs.
Anyhow I've bought you a coffee in the past and will do again.
Hi, thanks for the thoughtful post and the coffee. And thanks for 'disagreeing agreeably'.
I won't come back on all your points. But re: Blast 2019. It was a bumper year. Helped certainly by the World Cup but the trend was up. EG Group game tickets up 50% over the previous five years
Personally, I think most traditional fans accepted the Blast after some initial reservations because it clearly helped the county game. My opposition to you-know-what is that it is a Trojan Horse that will eventually ensure the end of the 18 first-class county system as we know it. It has always had financial pressure but always survived. And I agree the counties have not been professionally run or helped themselves. That intransigence has led to the ECB's draconian approach. But this involved IMO huge moral failings that I cannot forgive. I do not trust them to run the sport anymore, that includes the process of over the schedule, which is the Strauss Report re-presented without them seen to be driving it.
I struggle with some of the points you make in the newsletter whilst also finding it a helpful and thoughtful read.
Firlst I don't see the representation of the Blast and the sacrosanct August month as the reality of post or even pre COVID cricket.
Firstly COVID did the knees in of Blast attendance and it is now slowly recovering but it was never a guaranteed cash cow and swallowed a large part of the season. As below I support a reduction in the number of games.
Fixtures wise. My memory of 2019 is of one county championship round and attendances in the blast declining for the August games as families were on holiday. Weekend games suffered most. It was the same when I played under 16s. Whilst my family didn't have the money to go away often it became impossible to raise teams in the school holidays for 50 over games. That's the reality not some glorified myth of families flocking to county games outside the larger cities which can pull by definition larger crowds.
As a county cricket fan of a smaller county I accept my fully retired member fan friends might want wall to wall county championship games but that wasn't the reality in August as the counties scrambled for the scraps of attendance through the Blast to keep the wolf from the door.
Under that model the county was slowly dying despite being one of the luckier ones to have a bit of cash to invest in non cricket businesses alongside boyant pre summer holiday crowds on Friday nights.
So I am broadly in favour of counties actually getting the same home fixtures roughly out of one day cricket in august whilst the Hundred money secures the middle term future rather than going out of business which is a real and present danger.
I'd go further on constraints on the ECB payments to counties but put it into a trust with covenants and ring fence the monies that will be distributed. Also use it as a winding down endowment to create some extra profits over the years it takes to pay out. Simply put the likes of Essex and on occasion my own cointy have shown multiple corporate and governance failings Which mean they should definitely need to show how they are spending it with an eye on viability.
Small points.
There has been a club twenty20 championship in the past. I suspect this one will live or die on the basis of TV deals in India or saudi funding it as much like the FIFA club world cup it may have limited value in the UK. It will involve a small number of English players and will no more decimate the championship than England requiring counties to rest the one day squad players. I suspect it will rather more clash with ECB England fixtures and that will create the political tensions.
The hundred could in the same way as the pcl and IPL actually lead to more competition in the Blast and throughout the wider domestic structures. It's notable the mix of players playing for India and the recent moves to widen the Pakistani professional paid first class / domestic twenty20 teams.
I personally think the proposal Surrey have put themselves behind on fixtures isn't the worst from a small county point of view. Bit I would tie it to parachute payments from a windful tax on Surrey (in principle all counties making £x profites but I'll be honest it's only Surrey that meets the threshold) that offers a small contribution to costs of other counties.
I would like to see the loans system more formalised both on the one hand to encourage more use of loan opportunities for "high ceiling" cricketers being horded but also cap numbers so pathways remain financially viable within the smaller clubs.
Anyhow I've bought you a coffee in the past and will do again.
Hi, thanks for the thoughtful post and the coffee. And thanks for 'disagreeing agreeably'.
I won't come back on all your points. But re: Blast 2019. It was a bumper year. Helped certainly by the World Cup but the trend was up. EG Group game tickets up 50% over the previous five years
https://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/cricket/49797557
Personally, I think most traditional fans accepted the Blast after some initial reservations because it clearly helped the county game. My opposition to you-know-what is that it is a Trojan Horse that will eventually ensure the end of the 18 first-class county system as we know it. It has always had financial pressure but always survived. And I agree the counties have not been professionally run or helped themselves. That intransigence has led to the ECB's draconian approach. But this involved IMO huge moral failings that I cannot forgive. I do not trust them to run the sport anymore, that includes the process of over the schedule, which is the Strauss Report re-presented without them seen to be driving it.