Essex,Kent & Middlesex to play at Olympic Stadium from 2016?

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Essex,Kent & Middlesex to play at Olympic Stadium from 2016? Jun 1, 2014 20:06:46 GMT hhsussex likes this

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Post by Deleted on Jun 1, 2014 20:06:46 GMT

Now this just might save English county cricket. Instead of the half-baked T20 Bash relaunch which is simply the emperor's new clothes, finally someone is getting radical and thinking out of the box:

www.bbc.co.uk/sport/0/cricket/27517116

Fascinating that after abandoning the tight T20 schedule of past seasons for an unwieldy comp that wobbles along over four months - and promising there would be no tinkering until at least 2017 - the ECB is now encouraging a festival of T20 Bash games that would involve at least three counties playing the bulk of their home fixtures at a non-cricketing venue on drop-in pitches in an intensive two week period.

Essex taking the lead. But a cautious welcome here from Kent (who played a T20 'home' fixture at the Oval a few seasons ago and got their best ever crowd):
www.kentonline.co.uk/kent/sport/kent-chief-says-festival-future-17889/

I appreciate that not everyone wil agree. But personally I am hugely encouraged by this, which could be the halfway house we need en route to to the EPL franchises which must surely come.

Last Edit: Jun 1, 2014 20:47:58 GMT by Deleted

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Essex,Kent & Middlesex to play at Olympic Stadium from 2016? Jun 2, 2014 7:08:10 GMT

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Post by Deleted on Jun 2, 2014 7:08:10 GMT

I personally have always thought that franchise cricket would herald the end of meaningful cricket in Sussex, as the more able players will drift towards the teams who host the franchises . We may cling on to some very ordinary cricket in Sussex, but all the best players will be playing for other teams.

Having said that, I do think we could explore something akin to the rugby league weekends they have, where every team plays a match over a weekend period - and possibly one of the really big non-cricket venues such as the Olympic stadium would work. You could have this counting towards that league's points total. Reckon, if successful this could be done at least twice a year.

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Essex,Kent & Middlesex to play at Olympic Stadium from 2016? Jun 2, 2014 7:24:44 GMT

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Post by Deleted on Jun 2, 2014 7:24:44 GMT

Very reasonable post. But I think most models of a franchise plan involve the ECB retaining a large per centage of the revenues and redistributing them to the 18 counties to keep four day cricket going. In David Lloyd's variation of the scheme, we would also keep a parochical lower-key county T20 competition (perhaps more like the old JPL) but all of the big names like Gayle and Malinga and Mitchell Johnson would be in the francished version. As almost none of those bums-on-seats names play in the county T20 Bash anyway, the counties would not be losing out on anything. Surely the most important issue is to find a model that enables us to keep the county championship intact with as many of the current 18 counties as we can, and what colours the T20 teams fly under is irrelevant, as long as they provide the revenue to sustain that more traditional structure in other formats of the game?

I confess I have a totally ulterior motive that biases me in favour of the Olympic Stadium : I have a property in Stratford and spent Sat afternoon in the Olympic Park with my grandchildren. It took us 20 mins to walk there - and that was at the pace of a two year old on a tricycle!

Last Edit: Jun 2, 2014 7:39:05 GMT by Deleted