Proposed new English franchise tournament

I think that the answer will be not to follow soccer but the Rugby Union, where the game was transformed over a protracted period of negotiations and a holistic approach was adopted to salary caps, recognising that players will derive income from a number of sources and that their management contracts need to be monitored. There is a very good and detailed listing of how it works and what is taken into account here www.premiershiprugby.com/salary-cap/

Unfortunately I haven't been able to find anything comparable on the ECB website to describe how their salary cap scheme operates, or even what the numbers are for this year.

Do they? It doesn't seem to add up to anything more than another Phil Space article. Consider first of all what is being presented, a YouGov survey that has then been massaged and positioned by a professional marketing company. YouGov invites people to sign up for its surveys and then asks questions, rather than any kind of random sampling. There's no mention of demographics in the report www.smg-insight.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/02/SMGIYG-SportsIndex-2017-Annual-Report-online.pdf
which probably means that those who've answered the question “Over the PAST TWO WEEKS, which of the following sporting events have you heard something positive/negative about?" are those who are interested in sport in the first place. That would tend to mean that the results are much more swayed by a kind of insider interest than a sample taken, say of all those between 14 and 70, with corresponding bands of age, consumer class rating and gender to provide better and deeper analysis.

Therefore it is probably reflecting that the ECB have done a very good job of marketing the NatWest Blast and raising awareness amongst those who have an interest in sport. That's good news for the traditionalists who claim the ECB are out to destroy the historic county structure and have no interest in their tournaments. On the contrary, it shows that they can do a very effective job of selling it to the existing consumer base. That is why a growing number of cricket lovers believe that the ECB management has a great deal of credibility and skill, and why we think it could do an even better job of arranging a new tournament that will bring in all those who DO NOT currently fill in YouGov surveys.

No, I'm not saying that at all. Well-conducted market surveys that are as near as possible free from bias in a purely statistical sense, and that can be analysed to show the different perceptions of age, gender, income and other groupings are enormously valuable and must always be encouraged if we are to have any basis to make progress. These are facts, not false facts or alternative facts or any other kind of stupid Trumpish rubbish, and in any sphere of life there must be a reliable evidence base on which to build a case.

This one doesn't seem to meet those criteria, and that is why it cannot be used to meet the facile conclusions that GD suggested in his routine 1000-words-will-this-do article.

Ah, the curse of selective quotation! Read again..."Well-conducted market surveys that are as near as possible free from bias in a purely statistical sense"

That has nothing to do with vested interests or any dark secrets or forces of unseen illuminati, it is simply about using logic and proceeding from hard evidence to a conclusion. If you are lazy or stupid and don't structure your survey properly then it is entirely capable of being misinterpreted and manipulated by all sorts of other lazy and stupid people. It doesn't mean that the survey has been rigged, just that it is conducted poorly. That can be a boon to unscrupulous marketing companies, in that they can sell the results of their "research" to the highest bidder, confident that it is so loosely defined as to make any interpretation equally credible.

The ECB were very clear from their own research, shared with Sussex and other counties last autumn, that there is a potentially large marketplace for those who are NOT currently cricket enthusiasts, and that marketplace cannot be reached by the traditional competition. Part of the reason why they are so certain about that is that the associations of the traditional county structure may be very warm and sympathetic to those of us who have grown up with cricket but are actually toxic to the untapped audience. For many people sporting associations don't follow county lines but are triggered by other loyalties, not necessarily geographical. Manchester United have many more followers than live within Greater Manchester; the Boat Race has an emotional appeal to a lot of people who have no ties of any kind to either Oxford or Cambridge Universities; motor racing fans have long since ceased to care whether Ferrari is represented by Italian drivers or Mercedes by Germans. This audience relates to personalities and has very few qualms whether Tymal Mills represents Sussex, or Hyderabad or any other club. It is Tymal Mills that is the draw.

According to George Dobell, the ECB has issued a "financial threat to obstructionist counties" re the forthcoming vote on the proposed City based tournament:

www.espncricinfo.com/county-cricket-2017/content/story/1086257.html


Any county wishing to vote against will need to find sufficient allies to ensure that the tournament is voted down. Much as I believe in the need for the new competition, reading GD's list of key points, it is beginning to resemble a dog's breakfast. 

Lizzie Ammon in The Times reports "At least six of the non-Test match counties have become increasingly concerned that they are being asked to vote to change the existing constitution, removing their power of veto and, for the first time, allowing the ECB to introduce tournaments that don’t include all 18 counties . . . "  Executives from the category B and C counties — those that do not host Test matches — are meeting on March 20 to discuss their concerns. 

Watch this space - with interest.


www.thetimes.co.uk/article/c68d0390-05cf-11e7-ae09-71f14792998a

Fb,

Lizzie Ammon is another journalist who is anti the CBT, so anything she writes will reflect her opposition and emphasise disquiet
amongst the counties.