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Post by Wicked Cricket on Jul 22, 2019 9:11:43 GMT
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Post by flashblade on Jul 22, 2019 9:41:01 GMT
He wouldn't dare say otherwise in his position. Note that he says we can't have 4 formats and that one will have to go. Pity he wasn't asked which one. Which format would you ditch from the domestic scene, WC? |
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Post by Wicked Cricket on Jul 22, 2019 9:58:01 GMT
Easy-peezy - the 50 over. We've won the Trophy.
The future, imho, is...
T20 Vitality Blast
The 100
Championship.
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Post by flashblade on Jul 22, 2019 11:06:03 GMT
Easy-peezy - the 50 over. We've won the Trophy. The future, imho, is... T20 Vitality Blast The 100 Championship. Easy-peezy - the 50 over. We've won the Trophy. The future, imho, is... T20 Vitality Blast The 100 Championship. . . . is not the correct answer! If I knew how, I'd set up a poll on this board, asking which of the 4 formats should be dropped. Can anyone help, please? |
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Bazpan
2nd XI player
Posts: 191 
County club member: Kent
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Post by Bazpan on Jul 22, 2019 11:19:38 GMT
The Independent reported Morgan's words this way:-
"Asked if that meant he was saying the T20 Blast is the one that should be culled, Morgan shrugged and said: 'I’m not making the decisions but ... '
He did not finish the sentence but the inference was clear."
You can see why he'd have positive feelings about 50-over cricket this week, and with Euro T20 Slam and Bangladesh Premier League stints lined up (with possibly more contracts to come?) he could be starting to think that actually you can have too much T20.
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Post by longstop on Jul 22, 2019 11:45:55 GMT
Easy-peezy - the 50 over. We've won the Trophy. The future, imho, is... T20 Vitality Blast The 100 Championship. Easy-peezy - the 50 over. We've won the Trophy. The future, imho, is... T20 Vitality Blast The 100 Championship. . . . is not the correct answer! If I knew how, I'd set up a poll on this board, asking which of the 4 formats should be dropped. Can anyone help, please? Help is at hand. Reply with the exact question you want to ask and the possible responses and I will oblige. |
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Post by gmdf on Jul 22, 2019 11:50:21 GMT
The next Cricket World Cup will be in India in 2023. Are we assuming we won't try to defend our title? Giving up on 50 over cricket would mean exactly that...
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Bazpan
2nd XI player
Posts: 191
County club member: Kent
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Post by Bazpan on Jul 22, 2019 12:15:26 GMT
The poll will be interesting but it might end up being just a vote for or against the Hundred (if the latter is included). If the poll will concern which of the other three competitions will ultimately have to make way for the Hundred, that'll probably be difficult for most people to answer - no matter how strong their feelings are. The Championship will have to remain if we want to have a competent Test team (and most contributors to a county forum will regard the Championship as non-negotiable in its own right). Disposing of domestic 50-over cricket altogether would be destructive, for the reason given by GMDF (among other reasons). I'd find it easy to vote for the Blast as the competition that I least enjoy watching, but lots of people like it and it does bring in vital revenue. I'd feel like one of the blazered, panama-hatted, reactionary county members of popular legend in voting to end T20 in this country.
Just by the by, at a Kent AGM the Treasurer said that he and the rest of the club management often ask themselves "What would we do without T20?". My mate and I turned to each other and said simultaneously "Sunday League". It often gets forgotten that Sunday afternoon cricket drew big crowds. T20 wasn't the first format in modern times that had the ability to fill grounds on a weekly basis. If we must have the Hundred then I'd swap out the Blast for a Sunday League. I'm aware of how fanciful that is.
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Post by gmdf on Jul 22, 2019 12:20:54 GMT
The poll will be interesting but it might end up being just a vote for or against the Hundred (if the latter is included). If the poll will concern which of the other three competitions will ultimately have to make way for the Hundred, that'll probably be difficult for most people to answer - no matter how strong their feelings are. The Championship will have to remain if we want to have a competent Test team (and most contributors to a county forum will regard the Championship as non-negotiable in its own right). Disposing of domestic 50-over cricket altogether would be destructive, for the reason given by GMDF (among other reasons). I'd find it easy to vote for the Blast as the competition that I least enjoy watching, but lots of people like it and it does bring in vital revenue. I'd feel like one of the blazered, panama-hatted, reactionary county members of popular legend in voting to end T20 in this country.
Just by the by, at a Kent AGM the Treasurer said that he and the rest of the club management often ask themselves "What would we do without T20?". My mate and I turned to each other and said simultaneously "Sunday League". It often gets forgotten that Sunday afternoon cricket drew big crowds. T20 wasn't the first format in modern times that had the ability to fill grounds on a weekly basis. If we must have the Hundred then I'd swap out the Blast for a Sunday League. I'm aware of how fanciful that is. Good post. I'd be with you on this (but also realise it isn't going to happen anytime soon!) The best thing may well be that the 100 is a failure, and disappears after a few years... |
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Post by flashblade on Jul 22, 2019 13:42:26 GMT
. . . is not the correct answer! If I knew how, I'd set up a poll on this board, asking which of the 4 formats should be dropped. Can anyone help, please? Help is at hand. Reply with the exact question you want to ask and the possible responses and I will oblige. Thanks, longstop. My question is:"Eoin Morgan says there is not room for 4 formats in domestic English cricket. Which of the 4 contenders would you scrap?" Possible responses: - County Championship - 50 over competition - T20 Blast - The Hundred - none of these - keep all 4 Hope that's clear enough! |
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Post by hhsussex on Jul 22, 2019 21:19:02 GMT
The poll will be interesting but it might end up being just a vote for or against the Hundred (if the latter is included). If the poll will concern which of the other three competitions will ultimately have to make way for the Hundred, that'll probably be difficult for most people to answer - no matter how strong their feelings are. The Championship will have to remain if we want to have a competent Test team (and most contributors to a county forum will regard the Championship as non-negotiable in its own right). Disposing of domestic 50-over cricket altogether would be destructive, for the reason given by GMDF (among other reasons). I'd find it easy to vote for the Blast as the competition that I least enjoy watching, but lots of people like it and it does bring in vital revenue. I'd feel like one of the blazered, panama-hatted, reactionary county members of popular legend in voting to end T20 in this country.
Just by the by, at a Kent AGM the Treasurer said that he and the rest of the club management often ask themselves "What would we do without T20?". My mate and I turned to each other and said simultaneously "Sunday League". It often gets forgotten that Sunday afternoon cricket drew big crowds. T20 wasn't the first format in modern times that had the ability to fill grounds on a weekly basis. If we must have the Hundred then I'd swap out the Blast for a Sunday League. I'm aware of how fanciful that is. If the poll will concern which of the other three competitions will ultimately have to make way for the Hundred, that'll probably be difficult for most people to answer - no matter how strong their
feelings are.  Yes, that's true. It isn't easy to make choices between those formats which most of us will recognise are all relevant to keeping a team afloat, solvent and attractive to its supporters.
The Championship will have to remain if we want to have a competent Test team (and most contributors to a county forum will regard the Championship as non-negotiable in its own right).
Well that's the point that everybody agrees on and nobody bothers to examine to see if they are making sense. How negotiable is "The Championship"? In my lifetime it has moved from the post-war standard of 28 games (irregular patterns of home and away), via a short period of 32 games (some counties only), through 24 games (irregular patterns), 22 games, 20 games, 24 again, then 18 games (equally irregular, all against all) then to divisions of 9 or sometimes 10, with 16 games or 14 games, with promotion and relegation places of 2 or 3 or 1. It is clearly a non-negotiable, standard item that has stood the test of time and always produced the finest results because it is so admantine, so pure.....
No. It isn't true and it never has been. The Championship has always been mutable, adaptable to circumstance, to whim sometimes and most often to the siren song of cash. In the numeropus Golden Ages of Cricket Yorkshire, Surrey and Middlesex played many more games than Northants, Leics and even Sussex because they could and because they had the money and the sense of place to do so. Different places, different causes for pomp: Yorkshire had the appeal and land-owning capital of the Broad Acres, Middlesex the Establishment clout and of course Surrey always had the money - new money, fast money, expanding suburban property money.
None of these things had much effect on the performance of Test teams. England would lose against Australia when the winds turned against them, then much later on they would win with amateurs in a professional age. The big changes came with Packer and the televisual packaging of the game. Suddenly it mattered less what county a player came from and much more how well adapted he was for the game, and then the format of the game, in which he was playing. The selection of David Steele in 1975 was a significant straw in a wind of change, and then the rise of his versatile county colleague Peter Willey, a chap of limited talent but massive adaptibilty showed that the Championship was not king and that a player whose results in it were modest could be a match winner on another stage. From him to Mills, to the numerous 20 over bamboozling leggies and to hitters and finishers of varying quality but equal effectiveness is just another progression in the development of the game.
Of course we need some form of "first class game". The debate should not be about which of a number of competing formats shgould be cut, but about what we can agree on is the right kind of status for the games that are marketable and of interest to people in this age. There may be a place for the Hundred - why not? There may be a place for a 50 over competion - why not? But what is the status of the teams that perform in these and other formats? Should there be 18 counties, or 8 or none at all? Australia maintains its Shield sides, with very poor attendance and sometimes with no appearances from its Test players. Because they are modern professionals they are properly skilled and translate between formats. Why should England, of all nations the most innovative in cricket, the progenitors of 4-ball, 6-ball and 8-ball overs, the introducers of 65, 60, 50, 40 and 20 overs format games, why should they/we be afraid to anticipate change and to debate it?
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Bazpan
2nd XI player
Posts: 191
County club member: Kent
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Post by Bazpan on Jul 23, 2019 1:34:28 GMT
(Must get round to putting the finishing touches to my monograph 'What I Talk About When I Talk About the Specsavers County Championship').
Fair enough, HHSussex! 'Non-negotiable' was a lazy, vogueish usage of mine. You are of course quite right: the configuration of the County Championship has always been under negotiation. And yes the kind of cricket we mean by reference to it could certainly exist in forms other than a county championship. Trading concision for clarity, can I suggest that most county cricket forum contributors would insist on the retention of a domestic competition conducive to the maintenance of a Test side that's any cop, if for no other reason than that the Test skill acquisition imperative would indicate a form of domestic cricket that such folk enjoy? Not necessarily the only form; but one of our favourite ones. Multi-day, multi-innings matches between teams that mean something (even if to people who don't turn up to watch it!), and whatever else that characterises the County Championship, without it necessarily having to be a championship contested by counties. Personally I'm not all that tribal. I only support my county out of habit. But it would take me a while to acquire another, equivalent habit. Of course that wouldn't be a problem for someone starting from scratch with, say, Southern Brave.
I also totally agree with you that we should be able to expect some flexibility from our cricketers; more than they feel obliged to offer sometimes. It seems a long time ago now that Championship matches would routinely be interrupted by a Sunday League game, but I don't recall being aware that it caused players much of a problem. Now you'll get Test batsmen fresh from the IPL - or Championship batsmen with a Blast match in their recent past - batting like imbeciles and laughing it off by saying they were "still in T20 mode". Most people (if they're lucky) have jobs that differ from day to day in terms of the nature and urgency of the tasks involved, so what makes cricketers so special?! If a surgeon kills a patient by rushing what should have been a slow, delicate operation to cure a chronic condition, because he's just come off a couple of shifts of frenetic, life-saving triage, he doesn't get to chuckle ruefully and go "I think I was still in A&E mode there!".
The current discussion was prompted by Eoin Morgan saying something's got to give. Some people might disagree with Morgan, and you made the point that the debate shouldn't be about which format gets cut. Flashblade's poll includes an option for voting to retain all four competitions. By the way, our exchange has already knocked the poll off the front page. Is it worth moving it to the Polls section so it remains conspicuous?
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Post by longstop on Jul 23, 2019 5:13:34 GMT
By the way, our exchange has already knocked the poll off the front page. Is it worth moving it to the Polls section so it remains conspicuous?
You’re quite right, Bazpan. It should have been put in the Polls section. I have, of course, sacked the trainee responsible for this error. |
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Post by Wicked Cricket on Jul 23, 2019 13:11:59 GMT
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Post by flashblade on Jul 23, 2019 13:48:19 GMT
Elworthy "admits he is yet to grasp what role the tournament will play on the domestic landscape." also: "It is about me trying to understand what that promise it. What is the tournament? And that is what I am trying to get to grips with at the moment." I'm surprised that Colin Graves & Co weren't able to explain this to Elworthy when he was interviewed for the job!  |
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