Stop the ECB from taking cricket away from the counties!

[Slogger]

 To be honest as long as there is no further reduction to the county championship I couldn't care less about this. I doubt it will work in England - made up sports teams generally haven't succeeded in other sports such as rugby league. I also reckon most cricket fans live outside the big cities so there will be a difficult marketing job to be done by the ECB. They'll have to get a new audience or persuade people like me to commute into Lndon to watch. Maybe Essex could use their £1.3 million to keep the Colchester festival going? If this goes through they certainly couldn't argue that it had to go on financial grounds.......

[nat]

To be honest as long as there is no further reduction to the county championship I couldn't care less about this. I doubt it will work in England - made up sports teams generally haven't succeeded in other sports such as rugby league. I also reckon most cricket fans live outside the big cities so there will be a difficult marketing job to be done by the ECB. They'll have to get a new audience or persuade people like me to commute into Lndon to watch. Maybe Essex could use their £1.3 million to keep the Colchester festival going? If this goes through they certainly couldn't argue that it had to go on financial grounds.......

You will care when they take 80+ players from the counties to staff the city teams and leave the counties to play their CC games with diminished teams.

[JasonP]

To be honest as long as there is no further reduction to the county championship I couldn't care less about this. I doubt it will work in England - made up sports teams generally haven't succeeded in other sports such as rugby league. I also reckon most cricket fans live outside the big cities so there will be a difficult marketing job to be done by the ECB. They'll have to get a new audience or persuade people like me to commute into Lndon to watch. Maybe Essex could use their £1.3 million to keep the Colchester festival going? If this goes through they certainly couldn't argue that it had to go on financial grounds.......

The more successful it is the more it will be expanded.  If a 2/3 week tournanment works it will be doubled and then the CC will be reduced you can be pretty sure of that.  I don't think Lords or The Oval will have much trouble getting people in, the rest I'm very doubtful about.  The key to the success of the whole thing will be if they can get any free to air TV coverage, especially a few matches shown live.  If they can do that then the competition, like it or not from the Essex point of view, will be successful as far as promoting the game in this country.

[Slogger]

I don't watch T20 - I tend to follow games on the radio and leave it at that. So a question to those who do follow the format - which current Essex players would make a franchise team if the competition had been running this year?

[nat]

I don't watch T20 - I tend to follow games on the radio and leave it at that. So a question to those who do follow the format - which current Essex players would make a franchise team if the competition had been running this year?

RTD, Foster, Napier, Westley.

[JasonP]

I don't watch T20 - I tend to follow games on the radio and leave it at that. So a question to those who do follow the format - which current Essex players would make a franchise team if the competition had been running this year?

RTD, Foster, Napier, Westley.

Bopara would easily, on this years form Zaidi as well.

[IlfordEagle]

Tendo, Fossie, Westley, Ravi on form & maybe Zaidi.
I for one won't pay to go & watch these Franchise teams, sorry City teams with a token Essex player in them & I will NOT repeat NOT cheer players from Sorry, Kent etc, ordinary fans , real supporters have been sold out on this.

[golden duck]

I wonder if there is a little more to the club's support.

Big bash has a team at Sydney Olympic stadium and I wouldn't be at all surprised if one of ours ends up at Stratford Olympic Stadium. The club has clearly been a little keener on getting a game on at Stratford recently and these T20 talks have been ongoing under wraps. Putting two and two together and you get London Eagles. The 3 week window would fit the football close season. Hmm.

I have a feeling MCC might be a bit unsure about bish bash bosh super hyped T20 at Lords. Could they fit it around the Lords major match schedule?

Oval, Stratford, Manchester, Leeds, Nottingham, Birmingham, Southampton, Cardiff is my guess.

[jimmy]

To be honest as long as there is no further reduction to the county championship I couldn't care less about this. I doubt it will work in England - made up sports teams generally haven't succeeded in other sports such as rugby league. I also reckon most cricket fans live outside the big cities so there will be a difficult marketing job to be done by the ECB. They'll have to get a new audience or persuade people like me to commute into Lndon to watch. Maybe Essex could use their £1.3 million to keep the Colchester festival going? If this goes through they certainly couldn't argue that it had to go on financial grounds.......

championship will be down to ten games a year before you know if.

[Postman]

To be honest as long as there is no further reduction to the county championship I couldn't care less about this. I doubt it will work in England - made up sports teams generally haven't succeeded in other sports such as rugby league. I also reckon most cricket fans live outside the big cities so there will be a difficult marketing job to be done by the ECB. They'll have to get a new audience or persuade people like me to commute into Lndon to watch. Maybe Essex could use their £1.3 million to keep the Colchester festival going? If this goes through they certainly couldn't argue that it had to go on financial grounds.......

championship will be down to ten games a year before you know if.

Of course it will, and that is exactly what the anti-championship brigade among ex players in  the media, Atherton, Vaughan, Willis etc have been after for years. Yet another change foisted on us by those who have probably never paid to get into a cricket ground in their lives.
Actually there's a more basic point and it's about the importance of sportsmen being rooted in a team that represents their home and attracts supporters from the same place. The endless multiplication of T20 tournaments must lead before much longer to an international circuit on which the same players keep playing with or against each other month by month,a bit like Formula 1 or tennis  but under the banner of various bogus "teams" that lack any real local roots. It will attract the sort of person who just wants to be at an event for the sake of it, the kind of lamebrain who leaps about trying to catch a six or does "look at me" poses in daft disguises. Well, they can keep it as far as I'm concerned. I'm trying not to let this news spoil the end of a good Essex season but you do have to ask yourself what all the efforts have been for when the suits in power serve up this kind of thing.

[Essex Way]

Sussex, Kent and Surrey have balls.
As a members club Essex should ask the members.

[LeedsExile]

Excellent post Postman. I agree with every word. As to people suggesting Members should protest, wake up this thing is not designed to attract Members. We are resented and have no power at all. They are trying to attract "the future" supporters and could not give a monkeys about the people who actually go to championship cricket. We are totally taken for granted as they know we turn up and moan regardless.

[pablo]

Faragher's statement doesn't make sense as I thought the club were implacably opposed to franchise cricket as a matter of principle-. If three counties can try and stop it in its tracks why could'nt we?They will argue that this strictly speaking isn't a franchise but in effect it is - 80 plus players hi jacked by an unaccountable centralised body who will soon ask why they are giving the spoils away rather than keeping it for themselves. This is unequivocably a death knell for county cricket and should be opposed relentlessly at every turn. As a members club surely the whole membership should be canvassed for their views as has happened at Sussex and Somerset but of course it won't happen here as they know what the outcome would be. They will sell their soul and our souls for the shortest of short term 30 pieces of silver.

Any success achieved in the future in the 4 day or 50 over game - assuming we survive as an entity- would be devalued as for the duration of this City based farce would leave competitions as effectively 2nd team matches. The only hope is that the whole thing is such a ridiculous concept that it will fall flat on its face

[alji]

Totally agree with Pablo. If it's a success there is no way grounds staging it will want to stage games in an inferior 18 team competition as well They will want more of the city thing. 2-3 weeks is short in comparison to other countries

[Blocky]

signed.  the only way this can work is to make it happen over 2 weeks max and stop everything else.  it works in Convictland because they all live in one of 6 or 7 places. 

how many people that watch cricket actually live in London?  as somebody above said, city boys on a jolly only, and he's right.

hope it falls apart.  and I shall be bending Mr Faragher's ears later on today, if he isn't hiding in the committee room.