My News
21.02.07
The Times - Cricket Scheduling
At the moment, I believe, there is too much cricket being played and I think it has been a concern for a while. It is something the authorities and future tour programmers and boards need to consider. The public, sponsors, everyone wants to see the best players playing all the time. What we will see is injuries to a lot of top players and people resting from tournaments because it has now got to the saturation point. This needs to be addressed ASAP. What is best for cricket - not what is best for the bottom line and the dollar - think of the Player.
The way I would schedule domestic cricket would be that a shield match starts every 2nd Tuesday finishing on the Friday, Saturday - day off, Sunday - T20 match. For TV you would do a double header eg. Vic-v-NSW afternoon match, QLD-V-WA night match, which will still deliver the broadcasters the 7 hour block which is crucial in regards of funding the cricket programs in Australia.
I understand, from the board's and TV perspective, that 7 hours gives them a great platform to expose sponsors and for selling advertising. However, under this format, the structure would be more in line with public demand.
My big change to cricket
I believe that there is only room for 2 forms of cricket; not 3!
I would be dropping one day cricket. It was great fun to play and when you get the top countries playing against each other and it's still fantastic BUT, one day cricket evolved from test cricket to give people entertainment in a shorter time. In this day and age everyone is in a hurry; everyone's got someone to see.
To keep people interested in cricket worldwide, the T20 phenomenon is what the public want. To me there should only be test cricket and T20.
This would mean the players would have a lot more free time and it would also allow them to play domestic cricket and be around the young players and impart their knowledge and experience to the youngsters. It is such an important part of domestic cricketers play first class cricket and club cricket. This will keep the game strong at grass roots level all the way up.
It will also mean that the players can promote the game a lot more and, with less cricket, the best players will be playing more often.
Further, I think tours should be standardised too shorter tours, 3 test matches and 3 T20 games with a couple of tour games; the tours would only be 4 to 5 weeks long maximum; not months and months.
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