How can local cricket be reformed to attract new fans? Photo: Getty Images/Ben Hoskins.
We've asked Telegraph Sport readers for solutions to the problems facing county cricket, and we've received a plethora of responses.
We've compiled the most common suggestions below to create a manifesto. for a new graphics game. Scroll down the page to read Skyld Berry's verdict to readers. manifest.
How to host a county seasonStart the season with a 50+ tournament
Most of the county season structure survey participants agreed that participating in a 50+ person event in April was the right decision, as it would allow the county championship to be played in better conditions and will also restore prestige to the format.
Bob Bayliss' clearly expressed the mood of many of the submissions:
Start the season in early April with 50-over group games. While some counties' the best performers in this format will be at the IPL, with more available than it currently hosts with The Hundred. Play in the county championship from late April to mid-September.
Some readers suggested a knockout format from the start in a 50+ man tournament, including secondary counties in the competition, while others favored entering the competition at the very end of the season.
However, most wanted the season to start with one-day cricket, moving the red ball to a more favorable climate.
Play County Championship matches Thursday through Sunday
While readers wanted the county season to start later, readers generally agreed with the fact that each week a separate slot is required for the championship rounds. While some favored games from Friday to Monday, more readers wanted Thursday to Sunday blocked.
Jim Johnston, one reader who advocated games running Thursday through Sunday, claims they will improve crowds and increase the number of people who can attend:
All games must start on Thursday to end on the weekend, making membership attractive for non-pensioners.
Two league divisions with promotion and relegation
While many readers would like to see options for three divisions out of six, and others would like to see the number of districts reduced, most still support a two-division, promotion-and-relegation system.
Charles Searle
Charles Searle
strong> wrote:
You need to keep promotion and relegation in the league as it makes it more competitive for teams and fun for spectators/fans.
There were several bids that called for the division of the two divisions into north and south groups. , mainly to encourage field support and reduce travel, but most were happy with the current two-unit structure.
Do four day games have to change in order to survive? Photo: Guzelian/Asadour Guzelian What to do with the Hundred? Get rid of her
The vast majority of readers want the 100 gone, at least in the male game. Submissions for the manifesto mostly acknowledged the benefits for the women's game, but considered it not for the men.
Richard Brinkmanreflected the opinion of many readers:
The regiment for men is unnecessary and useless for the national team and loses quality. This is an average product. Keep up the good work for women.
Reduce T20 games
Nearly all readers feel that there is no place for either Blast or Hundred in the men's schedule, and T20 is the preferred format in the men's schedule. representation. Although there were several suggestions that the T20 tournament should be a kind of franchise competition or just include eight districts, most wanted to shorten its duration in order to focus more on red ball cricket.
< strong>James A . presented the following as an argument:
The 100 should be canceled or minimized in any way possible, because it is too close to T20 and therefore weakens the cheerful Burst. Too short a form is distracting and reduces the chances that T20 will be the most effective vehicle for attracting youth to Test/FC cricket. >Should one of the Explosion or the Hundred give way? Credit: Getty Images/Nathan Stirk How to Increase County Game EngagementUse more county suburbs
Using county suburbs more often was one of the most popular suggestions made by Telegraph readers, largely due to the improvement in atmosphere that small venues can create. provide.
Steve Jackson agreed with this sentiment and pointed out that some counties are already doing this:
It is very important that the use of outgrounds is encouraged. On the outskirts, especially in the middle of summer, there is much more atmosphere than in the sparsely populated arena of test matches. In a sense, this trend is already being seen: in Lancashire, for example, three gates are used this season.
Free admission for children
Telegraph readers gave many different tips on how to get more people through the gates of reverse county membership, free entry to away games for members, and discounts for those over 65.
However, the most common suggestion was free entry to territory of 18 and under to attract more people and ensure that future generations become fans of the district's game.
Another alternative proposal. , which was not included in the manifest but is worth writing down, came from Graham Carr, which offered free tickets to first-class matches with the purchase of T20 tickets.
County Championship TV Contract
While many readers noted that county YouTube streams greatly improved the county championship experience, most felt that contracting to broadcast the red ball game would be a vital step forward, especially if it were free. air.
Other readers have suggested simply improving the quality of the county's streams, which vary greatly at the moment.
How can the County Championship draw more fans through the turnstile? Credit: Getty Images/Stu Forster How to improve the quality of cricket in the area. Penalize low stakes and encourage spins with higher quality fields.
Some Telegraph readers favored three-day first-class matches with more overs per day.
Others simply wanted the full number of overs to be run every day, with the introduction of hard penalties that ranged from point deductions. , penalizing referees, shortening lunch and tea times.
The most common suggestion on how to improve re-evaluation was to encourage more spin and reduce seam dominance in county play. This will improve the variety of shows for fans and provide more cricket games.
Roger Pugh wrote:
Endless overs in mediocre bowling is a real 'switch' casual spectators, both in terms of slow overrun and lack of variety.
The key to this is to improve the pitches so they're not green stalkers, but having end-of-season matches and using outdoor pitches as well will encourage more spin bowling in a first-class game.
More players from England at the show
Ensuring that England players were more involved in county cricket, especially red ball play, was another hugely popular proposal to save the county game. Players from England will improve the quality and also help attract fans.
Given the current international calendar and the attractiveness of the T20 franchised leagues, this will not be easy. However, the removal of the Hundred will free up England players to play more for their respective counties, especially as they are being replaced by the shorter T20 competition.
Telegraph Sports Analysis There is a compromise solution for Hundreds
Skyld Berry
Hundreds and hundreds of responses have shown how deeply our readers care about local cricket, and how much they want to improve the unsatisfactory internal structure .
The consensus on the necessary reforms is clear: the start of the season in the first week of April only serves to further marginalize the County Championship; that the season should start with competitions of more than 50 people in April; that the Women's Hundred works; while the men's 100 is not.
The 100 is seen as the crux of the problem because the entire month of August occupies a format that tries to reinvent the wheel and which, since its first novelty season in 2021, failed to capture the imagination.
After processing all the answers and resorting to the good old English skill of compromise, a solution may come up that may not be acceptable to everyone, but at least unpleasant.
Objections to The 100 tend to be format related, not franchise related, which is important. In order to attract spectators in addition to the traditional audience, English cricket must attract people of South Asian origin, who currently make up one third of club cricketers in the UK. From anecdotal evidence I've heard, no more than a few hundred Asian viewers have ever attended the Vitality Blast game played by the counties; the identity of a city (as is the case with three hundred franchises) or a region (three more) is much more attractive.
But if eight hundred franchises are going to consume August, which the ECB has signed contracts for until 2028, the format needs to be changed. Experiments with five-ball sets and 100-ball countdowns have generally not caught on in the men's game (the women's game in England, having been professionalized for less than a decade, may have a more flexible approach). ). And it seems like most of our respondents wouldn't mind a 20-over format that would make the 100 a higher standard than counties. A T20 competition, but in addition to it, not replacing it.
The difficulty, of course, lies in the name: is it possible to continue to call an eight-team franchise competition a hundred when it consists of 20 overs? Or could we combine the best of both worlds and have the first 15 six-ball overs as usual, and then ten-ball overs at the end of each inning, providing a culmination of multiple opportunities? This is an experiment that the ECB should have done when they tried different formats for the 100 but didn't.
So the search for the perfect internal schedule continues with our readers' manifesto as a valuable contribution.
In the meantime, for further reading, may I take the liberty of recommending my new county cricket book as the rise of 20+ man franchise tournaments around the world threatens to flood it : A Disappearing World: Our 18 First-Class Counties.
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