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Furball fixes English cricket
- Thread starter Furball
- Start date
Jono
Virat Kohli (c)
Segments of the Australian media want Clarke gone as captain and some as a cricketer all together. This despite lots of wins and centuries under his leadership. It is ruthless here.
2
Its nonsense that the counties cant exist without the ECB. They are supported yes but they are also burdened in so many ways with expenses that are not needed to run first class cricket, including facilities, academies, second Xi s and far to few matches.
You suggested mergers also indicate you are not quite aware of the attendances counties get. Letting Glamorgan swallow Somerset is sort of like merging Manchester United and Bolton Wanderers but doing so in Bolton´s name and place. Somerset probably get three time bigger crowds. And its not three men and a dog either. The last figures I saw was 7,000 for a match. Allowing for poor weather, this likely means that Somerset will get 10,000 over a first class game in fine weather. And thats without including members. Its hardly cheap either with entrance often somewehre around £20
There is lots of potentiel in the county game. I would go the complete opposite way and proffesionalise the Whole county game. 38 counties. England is by far the richest cricket country, there is zero transport costs, and there are lots of people WHO will happily go Watch a locally played county game.
Ideally it could be the Work horse for first class cricket Worldwide. What is so often forgotten is that fringe players or Young talent need jobs. A major reason for the decline of the windies is the lack of acces to English cricket in modern times. Reducing the first class game in the only place where it Works will be the very best way of ending the game altogether.
its not a no-brainer. Counties have said for years that they get the poorest crowds on saturdays yet continue to be critisized for not staging cricket on saturdays to entice crowds...
County cricket is not a big enough event for people with normal jobs to set aside an entire day after a full working week and for retired people, well saturday is often the busiest day of the week. First class cricket should aim for its nieche not try to compete with Britain´s hyper-competitive weekend market. Less than half of people have a normal working week after all. The challenge for county cricket is not that people with a traditional working week cannot attend during the week but why 99% of retired people dont attend.
flibbertyjibber
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You wait to see what our lot say tomorrow lol
GIMH
Norwood's on Fire
Yeah fair enough
marc71178
Eyes not spreadsheets
I'd love to know in what world facilities, academies and second XIs are not needed to run the game. Do we just magic up players in 5 years time?
I call bull****. If Somerset's tickets are around £20 and their total income for 2014 (including T20 etc) was about £460k, that's about 23,000 for the season, so how is 10,000 for one match likely?
Paying for it with magic beans no doubt? Most of the existing counties are struggling to survive so how will another 20 manage to a) afford to set up and b) run?
-facilities, academies, second XIs are fine but they are not essential to keep professional cricket going. And my point was that its a tired old cliche that county cricket would die without ecb grants. Its one of those stupid ways the game talks itself down.
- I dont know where you got that 460k figure. looking at Somersets site, they claim 1.5m for admission and membership. That alone could run pro cricket even without considering the rapidly rising sponsorship deals that all counties make. Its a complete nonsense that counties ae struggling to survive. Revenue rises ever year at a far higher pace than elsewhere. Its the same in all of sports. In 10 years time all counties will have far higher income levels than today but there will still be people talking about how they can possible survive. Championship cricket have for many years hovered around a 500,000 total attendance. By pure logic accounting for weather and difference level og support an overall avergae of 4,000 per match will inevitably mean that sometimes 10,000 are reached. Indeed the top game is usual Yorkshire at Scarborough where they get up to 20,000 over 4 days
- last years new deal for ICC events gave the ECB an estimated extra 15m every year to play with that. That alone could finance 7-8 new counties or twice that if lower division counties only got smalle grants as I think they should. But thats nothing compared to the ECBs own new tv deal up for renewal in a few years time. A massive rise is extremly likely considering the current old long-running sorry deal. This increase could like finance 100 new counties if need be.
vic_orthdox
Global Moderator
Sounds good, just do no development and pick the best club cricket players at 18+ to play for your county. Am sure there'll be no issues with the products coming into county teams then...
They actually cut the Counties signing factor by 10 %,except provisions for local players,that hasn't stopped counties hiring overseas as locals,they must be 3rd party deals in my thinking ,cause players like Cosgrove,Cooper and Taylor come at a cost,if you look at Notts who have theoretically the same money as Leicester you wonder if their are 3rd poarty deals involved,involving sponsers.
On Graves he has said he would like to expand the comp.I'd like to see a club based in Scotland,as their aren't many Scots on 1st contracts,plenty playing 2nds but thats pittance.
On Graves he has said he would like to expand the comp.I'd like to see a club based in Scotland,as their aren't many Scots on 1st contracts,plenty playing 2nds but thats pittance.
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marc71178
Eyes not spreadsheets
So remove all facilities etc and players will improve - OK.
As for the ECB grants, well without it Somerset would've lost over £1.5m last year (only using them as I've got their accounts in front of me to disprove your other points).
I got the £460k from their accounts, ignoring the memberships as you initially claimed.
You clearly don't know what you're talking about finance wise - £1.5m would cover about 60% of their playing staff costs, and there's other costs as well.
Also, yes income will go up, because of inflation but guess what else goes up because of inflation - that's right, costs.
Oh, and for average of 4,000, try about 3,500 per match, so if you have 10,000 at a game then you have a lot of games with almost nobody there. Oh, and they did get 20,000 at Yorkshire 70 years ago, but I'm not sure how that's relevant now?
How does £15m finance 7-8 new counties, paying them magic beans again are you?
wpdavid
Hall of Fame Member
Something like that, although I'd combine counties for the 4-day games and leave them alone for the one-day competitions.
A fundamental problem with the current arrangement is still that players with D2 counties are supposed to develop into international players whilst playing with and against the mediocrity that is the 2nd Division, and it just doesn't happen. And tbh a fair chunk of D1 isn't great anyway.
As other have said, I wouldn't involve Ireland in our domestic set-up.
And I'd slightly tweak your suggestions.
Looking at my map of the UK, I'd combine Lancashire with Derbyshire for the 4-day games and bring Northants into the East Midlands grouping with Notts & Leics.
It wouldn't solve everything, but at least there would be a clear means of progression for the better players. And if the financial rewards more higher for those in the groupings, that might motivate enough of them to work at their games rather than settle for mediocrity. Actually, I suspect that nine regions is too many, but I'm too much of a traditionalist to go further than that.
And yes, the CC would cease to exist in its current format. It would be unreasonable to have two divisions of counties if they're effectively being penalised for producing better players. So that would be the level underneath the combined sides, probably playing each other once a season whereas the regions play each other twice.
Furball
Evil Scotsman
This isn't 'Furball fixes Australian cricket' ****
Scaly piscine
Cricket Web: All-Time Legend
I reckon make the CC two divisions of 11 and 7. The 11 play against each other once (10 matches each). The 7 play each other home and away (12 matches each). 1 promotion/relegation spot.
Durham are the only side not to have been in Division Two. It shouldn't be so easy to go down. There needs to be more stability in the top flight to promote some of the elitism in the top division like is seen in rugby. There needs to be a bigger gulf in quality.
I would also suggest other differentiation between the two divisions. More Test-like playing conditions in Division 1 - 5 days of 90 overs each. So teams in the two divisions play roughly the same number of days (Division sticks to the 4 days of 96 overs stuff). More foreign players allowed in Division 1.
Generally speaking I would have County Cricket start later in the day whenever possible. I don't see any advantage to finishing at 5.30pm when a lot of people come and watch after school/work etc. and the light is perfectly good for a long time after for most of the season.
Durham are the only side not to have been in Division Two. It shouldn't be so easy to go down. There needs to be more stability in the top flight to promote some of the elitism in the top division like is seen in rugby. There needs to be a bigger gulf in quality.
I would also suggest other differentiation between the two divisions. More Test-like playing conditions in Division 1 - 5 days of 90 overs each. So teams in the two divisions play roughly the same number of days (Division sticks to the 4 days of 96 overs stuff). More foreign players allowed in Division 1.
Generally speaking I would have County Cricket start later in the day whenever possible. I don't see any advantage to finishing at 5.30pm when a lot of people come and watch after school/work etc. and the light is perfectly good for a long time after for most of the season.
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