English Cricket ( MY Plan)

[chris.hinton]

1) Scrap Professional status at county level and downgrade it to semi-pro

There are too many players in the system that are not good enough to be pro and then it becomes to soft for the other players. By downgrading County Cricket it could come as a challange to the semi-pro to join the "Regional" Feeder and hopefully they will produce better cricketers.

Youngsters would get at least £150 p/w compard to at least £500 P/w if pro, This means that they suffer a loss of form or get to soft becasue of the money they earn. Bring in Semi-pro status will help English cricket.


2) 6 Regional Teams

Regional teams is a Must as it can improve the quality of English cricket as test players would play in the competition most of the time. Selection for Regional teams will be based on County Performances and they will be awarded Pro Contacts
Squad could be up to at least 20 players this will be along the same lines as Australian Cricket.

Regional teams will play each other twice in 4 day Contests and 3 regional teams will play the Touring Sides.

Overseas Players will be Allowed to play in the competition

If anyone does Badly they could risk getting downgraded to semi-pro



3) Make County Championship More Youth Oriented, so young players can develop

With most key players gone, Counties could develop a host of youngsters which will benefit England and the Regional Sides.Counties could have Overseas players to make it more competitive. County Championship will remain the same but with 2 down.2up system.


I will post the rest in time, but feel free to ask questions

 

[Eclipse]

Yeah that sound like a good system but I think many of the problems lie deeper than the system.

The teams need better coaches and most importaintly there needs to be less matches played.

cricket needs to become more perfesional.

 

[hourn]

The pommy way of cricket needs to develop into a similar way the Aussie way has.

There is too many teams and too many paid cricketers in England, and there are too many people who have no chance of playing for England who are taking up resources that can be used by other players.

There should be 6 or maximum 8 FC teams in the country, although this will never happen as it is sure to raise a few eyebrows if over half the county teams were axed from FC competition. The uproar would be huge.

 

[royGilchrist]

I am not intimately familiar with the county system as some of the others here, but I think the basic problem is there isnt enough competitiveness, and the only way to mitigate this will be by allowing as many international players to play as possible. If a team can afford the over seas player, and they think that he will be useful for the team then they should just get them.

The dilution of talent level is also a cause I think as chris mentioned, some of the american sports also go through similar problems especially hockey with all the expansion teams.

 

[hourn]

Further to what i said, what is needed:

1. Less FC Teams
2. Less FC Competitions = less cricket = more intesity in the cricket that is played
3. Under 21 Championships - all season. I've been saying we need one of these in Australian Cricket for a while
4. under 19 and under 17 championships carnivals. And seriously picked as well. Not just everyone gets a turn cricket.
5. Cricket Academy, which is gtting underway

 

[Gotchya]

That seems like a good start. But what I said earlier, any system that looks to eliminate the attitude that 'there is always a tomorrow' will do good in England atm. I am not sure about the mechanism (which chris is likely to know better) but anything that targets the laid back and lethargic attiutde of the system itself is what is needed.

 

[Bazza]

Less cricket isn't necessarily important - players don't play any more than they used to, and we always coped beforehand?

Semi pro status would be a step backwards. The great thing about a professional sport is players can afford to commit to being a full time player. If they have to work 9-5 mon-fri to support their cricket less people will be able to have a go and many talented players will be missed.

More international players = less English players, which means youngsters could miss out on chances and lose their way. If they don't establish themselves in a county side until 25, they can't get into the test team until late twenties/ early thirties which means a very short test playing career and high turnover of players.

Regional teams to play touring sides is a good idea - potential future internationals could be looked at in a competitive environment. I would like to see this, but the 20 over competition which is being introduced will not help.

 

[marc71178]

Isn't Chris' first suggestion to cut down on cricket?

 

[chris.hinton]

Originally posted by Bazzaroodoo
Less cricket isn't necessarily important - players don't play any more than they used to, and we always coped beforehand?



Semi pro status would be a step backwards. The great thing about a professional sport is players can afford to commit to being a full time player. If they have to work 9-5 mon-fri to support their cricket less people will be able to have a go and many talented players will be missed.

More international players = less English players, which means youngsters could miss out on chances and lose their way. If they don't establish themselves in a county side until 25, they can't get into the test team until late twenties/ early thirties which means a very short test playing career and high turnover of players.

Regional teams to play touring sides is a good idea - potential future internationals could be looked at in a competitive environment. I would like to see this, but the 20 over competition which is being introduced will not help.

Only 1 international player per country, If counties turned semi-pro then the hunger might come back

 

[Top_Cat]

3. Under 21 Championships - all season. I've been saying we need one of these in Australian Cricket for a while

What's the point?

1) Players who would qualify for a tournament like that would also be just about ready to play for their state in FC cricket. Guys like Michael Clarke would still be playing for NSW U/21's instead of NSW or if the best players actually did play FC cricket, the players who had little chance of playing FC cricket would comprise the team, making the whole point of having an U/21's side (effectively a development team) moot.

2) The ACB cup between the state second XI's already effectively serves this function. An U/21's competition then becomes redundant.

3) Again, making a full-season thing means that you'd have players playing for it instead of playing for their state in the senior side. And again, the best players would just play for their state and leave the mediocre players behind in U/21's. What would be the point of that?

Less cricket isn't necessarily important - players don't play any more than they used to, and we always coped beforehand?

So? The point is that it's palpably not working anymore. Bear in mind in the old days when country cricket was played every day, there weren't three pointless bloody one-day competitions to play in. And any player at that level will tell you that one-day competitions are harder on the body than county games.

I think having les teams would be a good start. It's pretty obvious that there are too many teams out there with mediocre players who average 30-35 with the bat or 25-28 with the ball in their careers, get a benefit year and retire relatively happy FC cricketers - without ever having been int he running for a Test spot. The point is; the competition for places just isn't intense enough. If a player isn't good enough to play for a Yorkshire or Surrey, then they'll go play 200 matches for Hampshire instead. Now that's all well and good but it doesn't produce Test-quality cricketers.

Here in Australia, you can be assured that every player playing for any of the FC teams had to work REALLY hard to just make the FC side. And you can be assured that in most of the teams they have to work exceedingly hard to keep their place.

An example is Queensland. They have enough pace bowlers to fill four teams in their ranks so guys like Kasprowicz and Bichel could just as effectively be replaced by Adam Dale, Ashley Noffke, Joe Dawes, Scott Brant, Mitchell Johnston etc. So the guys who are there (Noffke, Bichel, Kasper) have to work REALY REALLY hard to keep their places as there are effective replacements. And it's like that throughout the states.

Dividing the counties into divisions was a good start. Now they have to go on with it and ensure that the best counties play against each other much more than against the lower ones.

 

[hourn]

Originally posted by Top_Cat

3. Under 21 Championships - all season. I've been saying we need one of these in Australian Cricket for a while

What's the point?

1) Players who would qualify for a tournament like that would also be just about ready to play for their state in FC cricket. Guys like Michael Clarke would still be playing for NSW U/21's instead of NSW or if the best players actually did play FC cricket, the players who had little chance of playing FC cricket would comprise the team, making the whole point of having an U/21's side (effectively a development team) moot.

2) The ACB cup between the state second XI's already effectively serves this function. An U/21's competition then becomes redundant.

3) Again, making a full-season thing means that you'd have players playing for it instead of playing for their state in the senior side. And again, the best players would just play for their state and leave the mediocre players behind in U/21's. What would be the point of that?

1) there aren't many guys going around now that are under 21's and playing FC cricket. Maybe one or two per state. Therefore those players would be free to play for their state if they are selected. This would mean that the VERY elite under 21 players would not be playing in a national u/21 competition, but i dont think it would devalue the competition too much because all players in it would be of an extremely high standard. This is also serves as an answer to why the standard of the competition wouldn't be compromised as you mentioned in point (3)

2) Fair point, but i still feel there is value in an under 21 competition. The ACB is a very good competition and is invaluable because it pits 2nd XI's against each other, but i dont think that this competition is promoted properly. An under 21 competition could be promoted reasonably well and give these guys some exposure.

 

[anzac]

Atherton made an interesting comment during the 3rd Test re England trying to turn out all the same type of pitch at all the main venues - from what I gather this was not only in reference to seam / spin etc but also to pace & bounce!!!!

That to me is absurd because you are either going to come up with something that will be no good for certain types of bowling & batting strokes, or you are going to go for a 'happy medium' which is going to amount to the same sort of thing.

All you will achieve in the long run is a team of robots suited to batting / bowling under one set of conditions. This may be ok if those conditions are almost exclusive to your environment & give you a good home advantage, but you could still be total crap elsewhere!!!



:duh:

 

[chris.hinton]

ok then

4) Get Rid of Poor Coaches

There are a lot of Coaches in the english System who are very poor and do not command the respct of the players. They are also Yesturday man and Either Get with the times or Get out, in some Conuties they is the "Old Pals Act" where people give the friends jobs regards of there Ability, It time that younger more "Open-Minded" Coaches came to the fray.


5) More Open Minded People in cricket

Coaches and Manager at youth level have to be open-minded and not choose the "Chosen Few " to coach and leave the rest to suffer if everyone was coached the same and effectivly England will produce more Cricketers. Youth Cricket Coaches are Directed by Parents (Who have the most Money) and some Parents Invite Caoches to dinner so there Sons can get a Better Chance

6) Terry Jenner

I have Explain the reason behind this in "Me on leg-spin" Thread

7) Better Coaches and Facilities

Because of my Proposal of Downgrading the Status from Pro to semi pro this frees up money to be invested at Grass roots level, Facilities could improve and Coaches could be better organized, and at Club Cricket Level the Counties could give them Funding

 

[Rik]

Well if you look at Surrey most of their players out-do themselves, they have the will to win. They seem to be the most Australian thinking team in England and play an aggressive and fast scoring game. I'd love to see how they fared against a team like NSW or Queensland. If every team had the attitude of Surrey we would be much stronger as an International Team. They also have strength in depth, I mean they can afford to let Giddins go and have Stewart and Tudor and Thorpe out of the squad and yet still win...and they have players like Shahid who are still ok with being dropped after scoring 100, people who are more interisted in the success of the team than personal gain...

 

[Andre]

Are you going to send this to the ECB? With all due respect, it's well thought out, but hardly anything, bold, new or unheard of. There are also many, many reasons why it simply won't work.

 

[Neil Pickup]

I'll see what I can do about 4 and 5 next season... well, from small acorns...

 

[age_master]

i would merge 2 teams into 1 so that there were 9 county teams, i would also have an u/19 competition, at under 21 most good players (players with good potential are already playing FC cricket)

 

[chris.hinton]

Originally posted by Andre
Are you going to send this to the ECB? With all due respect, it's well thought out, but hardly anything, bold, new or unheard of. There are also many, many reasons why it simply won't work.

Tell me Please

 

[The Argonaut]

My theory on this has been posted before and goes like this. Keep the 18 county sides but have this competition as the 2nd tier. Have 3 teams feed their best players into 6 regional teams. This will improve both competitions as players will strive to get promoted into the top level and the top level [players will want to stay there.

Reduce the amount of cricket played and make it count.

Have overseas players play at county level only not at elite level. The elite level should be made up of the best 70-80 English players playing against each other.

I don't like the semi-pro idea though the wages of the county players would have to go down using this model.

The Aussie state level players play no more than 50 days of cricket at this level every season. This would be just over half that the English players would play. This would have to have some impact on the amount of injuries that the English seem to suffer at most times over the years.

Can someone tell me the last time the English were able to pick their best squad to go overseas after their season. It is very rare for Australia to play away with their best players at home injured and if it does happen then it is usually only one player out. Recently it has been either Lee, Warne, Gillespie and occasionally Steve Waugh. Something for the English to aspire to.

Anyway just some ideas.

 

[marc71178]

Can someone tell me the last time the English were able to pick their best squad to go overseas after their season.

In theory last winter the best choice eleven was all fit, but some opted out, and in the case of Gough IMO that caused his injury which has all but ended his career.