The Cricket Thread

[Tony Towner]

It doesn't make you a twat, but you'd be watching a T20 game tonight as you would have done 5 years ago without any of the wider disruption which has been for nothing. The product wouldn't have been worse and the players would have been broadly similar

 

[ROVERT47]

Understand that, I was always happy watching the T20, a market has been coined though whether that’s right or wrong, my Wife, no big cricket fan, enjoys it and my eldest who’s never been into cricket watches it occasionally.

 

[Tony Towner]

...but they are ditching the format

 

[ROVERT47]

That's why they are ditching the format

Well quite, it’s not a game for the aficionados, but as you can see with the crowds, it something that people find enjoyable.

 

[Carrotdude]

The only good thing about it is that it’s on terrestrial tv - but of course they could have done that with a t20 competition

 

[North Shropshire Lad]

Understand that, I was always happy watching the T20, a market has been coined though whether that’s right or wrong, my Wife, no big cricket fan, enjoys it and my eldest who’s never been into cricket watches it occasionally.

This is the bit I don't get.

Why would someone [your wife and son in this instance] start watching a game that is in two innings of 100 balls but never watched/watches a game or have any interest in a game where they play two innings of 120 balls? I'm sure it's not because Surrey are call the Oval Invincibles, as it's highly unlikely someone who's never watched cricket before has any idea what the Oval is or where it is etc.

Serious question as I don't understand how or why the Hundred is attracting an audience that the T20 Blast couldn't.

 

[sycophantia]

This is the bit I don't get.

Why would someone [your wife and son in this instance] start watching a game that is in two innings of 100 balls but never watched/watches a game or have any interest in a game where they play two innings of 120 balls? I'm sure it's not because Surrey are call the Oval Invincibles, as it's highly unlikely someone who's never watched cricket before has any idea what the Oval is or where it is etc.

Serious question as I don't understand how or why the Hundred is attracting an audience that the T20 Blast couldn't.

Because its free to watch on terrestrial TV?

 

[ROVERT47]

This is the bit I don't get.

Why would someone [your wife and son in this instance] start watching a game that is in two innings of 100 balls but never watched/watches a game or have any interest in a game where they play two innings of 120 balls? I'm sure it's not because Surrey are call the Oval Invincibles, as it's highly unlikely someone who's never watched cricket before has any idea what the Oval is or where it is etc.

Serious question as I don't understand how or why the Hundred is attracting an audience that the T20 Blast couldn't.

Probably because it ain’t the Long room at Lords.

 

[Sniffer]

The marketing budget of the Hundred is off the scale compared to the T20 blast.
The T20 competition was well attended prior to the hundred which has taken an audience away on a falsehood.

 

[North Shropshire Lad]

Clearly Rovert47 has access to other channels as he states he 'was always happy watching the T20'. But his wife or son never watched those, so while terrestrial TV will have been an argument for some, it was something else here.

 

[North Shropshire Lad]

Probably because it ain’t the Long room at Lords.

I don't understand this. T20 Blast or IPL or Big Bash are hardly stuffy bacon and egg tie cricket.

 

[Wolftone]

I could make it much more exciting. I could do it with loads of sports. But they'd eventually be unrecognisable.

 

[Paddingtonwolf]

I don't understand this. T20 Blast or IPL or Big Bash are hardly stuffy bacon and egg tie cricket.

He is trying and failing dismally to make an anti-traditionalist point

 

[Deutsch Wolf]

We now have no proper 50 over competiton (to the inevitable detriment of the England ODI team), have downgraded an already good T20 competition (the oldest one in the world) and have a ridiculous stanza in our home Test calendar. For a tournament with made up teams that lots of cricket fans dislike on numerous levels, and that also disenfranchises lots of the counties and their fans (if you're a Sussex fan for instance, who are you rooting for here?).

If you think having a few games on BBC Two is worth all that - with some odd non-sequitur about how it's not 'stuffy' like er, T20 games at Chelmsford or Taunton? - then I don't know what to say.

 

[Tony Towner]

Probably because it ain’t the Long room at Lords.

That's a pathetic, ill informed and cricketing terms uneducated response tbf

 

[Deutsch Wolf]

I don't understand this. T20 Blast or IPL or Big Bash are hardly stuffy bacon and egg tie cricket.

Worth pointing out that Lord's hardly hosts T20. Middlesex only play some of their Blast games there and England haven't played a T20 there since 2009.

 

[Paddingtonwolf]

EDITED TO ADD FURTHER POINTS

There was once a perfectly good T20 competition that involved all 18 counties. There was a perfectly good 50 over competition that involved all the counties too. Tests were played in the best period of the English summer.

This was ditched for crisp sponsored bollocks that disenfranchised nearly 50% of the counties on a whim. As a Somerset fan I am not interested in following a non-Somerset franchise. I am not a Glamorgan fan so I have no team in this shit idea.

Imagine a new football competition taking in only the top ten premier league sides and excluding Wolves but being told Aston Villa is who you should follow. Then up that a bit as Somerset have been twice runners up in the county championship and finalists in all the one day competitions in the last few years. But Taunton isn't as commercially viable to the hundred marketing department so out you go. And THAT is my main reason for fucking despising it.

On top of this, the 50 over format is destroyed, turned into a second XI competition as all the best players at all the counties are removed to play in the Hundred. So the England 50 over team suffers.

And the test team - the best six weeks of the season conditions-wise have no test cricket. Somerset are lucky enough to supply both England spinners at the moment. There is a good reason for that. Taunton is the best spinning pitch in the country. And yet even Cyderabad cannot support a two spinner attack early in the season so we had to send Bashir out on loan. Taunton is at its best in late July and August. And because of the hundred, it might as well lie fallow in that period as the only games on it are second XI. The good spinners are carted off to other venues with super short format and ridiculous fields with batsmen set on trying to hit every ball into neighbouring postcodes. So the spinners don't learn their craft as well as they could, and the batsmen seem to develop only one way to try and combat the spinning ball, rather than innings building against it. This is bad news for test and ODI formats.

Over here, the Australian test summer doesn't stop for the Big Bash. It runs alongside, and players are released to and from the test team. Warner and Smith flew down to be available for their big bash teams in semi-finals and were back with the test squad the next day. In a rather bigger country. Once players are in the Hundred, that is it. That is all they play for half the season. Which is shit for player development.

Also, is the Hundred bringing in the best overseas talent in the way the IPL draft sadly does? No.

In summary, it is a blot on the English cricketing landscape, doing untold damage to all formats, and for no benefit whatsoever.

So comments like it ain't the long room at Lords as a reason to keep this circus is frankly ignorant cuntery and best ignored.

 

[Tony Towner]

I can't say definitively, but I'm not sure the members of the Test grounds are interested either. Warwickshire do very little in social media to support the Birmingham team, which presumably is to avoid a backlash. I'm sure they have their.own social media account, but still.

 

[Deutsch Wolf]

I can't say definitively, but I'm not sure the members of the Test grounds are interested either. Warwickshire do very little in social media to support the Birmingham team, which presumably is to avoid a backlash. I'm sure they have their.own social media accounts, but still.

I think NotSurrey are the exception to the rule.

Much like the IPL - I have no idea who plays for who. To develop Pad's idea, imagine this hypothetical football tournament but all the players get swapped about. Who does De Bruyne play for, who does Saka play for, who does Palmer play for, who does Alisson play for, no-one knows. They're just hired hands. Oh and England say that Alexander-Arnold, Rice, Stones and Foden can only play about 2 games a season.

It'd be derided, we already had a league didn't we.

 

[Wolftone]

I think NotSurrey are the exception to the rule.

Much like the IPL - I have no idea who plays for who. To develop Pad's idea, imagine this hypothetical football tournament but all the players get swapped about. Who does De Bruyne play for, who does Saka play for, who does Palmer play for, who does Alisson play for, no-one knows. They're just hired hands. Oh and England say that Kane, Rice, Stones and Foden can only play about 2 games a season.

It'd be derided, we already had a league didn't we.

Who do Doc and Max play for though