3-Team Cricket

[TheLocalYokel]

Not being a big fan of 20:20 cricket (I liken it to 5-a-side football compared with the real thing) I thought that the ECB's new toy The Hundred (this summer's inaugural season was axed because of the virus) was about as far as anyone might stretch the Great Game's format.

I was wrong.

In South Africa they've come up with an idea where three teams contest a match - a single match that is, not a round-robin tournament.

Out of curiosity I watched a bit of it on Red Button tv today. I felt a bit like how I imagine Americans feel when they watch 'proper' cricket. I can understand why 20:20 has gained an audience, partly a new audience it's reported, because in essence it's a simplified and abridged version of cricket, but this 3-team format seems unnecessarily complicated.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/live/cricket/53433563

 

[JENNYJET]

I have studied the rules and I am not impressed. If the format is adopted by the ECB and ICC and suitably supported by a major sponsor with free to air TV coverage then perhaps it may gain an audience. I would let The Hundred bed down first before another format or limit participants to apprentice or junior players.

I feel the Test format is true cricket with the other games nothing more than flim flam, though my personal view may not chime with others.

 

[Kevin Farnell]

As a kid, I hated Cricket. I found it too slow and boring along with easily the largest number of rules of any game. Now, I love Cricket, but think I would have taken to it sooner had 20:20 been around at the time. I will always think of Test Cricket as being the 'proper' form, but if 20:20 gets more people interested in the game and some of those go on to follow Test Cricket then I think it's a good thing.
As for three team Cricket - No Thanks!

Kevin

 

[TheLocalYokel]

As a kid, I hated Cricket. I found it too slow and boring along with easily the largest number of rules of any game. Now, I love Cricket, but think I would have taken to it sooner had 20:20 been around at the time. I will always think of Test Cricket as being the 'proper' form, but if 20:20 gets more people interested in the game and some of those go on to follow Test Cricket then I think it's a good thing.
As for three team Cricket - No Thanks!

Kevin

When first-class, one-day and 20:20 'live' cricket disappeared from free-to-air tv in the UK earlier this century the authorities must have known they were taking a risk when it came to interesting the next generation in cricket. Understandable to a degree, accepting the large bounty from the likes of Sky enabled the game to be more financially secure in this country, but at the expense of much of the potential younger audience.

The ECB has recognised this now with The Hundred which is particularly aimed at attracting youngsters to the game, especially those living in inner city areas. To that end some of The Hundred matches will be shown live on BBC tv, although the virus has put everything back to next year.

Quite why they felt the need to tinker with the established and popular 20:20 format baffles me. Some people, youngsters with no previous exposure to the game in particular, who might be attracted to 20:20 cricket, albeit it still won't be on free-to-air-tv, might be confused with yet another short version of the game running in parallel.

Not all the country is covered by The Hundred's city-based teams anyway, including the South West and North East, both of which have first-class counties with two in the case of the South West. Instead, the ECB expects those first-class counties which have been left out of The Hundred to associate themselves with the nearest first-class county that does have a Hundred team. How many cricket supporters in Cornwall and Devon will be prepared to travel to South Wales to support 'their' team, Welsh Fire, is something only the fertile imagination of the ECB can answer.

There is now a T10 cricket format of ten overs per side. There have been officially-sanctioned leagues involving franchised teams in the Middle East featuring professional cricketers from the main cricket-playing countries. The event was shown on one of the Free View channels in the UK last year. Presumably the ultimate in 'short cricket' is one ball-a-side cricket, or perhaps the concept of not taking to the field at all but merely flipping a coin in the dressing room to decide the match winner.