Time for English cricket to accept game’s future

May 1 2008 by Alex Turner, Liverpool Daily Post

IN the past cricketing revolutions have usually been Boycottian in their unveiling. And that is change at its most swift.

Far too often it has resembled Monty Panesar’s batting: entertaining to watch, but ultimately seems little more than a timewasting ploy with little end result.

But Panesar’s batting, which is affectionately described as resembling a rabbit caught in bright headlines, is nothing compared with the position the MCC are in.

They have chosen to go into bat against the Indian Premier League but are facing the combined might of its attack with only a Kwik Cricket bat in hand.

In truth the cricketing analogy doesn’t do it justice. Instead consider a Panzer division and the Polish cavalry.

Cricket, in this country at least, has finally been forced to face the commercial realities of sport that football and both codes of rugby addressed in the early 1990s.

It was painful then, and this will be painful now.

The IPL has stolen the initiative and it will be hard for the MCC to wrest it back.

The notion of regional franchises is largely unworkable – the game is too steeped in tradition, too parochial, too mismatched, for regional teams which would be overwhelmed by the region’s dominant county.

What weight would Durham have in a North East side alongside Yorkshire? And for the Lancashire members who were apoplectic at the possibility of a move to Wigan, would they seriously entertain playing some ‘home’ matches at Derby?

Instead of thinking about counties, the sensible approach would be to focus teams in cities, the unit of modern sport.

Manchester, London, Birmingham and Cardiff could be the cricketing powerhouses of the future.

But it may already be too late to build clubs that can match the spending power of the IPL but it is possible to have the best players.

Decisive streamlining of the formats of competition is pressing; an acceptance that Twenty20 is the game’s future, even to the detriment of Test matches, is imperative.

Or cricket will become like running – a sport which we were good at once.