Or how I learned to stop worrying and love abolishing Yorkshire….
Michael Vaughan is probably right. The future of professional domestic tournaments are competitions that are limited to 10 teams at most.
However, given the growth of the womens game domestically and internationally, there is still a demand for 18 cricket stadiums in England and Wales, given that these are Europe’s only cricket stadia, with Ireland, Scotland and Netherlands all wanting to have a permanent ground with the capacity of Chelmsford or Bristol then we need to balance:
- The growth of the womens game.
- The desire for high-quality professional domestic cricket played on:
- The best pitches.
- With the talent pool that isn’t as diluted as it appears to be right now, especially during the Mens Hundred and RLODC.
- To try and keep English cricket’s greatest assets, their stadiums, in use.
The Hundred’s best success has been by deviation from their original plan. In 2019 they unveiled plans for the Womens competition that only saw each team playing 1 game at the same ground as the men used, with all the other games taking place at the 10 county grounds that do not host a mens game as well as a school (Sedbergh) and 2 recreational cricket clubs (South Northumberland CC and York CC). This lead to the absurdity of the Welsh Fire Womens team playing 3/4 of their home games in…. England.
The pandemic changed this approach and I’m assuming as a cost-saving measure it was deemed for the best that the mens and womens teams all played at the same venue against the same opponent on the same day (excluding the 2 launch games and the knock-out rounds).
The womens competition did not also have another professional cricket competition taking place at the same time as the Hundred either, unlike the men’s competition. With this in mind, I am proposing a change to the structure of professional cricket in England and Wales to maximise exposure for all competitons, better use of resources for pitches and to help make everyone equally angry at me.
This plan’s goals are to:
1: Decrease the wear on pitches that are vastly overworked throughout the season, with grounds like Lord’s and Edgbaston seeing excessive numbers of matches, whilst other grounds are far less busy.
2: Allow for a parity of esteem for men’s and women’s cricketers. Heather Knight won a world cup in 2017 at Lord’s and it took until 2021 for her to play her next match there. Currently there are too many Womens List A and T20 games being played at club grounds rather than at the 18 cricket stadiums available in England & Wales.
3. Keep crickets reach in England and Wales as broad as possible by ensuring that cricket is being played at the 18 stadia, rather than the 8 it could shrink to if there is not a substantial change.
So starting as we mean to go on:
1. Abolish Yorkshire (and Glamorgan, Hampshire, Lancashire, Middlesex, Nottinghamshire, Surrey, & Warwickshire)
The County Championship, T20 Blast & Royal London Cup need to be played at grounds where these tournaments are going to be the priority for pitch preparation.
With the Hundred continuing to be backed there is going to be pressure now to stage England and Wales Womens games at the venues of Hundred teams instead of their traditional venues of New Road, Taunton, Hove and Chelmsford.
That means that with international mens cricket being played at all 8 grounds there would be extreme pressure on preperation of pitches at the 8 grounds that host The Hundred. These grounds by and large did not really try to stage Mens RLC games this season or Womens Regional Competition matches (with notable exceptions) either.
So with this in mind, I am proposing that the mens County Championship, T20 Blast & Royal London Cup are not played by the 8 counties that host Hundred games and neither are their grounds used. Similarly I am proposing that the Rachel Heyhoe Flint and Charlotte Edwards Trophies are not played at the 8 grounds that host The Hundred either.
The mens competitions will be played by: Derbyshire, Durham, Essex, Gloucestershire, Kent, Leicestershire, Northamptonshire, Somerset, Sussex, Worcestershire.
There will be a draft of the current players under contract to the 8 mens teams that no longer exist allowing the best players to be playing in a 10 team tournament on pitches that are fresher.
2. Move the Womens Regional Teams to Play All Games at The 10 non-Hundred Grounds
Here’s how organised and well thought-out the creation of the new 8 womens regional teams has been. Of the 8 teams, only 3 have websites that exist in their own right. Another 3 are hosted on the websites of other counties and 2 only have twitter accounts. So if there has been so little thought paid to the launch of these teams then moving their games to a ground that isn’t used by The Hundred shouldn’t be too disruptive.
Derbyshire & Thunder
Durham & Northern Diamonds
Essex & Sunrisers
Kent & South East Stars
Leicestershire & The Blaze
Somerset & Western Storm
Sussex & Southern Vipers
Worcestershire & Central Sparks
But that will mean that there are 2 grounds without womens regional teams. That leads me to another point…
3. Have a goal to create 2 More Womens Regional Teams Within the Next 5 years.
Mens professional cricketers in England and Wales play too much cricket and women too little cricket. So why not expand the number of professional cricketers in England & Wales for women by 2 teams in order to have as wide a base of cricketers as possible?
This would also ensure that every existing cricket stadium in England and Wales has a womens team using their home ground. There will be parity of access to the best facilities in the country and it will allow fans of mens and womens cricket to occupy the same space and have more cricket to watch.
These 2 teams would be based at Bristol and Northampton.
4. Create a Womens First Class Cricket Tournament
England’s women are currently in the middle of their longest test match victory drought. At home, that record is even worse. A baby born on the day after England’s last test win at home would be eligible to vote in the next general election.
Every year England’s women play test matches in hope rather than expectation. To that end the ECB should create a Jan Brittin Shield, split into two groups and have a final played over 5 days between the respective group winners. At present, with the 8 teams this could mean that you play the tournament in a little over a month giving everyone a chance to bat in the middle for long periods of time and bowl lots of overs, which are crucial for player development, while also allowing the professional domestic game to allow England players to gain experience with first class skills that are needed for tests. This tournament could be played during the Mens T20 Blast.
Australia have been first-movers with womens List A and T20 cricket in the form of the NCL and WBBL, why not England with the establishment of an elite first class competition?
5. Mirror mens and womens domestic fixtures (where possible).
When Essex are playing Kent at Canterbury then Southern Stars will be away to Sunrisers at Chelmsford and vice-versa. This will allow cricket to always be on at the one of the 18 major cricket stadiums across the country (as far as possible).
6. Keep The Blast, but as a 10 team competition
The Cons:
The largest mens counties and womens regional teams will no longer see any domestic first class or list a cricket being played on their grounds and will have to travel significant distances to watch games of professional cricket in those formats. Their are far more media voices for the 8 grounds that host Hundred matches than the 10 that don’t and this will anger most of them.
The Royal London One Day Cup would still be running concurrently with the Mens Hundred means that the talent of players available will be stretched across 18 teams (however, this is still a reduction on the 26 mens professional teams that are playing during the Mens Hundred at present).
That’s my plan. It won’t happen of course, with the 8 Hundred teams likely to just replace the current Womens Regional Teams and the 18 First Class Counties and for 6 domestic tournaments and 6 international formats to be played at just 8 stadiums.
But this is my attempt to create an elite domestic professional structure whilst not contracting the overall reach and availability of the game in England & Wales.
Uphill and into the wind 