Harnessing the millennial bug

Renegades' Aaron Finch and Sunil Narine warm up before going out to bat in the Big Bash League © Cricket Australia/Getty Images

England's new T20 tournament: For

By. Tom Harrison

It is a privilege to present my views in these pages, in an edition whose cover is graced by Anya Shrubsole, one of the stars of last year. Anya is pictured on that unforgettable Sunday in July, when England won the ICC women's World Cup in such thrilling style at Lord's. For everyone building towards the start of a new domestic competition in England and Wales in 2020, the atmosphere at Lord's as she turned the match on its head was as significant as the result itself.

Lord's was different that day. The ECB and the ICC had worked hard on spreading the word about the tournament, and taking the final, in particular, to a new audience. The focus was on women and girls, families, and diverse groups with affiliations to countries other than England. It was not a traditional crowd. The match was sold out long before England had reached the final, and the day itself made a statement about where the game can grow.

Tea, coffee and bottled water were the biggest-selling drinks, and the atmosphere was intoxicating. Families and youngsters were there in abundance: women and men, girls and boys, all savouring their big day out, many new to the game and Lord's. They were transfixed by the drama. TV audiences, digital-clip downloads and social media all confirmed something special was happening.

As a taste of what we're trying to achieve in 2020, it is the perfect place to start. It shows that, if we are prepared to present and promote the game differently, then a younger and more diverse audience, so crucial if cricket is to keep thriving, will be attracted to the sport we all love. Cricket is rightly proud of its history and traditions. Test matches matter just as much to the game's future as newer formats. We must never lose sight of that. Equally, we have to recognise that we are confronted by major challenges in attendance, participation and relevance; sometimes our structures can be a straitjacket, making it difficult to attract new followers and holding back important changes. To stay relevant to the millennial audience, it is essential we reach outside the game and listen to the wider world.

The growth of T20 since it was devised in England and Wales in 2003 shows how cricket is constantly evolving. The shortest format helps demystify it and make it more accessible, easier to follow and wider in appeal. It has reminded us that cricket can have mass appeal. We need to strip away the tag of privilege and elitism which the sport in this country still carries, unfairly.

Accessibility at all levels of the game, for all communities, must remain a priority - and will be under our leadership. A successful new tournament will benefit our more established competitions at both domestic and international level. We will invest in these, promoting them and ensuring each has a big role. If we are creating something to which more people can feel connected, then the long-term health of the whole game will benefit, at all levels and across all counties and boards. The new fans we attract can and will become the Test fans of the future, but in order to achieve that goal we need to broaden the base of those introduced to cricket.

Some question why we need a new competition in addition to the T20 Blast - which has already done a great job for county cricket, getting big audiences back into our domestic grounds. That will still be the case after 2020: outside the high-summer window we have identified as ideal for the new competition, the Blast will continue to take T20 to all corners of the country. But you only have to look at the huge success of the Indian Premier League and Australia's Big Bash in different markets, with a format invented here, to see the potential, and need, for us to go to another level. There is a way we can do this, while ensuring that other competitions, all formats and the counties have an opportunity to thrive - and continue to be the breeding ground for talent.

Let me also be clear about why we need a step change. Within the thorough research on which all plans are being developed, we did seriously investigate repackaging the T20 Blast. But it is only by thinking more radically, by getting outside the cricket bubble, and even beyond sport, that we've been able to deliver new investment of well over £1bn into our game from our new broadcast partnerships.

That means harnessing the combined pulling power of Sky Sports and the BBC in an innovative way, ensuring live cricket's return to free-to-air television. These are partnerships that will drive participation and the first live free-to-air exposure for T20 - domestic and international, women's and men's. There should be optimism about cricket's future in this country. These are exciting times. I know that is felt around the game, and there is a sense we are making real progress, while understanding the challenges we need to address, particularly at recreational level.

What will the new competition look like? For five weeks of the season, we're going to target a different audience, and promote the game in different ways. There will be 36 matches in 38 days, ensuring a strong daily narrative that's easy to follow. I've seen the tournament described as - and criticised for - being a city T20. That's true, in that the venues will be based around our major cities, so we can draw the biggest crowds. But the appeal of the teams themselves must be nationwide, reflecting the globalised world we live in.

Spectators will get a completely different match-day experience from anything we've previously offered. The young in particular will feel connected to the game, the players, the teams and the cricket in a way they have not felt before. You won't have to be a first-class county member to come and watch the new competition - although you will be very welcome if you are. You won't need to know the ins and outs of the lbw Law, or even how many balls are in an over. You'll be attracted to the competition because you love cricket presented in this way: you enjoy watching sixes fly and fielders pull off stunning catches - brilliant skills with bat and ball.

Because we're creating a fresh competition aimed at a different audience, we're introducing a new financial model too - to make sure it's sustainable and serves the game's best long-term interests. The ECB will retain ownership of the eight teams, but not control how they operate on the field. The key is that any money generated remains in cricket, for the good of all sections of the game - with at least 10% directly funding our participation programmes. This is why we have not sold equity stakes to private enterprise, and why this is not franchise cricket.

There has been plenty of interest from private entities in the UK and abroad wanting stakes in teams. We have resisted those approaches because we must maintain control of the tournament's objective, keep investment within our game and focus on the long-term strategic purpose. This is about creating more fans and building a bigger following. That is our guiding philosophy. By getting this right, we will attract long-term riches in attendance and participation - new fans, new players and the growth of the whole game.

We make no apologies for doing things differently, or for having our eyes firmly on the future. We want to keep our game front and centre of the national conversation, making sure cricket means as much to the next generation of Wisden readers as it does to this.
Tom Harrison is chief executive officer of the ECB.

England's new T20 tournament: Against

A needless risk

By. George Dobell

As another Ashes tour slipped away, the ECB's chief executive Tom Harrison held a press conference in Melbourne in which he insisted cricket in England and Wales was "in extremely good shape". He provided several reasons for his optimism, but key was the recent conclusion of a broadcasting deal worth £1.1bn. It seemed to confirm the suspicion of many: what matters to administrators is not the size of the trophy cabinet, but of the bank account. To be fair to Harrison - who earns over £600,000 a year - he didn't just cite the broadcast deal. There was the success of the women's team at the World Cup (though he didn't mention their failure to regain the Ashes), the success of the men's white-ball teams (though he didn't mention they fared less well at the 2017 Champions Trophy than in 2013), the launch of a participation programme for children and - laughably - the suggestion that changes to the ECB's corporate governance provided some sort of compensation for Ashes defeat.

Harrison and his ECB colleagues deserve credit for acknowledging the need for change. Cricket in this country has, by most measures, been ebbing in public relevance. Sure, this was a problem of the board's making: their predecessors had sold the TV rights to subscription broadcasters, after all. They were right to conclude that Twenty20 is the vehicle to inspire a new generation of players and supporters, and right to explore ways to exploit it potential. But, as Captain Scott might have told them, not all explorations end happily. And while that broadcast deal is a lot of money, there's a good chance it will turn out to be fool's gold.

The problem with the ECB's plans is that we stand to lose far more than we gain. Yes, the new competition could inspire new followers, but so could a rebranded T20 tournament involving all the counties - especially if it were broadcast free to air - and it wouldn't carry the inherent risks. Play T20 in a block? We did that. And after one wet summer (2012) led to a 50% fall in ticket sales (admittedly, there were fewer fixtures), it was abandoned. Playing games in a window demanded too much of spectators - their time and money - and left the competition vulnerable to being eclipsed by rival events, such as the Olympics or football tournaments. Market research undertaken by the ECB suggested spectators were confused by different start times: in 2010, there were 19 variations in the group games alone. They desired predictability, or "appointment to view", as it was called in the Morgan Report into county cricket. All that seems to have been forgotten. Meanwhile, to make space for a white-ball window, the County Championship will be squeezed ever more into the margins of the summer. With so many games played in April, May or September (when matches start at 10.30, making dew a factor), the need for fast bowlers and spinners is negated. Medium-pacers, gaining movement they can rarely replicate on international surfaces, proliferate and dominate. Don't be surprised when England struggle for wickets in India and Australia.

Other formats will suffer, too. Current plans indicate the 50-over tournament will be played at the same time as the new T20 competition - and some Test matches - which means the best 100 or so England-qualified cricketers won't be available to play in it, and the best eight or so venues won't be able to host it. Surely that doesn't give England the best chance of winning 50-over World Cups? And what message are we sending to the next generation of players if the glamorous new competition overlaps with England Tests?

There are many other questions. What evidence is there to suggest spectators will warm to teams with new identities? They certainly didn't when Welsh rugby attempted something similar. Will they travel to what have long been considered rival grounds to support the team based there? What will happen to attendances for Tests - or domestic 50-over matches - if the new competition is played simultaneously, and marketed more aggressively? What will happen to those counties who don't host games? Isn't it likely they will, in time, be impoverished and marginalised? Isn't this an attempt to cut the number of firstclass counties by stealth?

The ECB have, at various times, claimed the new tournament - with its influx of broadcast money - will enable them to pump funds into grassroots cricket. But Jim Wood, who has served on the ECB board for years as the voice of the recreational game, accepts that's unlikely. The start-up costs of the competition (£1.3m a year has been promised to each first-class county, before we even consider marketing costs and players' pay demands) mean there will be no such surplus. Wood supports the competition on the entirely reasonable basis that it will inspire new followers. But actual cash? The ECB have already spent a chunk of the reserves they built up over many years preparing the ground.

Were such risks necessary? The number of spectators attending the current domestic T20 tournament - the Blast - had grown by 63% in four years, and is expected to exceed a million in 2018. The format is starting to reach a new audience, with 69% of T20 ticket-buyers at The Oval having never attended a cricket match before the competition started. Imagine how much higher those figures could have been if the ECB had invested in marketing it. Imagine how much higher it could have been with promotion and relegation, and some free to-air broadcasting. Imagine how the game could have grown with an FA Cupstyle knockout tournament.

Instead they have been seduced by an Australian example (the Big Bash) that cannot simply be transposed to England - the nations have different holiday patterns, climates and city densities, for a start. And they have undermined a successful competition, threatened a key revenue stream of the counties and pushed more than half towards irrelevance. Several of those counties, bound by gagging orders and intimidated by fears they would lose their funding or hosting rights, have been pulled along kicking and screaming.

The most brittle of agreements holds it all together. We needed evolution not revolution. We needed context and free-to-air coverage. But whether or not the prospective start date of the new competition - July 24, 2020 (or 24/7, 2020) - is a Freudian slip, it underlines the impression the ECB have prioritised one format at the expense of all others, and are prepared to sacrifice the long-term success of the Test and one-day sides in pursuit of the T20 dollar. There are still reasons for optimism. Cricket remains a terrific game and, if we can only find a way to get more people to see it, there's no reason it should not thrive. But the ECB's plans are a monumental, unnecessary risk.

George Dobell is the senior correspondent at ESPNcricinfo.