Because there will be 2 county teams in the "Champions League" the powers
that be say the season needs to finish earlier.
Hence cutting down on the 4 dayers.

Yet we all know they wouldn't increase the following year.

One of the recent 'great rip offs' was in 2005 when test tickets increased from
about £30 to £60 because we were told 'It was the Ashes'

Strangely though they didn't drop the prices back to £35ish the following year.

Seems grumpy `Old Rupert` is no longer on his own.I haven`t been near New Road this week as I have absolutely no interest in so-called International cricket anymore.I expect `the usual suspects` have had their noses well into the hospitality trough-moaning all the while at the state of cricket today!
Now back to the Glastonbury thread!!!!!!

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/sport/cricket/news/5687076/ECB-under-pressure-over-P20.html

An interesting article about P20.

I didn't realise that only Div1 got Indian coverage, i.e. ALL THE DOSH

Basically, looks like Div2 will be very much the poor relation.

I wouldn't be suprised though if counties are still allowed 4 overseas players
in Div2 just to make sure the ones that can afford them (test grounds) get
promoted.

I am not sure if Div 2 are allowed 4 Overseas players a team- I have a feeling that that is the Div 1 gimmick

I have never known a time when domestic cricket was such a mess! The chase for fools gold means TV (sorry Sky) is king and the spirits of members all over the country are at an all-time low.Opening their legs for Stanford totally debased the ECB and all associated with the debacle but now it`s Indian gold they are chasing.Perhaps I wouldn`t mind so much if most counties weren`t about to blow it on overseas players -most of doubtful pedigree.
Rant over.....for today!

Question : are we just going to have a weekly debate and rant, or are we going to try and do something about this ? And if we are, where do we start, what do we do ?

..... or as rupert puts it, let's just open our legs for anyone.

I'm not opening my legs for either serchers or rupert!

I am not particularly trying to support the ECB here or go along (as I have been accused of before) the lines of "I'm in pull the ladder up", but I still feel that the other side has a difficult balancing act to follow.
Firstly Mike, quite reasonably says about cricket at times people want to watch it. I would suggest all of us want cricket on at times that we can watch it ourselves. The time I can watch cricket is not the same as mike, or serchers, or wbb or perhaps many others. The crusade for more sunday cricket has largely passed me by because i have to work a reasonable number of Sundays and have other time off in the week. I am sure there are lots of other people with other different working patterns and the old 9-5 is getting far less dominant that it was. For a long time the only parts of four day cricket that have come even close to being profitable in their own right must be the corporate stuff. As i suspect this is going down at the moment, so the large part of the clubs revenue will now be from the one day game ( and there mostly 20/20) and the Sky deal and we all know in all walks of life, he who pays the piper calls the tune. Sky want an evening game to put on to get their advertising revenue in and if they do not then the tv money will dry up as well. The very very sad fact is that the four day game is so heavily subsidized by the one day game, particularly the 20/20 it is absolutely amazing that there is any four day cricket left at all, and further more that if the Test Matches were not still such a draw then I doubt there would even be as much as it is.

The bit I do not understand is, if the game and the schedule is weighted in favour of the four day game and needs to be moved then should it be the 40 over game that is being dropped? I suspect that there do need to be changes (and I am not knowledgable enough to know how or else I would be doing that much better paid job) and they are probably a deal more radical than I would really want but for the game to survive in any form at all then I suspect that it will have to happen.

As for serchers question, unless you have the where-withall to finance a rival tv deal then you are likely to be unable to do anything about it other than like it or do the other thing.

Ideally, cricket needs to be:

Mid-April or early May to early October

Top-heavy with Championship.

One 20/20 contest.

A Sunday/Bank Holiday League, televised by a free network and with a 40 over remit

A September Vase, of any length and any description the ECB can imagine. Floodlit. Maybe gradeplay- a two day game of two all-day innings like in Oz.

That works absolutely fine..............

for a certain demographic of the cricket watching public.

I didn't say it would work for all...but this nonsense about P20 being on Friday and Saturday nights is chav hell.....cricket is meant for Sunday afternoons.

Meanwhile, the Welsh Government are so impressed by the ECB that they are widening the M4 round Cardiff causing huge delays. Next weekend.

But is also the time of day that alot of people (not me particularly I would add) can get out to watch cricket.