ECB abandon plans for English Premier League
The ECB have announced that they are shelving their plans for an EPL to rival the Indian IPL version. Due to the economic climate it has been deemed that this is not a good time to launch a tournament intended to be the major revenue-earner in English cricket.
Whatever the reasons for the decision, it is one which should be greeted with satisfaction by everyone who wants the best for English cricket. When the ECB launched Twenty20 they can never have imagined how it would have taken off. They can also never have thought that within 5 years one of the other national boards would have run with it to create one of the dominant events in the cricketing calendar.
Yet I believe they have always been mistaken in trying to create an equivalent, almost rival event. Better surely to stick with their own established format, one which has proved successful, than to adopt someone else’s and do the whole thing just a little bit worse.
They already have a strong tournament. Twenty20 is popular with supporters and the forthcoming World Cup will raise the profile of the format even further. Teams will be permitted four overseas players each and if they still inject some of the planned capital into the tournament then they should be able to get some good names. Very little cricket is played elsewhere in the world during the English summer meaning there may be players who are more keen to play here than in the IPL which is squeezed in to an overcrowded area of the cricketing calendar.
This summer is a huge one for English cricket. Test cricket remains the lifeblood of cricket in this country, England being one of the few countries who can fill grounds for all 5 days of every test of the summer. And the Ashes is the biggest series of all. Additionally England are hosting the Twenty20 World Cup. For this year the ECB should focus more on the fact that they have the finest players in the world descending on their grounds and they should be doing everything to make sure they fill those grounds. If they want to advertise cricket in this country in its newest format, the World Cup is where they should be focussing their attentions.
The shelving of the EPL then is a positive move. You can have too much of a good thing and the English cricket-watching public are not the kind who will show up to any game laid on regardless. The EPL on top of the Ashes and the World Cup could make an already crowded calendar unworkable. Twenty20 has a future in England but it should not be a mimic of the Indian version. It must have its own identity and at present it has retained that by the skin of its teeth.
by Stuart Peel
