The only thing to watch has been The Hundred and the games have been awful, full of players who play in the 'T20 Round The World Roadshow' in various T20 leagues and a lot don't seem to have much to offer and are past their best interspersed with county players who no one has heard of and are out of their depth even in this poor excuse of a competition. I do give it a genuine go when it is on but I will never treat it as anything but a joke and I could never bring myself to get behind a team.
Wait for the viewing figures to go down
I have a Sky Sports subscription - largely so that I can watch Test cricket. In bored moments recently, I have turned on to the "Sky Hundred" channel in the hope of something watchable. Mistake. I can rarely last more than a dozen or so balls before dismissing it as glorified pub cricket. The standard is genuinely dire.
OK, so it's not meant for me and to that extent the ECB have hit the bullseye. There are, though, two things that would really worry me if I were promoting this competition. The first, as noted by paulbear, is the lack of "names". Fat, semi-retired has-beens and kids from nowhere do not a competion make. The second is the number of times the commentators feel compelled to say how "exciting" everything is. No it isn't and the more often your contract requires you to pretend it is, the less credibility you have.
Now, you can launch a product on hype alone but, at some point, it has to offer something of quality. The Hundread is a long way short of that and, whilst I would love to see it gone, that would leave a massive hole in the ECB and County finances. Fold it back into the Blast, please, as soon as possible.
Wondered if anyone watched, just saw headline on BBC Sports app about the lad scoring a ton & Henry Brookes taking 5 wickets.
Watched the little clip of his wickets. One of which was a nice slower bowl that cleaned up batsman who was trying a ramp shot. Looking at scoreboard, I then realised the said batsman was one Alex Davies !!!
Not that I give a flying "#@k about the game or result. But one would hope a batsman practices to get better & may even learn from his mistakes or even.. his own bowlers whilst standing behind stumps.
Don't know whether to laugh of cry.
Gave it the benefit of the doubt last year with having lost nearly 2 years of cricket due to Covid. But it's obvious this year that the standard is pretty low and that the commentators have become cheerleaders - Pietersen and Morgan being the worst examples.
I also dislike the chumminess on display between many of the players. Those that are on an endless cycle of franchise cricket seem to play with no edge or passion - it's just another 4 week jaunt for a fat pay packet.
We watch it because when push comes to shove it's a game of cricket but I think those of us who have been round the block a few times know the paying public has been sold a pup.
Quite agree about the commentators, if the cricket product is good enough no need for people to be bulling it up.
Can’t get used to seeing random playing for random sides. If this was soccer would you expect to see players turning out at the opposition’s ground. Or would you for that expect to see the premiership aka the county championship, halted for some Mickey Mouse tournament, other than I suppose the World Cup this October! Remember the up roar over the proposed super league.
The County Championship I thought was the main stay of the cricket season. Ok perhaps reduce it but but not suspend it. The cricket season is short enough.
Re player burn out there is an option not to play all the year round. And there are of plenty of rest days due to the weather plus for the lucky ones central contracts. Plus the counties seem to me to be playing multiple sides. I’d love to know what the cricket stalwarts of the 1970s would have made of all of this.
An absolute shambles.
For anyone who hasn't already done so it might be worth taking part in this survey:
https://cricketsupporters.com/news/survey2022/
It is quite long but at least our voices can be heard. If it doesn't open copy and paste it to the search engine.
Without looking too closely at fixtures I can't understand why there are gaps of up to a week between one day games whether that be T20 or RLC. A CC game is played over 4 consecutive days of 96 overs compared to 40 and 100. The Hundread (I like that) is 33.2 (or is it 32.8?).
Definitely they need to look back to the 70s and earlier and also look at how baseball is played in US
If we did reduce the CC how would we feel if it was the 7 grounds with hundred sides that were cut from the championship plus Middlesex. That would be fairer than what I've seen proposed which is to cut the Worcestershire's and the Derbyshire's out of the CC. It would be dreadful for us as Bears fans for sure but fairer because at least there'd still be hit & giggle to watch at our grounds. Agree with comments about the 16.4 being a bit like watching wrestling on the TV in the 1970's you have to wonder at what point the stage managed nature of games become will too obvious
There is a 3 day game at Portland Road from Tuesday for Warwicks U18 v Somerset U18.
A "proper" red ball game with 104 overs per day.
While not County championship, it is proper cricket and entertaining to watch
This makes very depressing reading
One thing that annoys me is this insistence in high performance in the traditional formats of the game almost to the level where the players are literally meant to go right to the edge (all very Strauss that) and yet in these new fangled formats which have most resources chucked at them there is far less pressure on the players or the teams once they are in - it's all geared towards fun, signing autographs, posing for selfies etc... just like county cricket as I remember it in the 1990's. The games are never going to all be of a high standard (despite the hype) especially when it only lasts 200 balls in fact many games will be pure dross but that matters not whoever finishes in the bottom two won't go down. Same with the boring IPL and big bash - when you've seen one display of fireworks you've seen them all I've seen Brendan McCullum in T20 and Gilchrist do the same in tests and Keith Barker in county matches not to mention Lara.
If there's one thing county cricket can learn from the hundred it is it must be a priority to make the matches fun for the players and spectators not drive them close to the edge in search of higher and higher performance at smaller and smaller margins and at great cost to player mental health and the attractiveness of the game to spectators. This is what I recall of county cricket in the 1990's when it was fun - 4 competitions for all 18 counties to aim to win at the start. Maybe they wouldn't be so keen to drift off to mickey mouse competitions then.
Not a lot we can do about the global stuff other than allow it to go over our heads and carry on supporting the Bears and county cricket. Pity then that there's very little of it to watch at the moment - 2nd xi masquerading as a first team in the RLODC/age group and local Saturday league stuff apart
The whole of county cricket was more fun in general in the 90's anyway because we all knew when fixtures were played and you could see good players play in the big knock-out games as there was no crossovers in fixtures. Now, we have players missing for T20 finals days and having to 'Get Permission' to play in a cup final and it's this fixture overload that has brought us to this point where we know we cannot see all the best players in the top games. I do think there is still value in the RLODC as there are a lot of good players playing in it if they haven't been stolen for 'The HunDread' and we are able to put out a good side which looks strong and should hopefully win most games. The CC is still 'fun' but if you consider how many counties will never look like winning the title, you can understand the need to just play a game to get a certain result even if it is not entertaining, if it means the chance of being champions.
Great points. I've often talked up going back to one division 18 counties - to general consternation. I think it would help. No stress then about finishing 9th or 10th or 13th or 14th. There was even a bit of fun associated with finishing last with the awarding of the wooden spoon.
There's no relegation in the hundred or the IPL or the Blast so why should players be under that level of pressure in the championship? Make it fun again and a proper Championship 17 games even make some of them 3-day matches to make them fun fun fun and to fit them in the schedule and to take the matches to the seaside and festival grounds and to ensure New Road and Canterbury have more than 4 measly white ball fixtures in the entire month of August. August being more fun for playing and watching cricket than early April (normally anyway)
I had a bit of a pop at David Hopps earlier this season for his comments about Bears style of play grinding out wins/mostly draws. I take it back. He was right ultimately to be concerned in this way not specifically about Bears but about the whole county championship.
Unless you have a batting line-up of star batsmen who can/will score very quickly, sometimes grinding out big totals and making sure you are still in the game after 2 1/2 days is often all you can do. I think a lot of journo's (And teams, Kent) were a bit rankled when we won the title in 2004 with just 5 wins and the rest, draws. Some still prattle on about it but what they have to realise is at the time, we were so many points in front of all the other sides, that all we had to do was keep accumulating points and not losing and Knight's habit of winning the toss with a strong batting line-up (At one point, Frost batted at 8 and was averaging in the 90's) proved effective. It was similar in 2012, 1 defeat and 6 wins but 4 of those came in the first 6 games when everyone else was avoiding the rain. I would go back to the 18 county season as it was fun and we had good games without side being bothered about promotion/relegation and more likely to have good finishes to CC games.
And I've always thought the best v best argument pretty weak anyway. Notts were a damn good side last season after 2/3 years of struggle. They deserved to finish 8th in 2019 but did not deserve to be plonked in the bottom tier this season. They'd likely have pushed Surrey, Hants and Lancs pretty hard for the title this season had they not been dumped into Div 2. And it's the same for emerging sides or transitional sides. We could get relegated this year but the injuries magically clear up over the winter and look like a decent top 3 side again next year but be unable to show this as like Notts we'd get dumped in Div 2. The impact on membership at counties stuck for years in Div 2 cannot be underestimated either.
Checking the dates of the annual fixture v Worcestershire was a highlight of fixture release day as was scouting for seaside or festival destinations. All that has been narrowed and lost in pursuit of ever diminishing improvements in levels of performance. 17 different surfaces across the season used to help batters and bowlers hone their techniques too. Now they are limited to the same 6 or 7 surfaces season in season out unless they play for a yo-yo county.
1 division would make it easier for them to schedule some first class cricket during what I now call pantomime season which August has become.
Sort of out of the blue, we had a visit from a youngish family. I put the hundred on tv for her lads and the mother was very quick to say this cricket was quick and easy to follow and didn’t involve matches between the counties and was all for it.
I made no comment, but on that basis I decided us elderly traditionalists are probably doomed in our objections. However the lads did get easily bored and I was the one left watching! But they are apparently very keen to play the game.
Not sure if these observations take the debate forward, but whatever, I think the counties having decided to take the game elsewhere, should at least be reducing the cost of membership by a month for August or adding the hundred as a benefit. God forbid the later.
If it's on telly/twitter/tik tok I guess anything becomes easy to follow. The lack of visibility itself makes the rest hard to follow. Not sure why counties as entities would be less appealing to mums with young kids than crisp packets with cartoonish names. Oh hang on. The lack of ethics with regards this side of it astonish me. Could just as easily attach jazzy names for the T20 teams whack it on BBC with all the attendant hoopla and that'd surely work for a few years too.
Even if it's considered a roaring success there still needs to be first class cricket in the height of summer staged at 20-30 different venues across the length and breadth of England/Wales to justify county memberships or county affiliation
https://watch.talk.tv/watch/replay/47451218
Nice hours discussion here between Mark Saggers, Derek Pringle and Martin Bicknell from about 2 hours in (8pm till 9)
If you want to get depressed about the future of cricket whilst having a wry smile, read this:
https://www.espncricinfo.com/story/the-light-roller-death-by-t20-league-its-real-its-coming-1329215