All excellent points. I particularly agree that announcing proposals on the 9th for a vote on the 20th is clearly an attempt to push through proposals without any proper debate or consideration.

Just asking the question, but does it matter financially to the counties, if they simply get rid of their red ball members? Do they need us or is it just how it seems?

Absolutely right in the short term counties would be financially better off if there was only white ball competitions. However, this would eventually lead to the decline in a successful test team which provides a considerable income for the game.

Yep somewhere between 65% and 75% of broadcasting revenue to the English game is directly from just the 6 or 7 home test matches staged in England each season.

This term 'future proofing the game' gets bandied about by proponents of the 16.4 & it's all very well cos we know England can't play India or Australia every year charging £200 a ticket and filling hospitality and pleasing the broadcasters. There will of course be years when Windies or Sri Lanka or NZ are touring instead when tickets and hospitality has to be pegged more reasonably.

Future proofing the game could be achieved in other ways not reliant on a panicky new format.

The income from 1 day of the India test match to the ECB coffers would require 8 of these 16.4 events to match up in terms of revenue generated.

And sure crowds of 19,000 at Edgbaston to watch teams nobody gives a monkeys about is impressive but like I say you'd need 8 of those to match the income generated from a single day of the India test match.

George Dobell recently suggested selling Lord's for development and using just some of the billions from that to build a 55,000 stadium in the south east with a retractable roof thus enabling cricket to be played deep into October and March (perhaps even into winter if the temperature could be regulated) extending the English cricket season

There might be 19000 at the 16.4 game but how many tickets were actually sold?
As for a stadium with a roof - how high would the roof need to be or would it be if it hit the roof then to be out the fielder would have to catch the ball one handed!!!

Yorkshire gives its verdict on the 16.4

https://open.spotify.com/episode/2gXuJq8tZFTHY9gzlf0jpo
Bit simplistic some of the ideas here and i certainly don't agree with his idea or even a need for cutting the championship but overall he's right to vocalise the angst and divisiveness it has caused.

And from the Yorkshire Post

Scrap the 100-ball format and go back to playing T20 - Chris Waters
IT IS a measure of the all-consuming nature of the Yorkshire cricket crisis that I have not had time lately to lambast The Hundred.

But I’m damned if I’m going to let the chance pass by on the final day of its second season.

Whereas last year’s competition was a novelty, with many tuning in to see what the fuss was about, we now have a better idea of the concept in the round.

The main problem with it, as the former Yorkshire and England fast bowler Steve Harmison put it the other day, is that it “just doesn’t work” - a verdict upon which I am unable to improve.

Harmison was articulating what even a blind man wearing a blindfold could see in a pitch-black room - namely, that The Hundred is essentially mediocrity masquerading as excellence.

Forget the peripheral nonsense - the Z-list DJs that no one has heard of, the virtual-reality avatars, the television commentators seemingly high on acid, telling everyone that The Hundred is the best thing since sliced bread.

The concept, the cricket, is simply not good enough.

It is not so much a poor man’s IPL as a beggar’s IPL.

If English cricket is to have a franchise tournament - and it’s too late now to turn back the clock - then let it be a T20 one in line with the IPL and its global counterparts.

The need for a so-called “point of difference” - 16.4 overs per side (100 balls) as opposed to 20 overs per side - backfires for me, regardless of whether that might be best for the television schedulers.

From where I’m sitting, the only real “point of difference” with The Hundred is that it is not as good as T20.

It may not seem much - 100 balls instead of 120, blocks of five balls instead of six-ball overs, and so on - but it equates to unnecessary confusion for players and spectators while the television graphics are all over the shop, which makes the scoring difficult to follow - at least for yours truly.

Of course, I nearly forgot, The Hundred is not for the likes of me, or for Steve Harmison, or for the likes of you perhaps as “proper cricket” lovers.

The Hundred is designed to draw in those who previously thought that “cricket” was a chirping insect - essentially people who don’t like the game but, wooed by the appeal of this incredible new concept, will magically go from apathy and disinterest to pulling sickies at work or at school just to slip into Clean Slate Headingley, say, in their desperation to catch a few overs of a County Championship game.

There is no sign of that transfer of interest happening, of course, and it was never going to happen.

Why, it would be like giving someone a particularly bad novel and expecting their interest in literature to be piqued to the point that they would suddenly start lining their shelves with the work of George Orwell and Ernest Hemingway.

The Hundred is often presented as “the best versus the best”.

Indeed, the low – sorry, the high – performance review presently being carried out by Sir Andrew Strauss and the England and Wales Cricket Board actually states: “The Hundred is committed through to 2028 and is a clear best v best competition.”

Really?

In that case, why are so many big-name players not in it? Why did the likes of Jonny Bairstow and Ben Stokes pull out of this year’s competition?

There are various reasons such as international schedules and the need for rest, but this is hardly IPL standard or indeed the standard on view in other franchise tournaments.

Next year, The Hundred will not be clashing with England’s games in quite the same way.

But if the concept itself is flawed, the problems will remain.

As Harmison said on talkSPORT: “We’ve got to play Twenty20 cricket. The Hundred just doesn’t work. We’ve got to play Twenty20 cricket in line with the rest of the world.

“We’ve tried this new format. It hasn’t worked. I would question whether it is the best quality because I’ve not seen many games going down to the last ball in the two years, or a higher percentage of games going down to the last set of five.

“I think we’ve got to go back to Twenty20 cricket. We can still market it the same way and I think it will make the competition better and get it closer to what the IPL gives you.

"I think it could be the second-biggest and the second-best quality competition in the world in domestic Twenty20.

“I don’t think The Hundred works. I don’t think players know how to play it. I don’t think players understand it properly and I think that’s why we’re not seeing as many closer contests.”

Hear, hear to that.

Hitherto, my objection to The Hundred was not actually the cricket - each to their own - but rather the collateral damage to the men’s county schedule, and in consequence to Test cricket.

That we had no first-class county cricket last month, for example, was a ridiculous state of affairs and an insult to members and supporters who are frankly taken for granted now.

The damage to England’s chances of success at the highest level – purportedly the main objective of the high performance review – was clear.

Yes, the format has been good for women’s cricket, but the women can play T20 too and The Hundred is not played anywhere else – and with good reason. In its efforts to simplify the sport, it has only made it more confusing while the product is average. What’s not to loathe?

First and foremost my concern is its impact on the rest of the season and for that reason I've not paid all that much attention to the formats deficiencies. All limited overs forms of cricket are by definition a presentation of a limited set of aspects of the game which is why multi-day 2 innings cricket stands apart and has stood the test of time.

However there is so much I'm reading today about the deficiency of this new format even compared to T20. It's even getting slated on the BBC forum. These are people who've watched the thing pretty closely too; Alarm bells must be ringing

I did try to watch a couple of games but not for me and I call it fairground cricket , roll up roll up who can hit the most sixes , roll up roll up 5 goes on the coconut shy. T20 is the limit for me and people who can only stand to watch 100 balls each side can keep it but I do blame the counties for not keeping their players to contracts .
"
Dave replied:
Agreed, the extra 20 balls makes all the difference. I follow my county players (and former players) and quite a few are coming in at 5 and 6 and have simply had no chance to make any impact, whereas in T20 they can come in same position and turn the game around. It removes the nuance, it's simply a game of good start=win bad start = lose, there's no drama

So interesting to hear others view points. Personally thinking whether it’s going to be worth renewing membership, even if ashes year next. Chair? coming out to dress troops Somerset game, but I have a feeling it will be a re run of this year. No cricket in August!! Amazing!!

LeicesterExile wrote:

There might be 19000 at the 16.4 game but how many tickets were actually sold?
As for a stadium with a roof - how high would the roof need to be or would it be if it hit the roof then to be out the fielder would have to catch the ball one handed!!!

Regarding a Stadium with a roof, I did see two ODIs between Australia and South Africa at the Dockland Stadium in Melbourne with the roof closed about 20 years ago. It's where the Melbourne Renegades play in the Big Bash. I can't remember what the local rule is about hitting the roof. I have long thought that all the money spent making grounds like Cardiff and Durham fit for international cricket could have been spent creating one or more indoor stadia. They used drop-in pitches at the Docklands Stadium. I know they had problems getting the outfield grass to grow well but I assume that the technology has improved in the last 20 years.
Anyway, I can't see MCC selling Lord's and building a new ground any time soon (or ever).