The England coach wants to keep international cricketers fresh but the decision-makers are more concerned with maximising income than careers – Twenty20 Internationals are here to stayFrom somewhere deep in New Zealand on England’s never-ending tour Trevor Bayliss has been musing about T20 cricket. Taken out of context his comments may seem to lack coherence. On one day he advocated that T20 internationals should be abolished except for a little window before and during the World T20 tournament, the next of which is scheduled for Australia in 2020. He said T20 cricket should be the territory of the various franchises around the globe.A couple of days later Bayliss has suggested England might have a specialist T20 coach – he tosses...
Cricket was set on its lucrative path to the IPL by sport’s first super-agent and an all-star Sunday afternoon competition that forced the MCC into desperate actionIt was exactly 50 years ago this week that the MCC’s Advisory County Cricket Committee took a decision that they hoped might, as the Guardian’s John Arlott put it in a news story, “change the shape and mathematics of county cricket” forever. That, as it turned out, was a significant understatement.Their decision was to introduce, from the 1969 season onwards, a Sunday County League, with matches to be composed of two innings of no more than 40 overs. This, Arlott said, would “present the County game in a fresh way, which may well recall...
England’s victory at the MCG showed the difference between the Test and one-day teams, and where the priorities lie for players for whom the red-ball game is no longer the pinnacleIt was 5C in London last Sunday, unless you had Test Match Special on the radio. Then January felt a few degrees warmer than it really was. Saturday’s hangover was easier too, the morning’s chores more agreeable, the first sip of tea that little bit sweeter. Because for once this winter, England were winning. And half a world away, Jason Roy and Joe Root were walloping Australia’s bowlers all around the MCG. Roy made 180, each six a sorely needed pick-me-up after a month of blue Mondays, when the first...
The six-team women’s Twenty20 tournament starts on Thursday with England’s World Cup winning heroes just some of the star names aiming to entice greater crowds and television audiencesBefore the first Kia Super League tournament last year, the custom was to look back for context, drawing on comparisons of what domestic women’s cricket had been to what it was about to potentially become. To reflect on Charlotte Edwards, for instance, having to pay for her own England blazer when her career started, to now playing in a semi-professional Twenty20 league.What a difference a year makes. Season two arrives with the women’s game bouncing out of a revolution in the space of a month during the World Cup. England’s champions return to...
England’s one-day captain is happy to specialise in the limited-overs game but feels there must be a shift or the divide between the formats will become biggerEoin Morgan has given a few masterclasses this summer. There was his century against South Africa at Headingley, his 87 against Australia at Edgbaston and his 75 against Bangladesh at The Oval. Then there was the hour he spent at Aldersley leisure centre in Wolverhampton. You may have missed that one. It was during the finals of Chance to Shine’s street cricket competition, when the kids were taking a break from whacking tape balls around the indoor gym. One asked Morgan which was his favourite shot, another, a young Pakistan fan, what it felt...