What would you do if you ruled Cricket

[harrisb]

Taken from the wisden cricketer magazine,

what would change if you could rule world cricket.

Here's mine,

Turn Champions Trophy into a 40-Over World Cup
Begin a world-wide Premier League, with teams from all over the world.
Take out referrals, even though they haven't been implemented, it disrupts the flow of the game.
Have a World Test Play-Off every year, with the top 5 teams playing each other, like the tri-nations, but with 5 teams

now it's your turn,

 

[pcfan123]

Pay Test Cricketers the most amount of money.

 

[Dutch]

Extend the batting line-up of the England team to 16 and allow them to field with butterfly nets to catch the ball.

 

[Brook]

Leave something in the pitch for the bowlers, possibly partially uncover pitches. More incentive for bowlers, and then teams could safely play 4 bowlers. Give pitches around the world individuality.

 

[Gary123]

Will do nothing.
Just sit and relax in 7-star Hotels,Keep on giving disgusting speeches to improve cricket,And sometimes go and give away the awards as the Head of cricket.





That is what happens,isn't it?

 

[SciD]

Buy Bentley car and gift it to my GF.

 

[Kev]

Scrap the Champions Trophy, there are too many competitions now.

Shorten the World Cup - No more round robin matches and no weird seeding going on regardless of how teams do in the groups.

Look at standardising Tours. Cricket must be about the only top line international sport where the two competing countries decide how many times they are going to play each other.

Look into reducing ODI's to 45 or 40 overs.

Certainly scrap referrals.

Put a stop to players leaving the field of play all the sodding time. You never see a wicket-keeper going off! You want ot go off, then fine, your team plays with 1 less player.

Get rid of Powerplays. Really hate these, they are supposed to make the game more exciting but they just make it more confusing. Instead allow the bowlers to bowl a greater allocation of overs allowing the team to put in an extra batsman if they want.

Numbers on shirts in Test matches. Oh and while we are at it, the right number! None of this, "That's Freddie wearing Jimmy's Jumper" non-sense.

 

[harrisb]

nice to see people taking an interest in this, hopefully it will run for a while

 

[sifter132]

Agree with most of Kev's - you should be president mate :laugh Especially scraping the Champions Trophy, shortening the World Cup (only slightly mind you just make it 1 month instead of 2), standardised tours would be fantastic, numbers on shirts and YES for crying out loud stop the incessant 'nature breaks' by the fielding team.

Other things I would do:
1) Merge T20 and ODIs into 1 format for international cricket: the 40 over format broken into 4 quarters with teams swapping every 20 overs for fairness. Then tours would have a standard 3-4 Tests (5 for BIG series) and 3-5 40 over games. Easy. I'd add a few rule tweaks to encourage captains on both sides to attack eg. bowlers have minimum over counts instead of maximums allowing the best bowlers to bowl more. And for the batting side, maybe letting a member of the batting side who has been dismissed in the first 20 over quarter come back in later, thereby encouraging some hitting in the early parts of the match.

2) With no international T20 games, convert the IPL into a World Premier League and devote a month every year where there is no international play, just the WPL T20 tournament. Rotate the venues every year so it's not always in India. It would be a great promotional tool for cricket every year and would get plenty of fans from all corners of the world involved. You could eventually have a Hong Kong/Chinese team or an American team, made up of 90% foreigners of course, but it would be a great way of introducing the game into new areas by giving them a franchise.

3) Standardise the cricket balls for Tests. I was sick of hearing about the Duke/Kookaburra balls during the Ashes.

4) No Day night Tests EVER

5) Use Hawkeye and hotspot in the referrals. Otherwise it's just crap. Tennis manages to sell Hawkeye and it really seems like Roger Federer is the only guy who hates it. Cricket could be the same. Crowds would love the suspense of seeing the Hawkeye graphic on a big screen and would ACCEPT the decision when they know there is science behind it. It's only the stodgy ex-players that hate Hawkeye in my experience.

6) Oh and be really strict on over rates. I hate seeing 12 overs an hour and LONG chats between captain and bowler.

I'm sure more will come to me but that's off the top of my head.

 

[StinkyBoHoon]

1) merge 20 over and 50 overs into an all-emcompassing 'limited over' format. (so a limited overs series would be 3 ODIs and 2 T20s, for example, the winner would still be the first to 3. would cut down on meaningless one off t20 games and stop overlong one-day series.)

2) Implement a ranking dependent maximum and minimum series limit. This would ensure the better teams played longer series against each other and smaller teams played more tests against competitive opposition. It would aim to put a stop to pointlessly long, unbalanced contests (4 tests of the england v west indies series) and also provide rewards for teams coming up in the rankings as they would get longer series against the more wealthy, established opposition instead of unsatisfying short ones (australia v sri lanka, only 2 tests, actually got interesting by the end of the 2nd test but it was over by then). Would also stop to farce series just crammed into gaps around ODI tours.

3) Pitch rating panel. Pitches to be assessed by groundsmen after matches, 2 or more seriously bad reports can see venue banned from hosting tests for period and when ban is lifted ground will be on probation. Should encourage the grounds administrators to worry about providing fair pitches rather than just getting 5 days of play (three 4 day tests over a year is infinitely better for a ground than one 5 day one) especially at iconic grounds that host a lot of tests.

4) increase bowler limits in LO cricket a quarter of the overs rather than a 5th. hopefully would stop teams being loaded with bits and pieces players and encourage teams to play an extra specialist or two leading to better bowler v bat battles.

5) 50 over world cup same format as the T20, no stupid super 8. If india don't get to play pakistan and the ICC miss out on the TV revenue, so be it, but have a proper tournament. shorter as well.

6) Schedule larger and wealthy teams only to tour through IPL (england, SA, australia, even india) to frees up spots for less wealthy nation's players to go and make more money (it's shocking that guys like jayawardene, chanderpaul, vettori make paltry sums compared to ian bell)

 

[nz0003]

Play porn on the big screen, in between innings.

 

[McLOVIN]

Life time jail to likes of Lalit Modi and other jokers of cricket

 

[Cricketman]

Good thread.

- Make it a better bargain for the bowlers. Spice up the pitches - force the groundsman and home team into making better quality tracks that will make for a better cricket match. No more of this crap 892-0 tracks that we see so much of these days.
--Take out the bouncer rule. The batsman is protected head to toe and should have the balls to face an over of express pace to his head. You should be good enough to get out of the way or pull it away at the test match level.

- Take out International T20s, barring the T20 Championship (*note, It's NOT called a 'World Cup'). Limit the Twenty20 games to the domestic circuit only - such as the IPL, KFC Big Bash, and the Twenty20 Cup in England. This takes out an element of seriousness (to a degree) of T20 matches, brings young undiscovered talent to the forefront, and limits the number of useless matches in the international calender.

- Scrap the ICC Champions Trophy. I really like the concept and really appreciate the boost it has given to ODI cricket in it's current edition, but it's an overkill of an ICC tournament, and there is simply no need to have it right now. Replace the Champions trophy with the T20 Championship in the calendar. But, take forward the concepts that the champions trophy had when it was first created, being:

• Playing the game in a neutral venue, such as Kenya, Canada, Ireland, Malaysia, etc. This spreads the game of cricket, tapping into a whole new country of potential cricket fans and followers.

• Limit it to the best teams in the world, plus 1-2 minnows that have proved themselves outside the Test arena.

- No referrals in it's current state. Failing that, tweak it to something that isn't shiznit.

- Reduce the number of 'repeat' test and ODI series. We are sick and tired of facing the same people over and over again. Also, lmit the number of 'blowoff' series (such as a Bangladesh vs Australia, for example).
- Play some tests at neutral venues? Adds another demension to the game, and better than playing the same team in the same conditions over and over again. Imagine an India vs Sri Lanka test series hosted in say, England. No longer are we forced into seeing 80 overs a day bowled by spinners on the trot, but we see a whole new range of swing and seam bowlers in conditions alien to home.

- Stricter on over rates. Fine the boards, the players, and go even as far as a match penalty. We don't have time to watch you pick your nose and change fields to your leisure.

- Get rid of sub fielders. Got to take a poo? Play with 1 less person. Constipated? You should've had some more fiber.

- Rejuvenate ODI cricket. Leave it as 50 overs, cut the world cup short to 12 teams and a 5 week tournament.

- Stop changing the rules of cricket in general.

 

[gloryandfame]

- No referrals
- No Powerplays
- Test Championship every 4 years featuring all test teams
- Andrew McDonald made evil overlord of the ICC, Cameron White Vice president

 

[CG123]

Put Vettori in the Test and ODI world teams.