Betfair Official Blog

Back Page Betting: Get ready for the big-hitting Twenty20 bonanza

Click here to view market

Like many fans, Ralph Ellis is struck with a severe bout of Twenty20 fever and wonders why the press are still ignoring the competition.

Imagine the first day of the Premier League season and opening your papers to find no clue about who would finish top or bottom. In fact imagine the same scenario when the Football League starts a week earlier and the Championship race gets under way. You can't, can you?

So when are the national papers going to wake up to the Twenty20 revolution and the size of the audience that is flocking to see the new form of cricket? The Daily Star, for instance, doesn't even mention on 15 pages of sport the first night of a competition that will play to packed houses up and down the country. Somebody is making a mistake there because the fans who are filling up the cricket grounds for an evening of six-hitting and wicket-taking are the same people who watch the football all winter.

Yet as David Lloyd points out in the Daily Mail, a competition that was started as a bit of fun has in six seasons become a very serious sporting event, and the arrival of a £2.4million prize pot for entry into the new Champions League will make it all the more so.

Lloyd is the one writer around the tabloids who is looking not at the politics surrounding the Twenty20 boom but at the issue that will concern most Betfair readers - who is going to win the thing? Bumble's choice is Somerset, who have the huge advantage of Marcus Trescothick in their ranks. Just as he was their key player to win the County Championship second division last season in the longer form of the game, he can be every bit as influential in the explosive 20 over version. And he's guaranteed to be available for every fixture, unlike the England stars attached to other counties. Lloyd also rates Ian Blackwell as a player who can club unorthodox boundaries, and reckons the Cidermen are best value at [9.4] in this morning's betting on the eventual trophy winners. They are [1.66] to get their campaign going against Northants at Taunton tonight.

Somerset are clustered with Durham [9.4] and Kent [9.8] at the front of the betting, but the arrival of massive prize money could skew the competition. This will be the first time that county cricketers have known real pressure, and given the quotes of Kent's Robert Key this morning you'd have to ask how well he would handle it. Asked about the prospect of standing under a skied catch to win one of the semi-finals, with a possible multi-million jackpot hanging on the outcome, he says: "I think I'd feel a little bit under the pump." Try asking a top footballer how he'd feel about taking a last minute penalty to win a place in the Champions League final with a similar jackpot at stake and he'd tell you: "Bring it on, I'll score it". Could make an argument for laying Kent tonight at [1.73] against Sussex, who have the powerful batting of Murray Goodwin to call on.

Key also reckons the Twenty20 bonanza could kill off Test cricket in a generation, but he's talking nonsense. The new audience learning about cricket for the first time are actually a prime market to move on to the longer, more subtle and intelligent form of the game.

Five things you didn't know about Ian Blackwell

1. He was named by former Somerset coach Dermot Reeve as the hottest young prospect in
the game after moving from Derbyshire 6 years ago

2. His dad got him playing cricket in the garden of their Derbyshire village from the age of 2.

3. He weighed 17stone 6lbs when he was summoned from a beach holiday to replace
Ashley Giles for a one-day series in Pakistan

4. He's worked at his fitness after being offered the chance to captain Somerset but still
weighs more than 15stone

5. He says: "If they want me down to 12 stone I would have to cut off a leg"

• Cricket
• Twenty20