County Cricket / Andrew Hughes / 31 May 2010 /

There's another new tournament for punters and cricket fans to get used to this summer. The Friends Provident T20 starts this week and, as Andrew Hughes explains, its origins are steeped in cricket politics.

If you are interested in our T20 Finals Day Betting Preview then please follow the link.

The Friends Provident T20 that gets underway on Tuesday was supposed to be very different. It was originally going to be the English Premier League, ECB Chairman Giles Clarke's challenge to the dominance of the Indian Premier League. It was never entirely clear why we needed to challenge the IPL, or indeed why, if this was the plan, we did not adopt a similar franchise system based on the main cities.

Right from the start, Clarke's vision of an English Premier League was flawed. Because it was rooted in the bloated county system, in which all 18 counties insisted on their piece of the pie, there was no chance of attracting outside investors as the IPL had done so successfully and so Clarke was forced to look elsewhere for an injection of cash and ended up getting into bed with Allen Stanford.

The arrest of the egregious Stanford, coupled with the credit crunch and in the background the threat of a loss of television revenues should the Ashes be returned to terrestrial television, has led to a dramatic downscaling of the original plan. What we are left with is essentially an expanded version of the Twenty20 Cup, with two groups rather than three and each county playing 16 group games rather than ten.

Counties are now allowed to field two overseas players in their starting XIs, which has led to a flurry of activity, with big name stars such as Andrew Symonds and David Warner being snapped up for the duration of the competition. But who is paying for these stars? County cricket is essentially bankrupt, existing only on ECB handouts, which it is given primarily to develop English talent, not to squander on overseas signings. Once again, the counties are running the game for their benefit.

But perhaps, not for too much longer. Intriguingly, the whole saga of the English Premier League has caused divisions between the counties. A handful of chairmen were in favour of a franchise system, indeed some were even discussing it with the now-disgraced Lalit Modi as late as March this year. This is on top of fault lines that had already developed over the allocation of England matches and the existence of a two-division structure. A crumbling of the county block vote could offer an opportunity for a more dynamic ECB chairman to come in and to reshape the Victorian first-class system in the image of the twenty-first century.

And, politics aside, this should be a thoroughly entertaining tournament for punters and spectators alike. For a start, this is the competition that all the players want to win, due partly to the increased exposure that it brings, but mainly because reaching the final guarantees you a place in the Champions League this autumn, where they will be competing against the best Twenty20 teams from around the world. As a result, all these games will be keenly fought and Finals Day at the Rose Bowl, Southampton, on August 14th should be a tense and exciting affair.

As you have come to expect, there will be plenty of Betfair markets available for the Friends Provident T20 where you can make your cricket knowledge pay. You can, for example, bet on the winners of the North and South groups (for which the current market leaders are Durham and Somerset respectively) as well as the individual fixtures starting with a re-run of last year's final, Sussex against Somerset, on Tuesday. And it is Marcus Trescothick's side who dominate betting in the tournament winners market, where they are currently available at odds of [8.0]

'.$sign_up['title'].'

'; } } ?>

:

:

:

?

: