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Atomic Kitten: what a purrformance
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It is astonishingly rare for English cricket to be at the vanguard of innovation. Arguably, the last time it happened was on the Ashes tour in 1970-71, when a combination of wretched weather and zealous marketing brought about the birth of the one-day international. Typically, that concept proved so popular that it happened to spawn a revolution, although the English, so notoriously resistant to change, struggled to this day to grasp the implications.Now, three decades later, the revolution has finally reached the shires, and the upshot will be the greatest disturbance to the peace since Gandalf last rolled in with a wagonful of fireworks. If the pre-tournament hype is to be believed, the Twenty20 Cup is already a huge success – Gloucestershire have banned committee members from wearing ties, Worcestershire have installed a pitch-side jacuzzi, and even those notable diehards in Yorkshire are reported to be bringing a bottle or two to the party. The consensus is that reform must be embraced or the game will die.Newer, shorter, faster, sexier. Throughout the land, county committees are gearing up, dusting down and preparing to fling open the monastery doors. Atomic Kitten will serenade the lucky finalists at a mid-July jamboree at Trent Bridge (more than one county player considers a kitten a bigger incentive than the cash), but the competition will be made or broken in the next 12 days. Forty-five matches of 20 overs per side will take place between 5.30 and 8.15pm, and there will be hardly a pause for breath, let alone tea.New on-pitch innovations will include a hot-seat on the boundary edge for incoming batsmen (who will be timed out if they don’t reach the middle within 90 seconds), and microphone links between the players and broadcasters, which may have to be discontinued if the competition proves to be as intense as the marketing.It is all too apparent why this sudden change of direction has been embraced – county cricket has been marginalised for years, but ever more so since the birth of the ECB Academy and the central contracts system. How it has come about is rather less obvious – after all, pensioners are not renowned for embracing the rave culture, however full of beans they believe themselves to be.Part of the attraction is the simplicity of the format. Twenty20 cricket is less contrived than Cricket Max, the Martin Crowe-pioneered version from New Zealand (the ECB wisely ruled out the introduction of a “Golden Over” in which all runs would count double). It is familiar as well – there is hardly an amateur cricketer in the land who has not taken part in a midweek 20-over bash – while that 5.30pm start-time should appeal to curious office-workers with three hours to kill before the pub beckons.The man with the plan was Stuart Robertson, the ECB’s marketing manager, who in 2002 commissioned a major research into declining county attendances. He found that there are roughly 19 million “cricket tolerators” in the country, people with no innate loathing of the sport who were willing to be converted. Among the under-represented were women, males in the 16-34 age group and children. “It was a wake-up call,” said Robertson. “If the business was to move forward, it had to improve its accessibility.”So much for the concept. But unless the teams themselves can put aside the razzmatazz, and knuckle down for some hard-fought competition, the whole fortnight will have the glib sterility of a graduate-recruitment fair. “We played two 20-over matches as part of our pre-season preparation,” said Geoff Cope, director of cricket at Yorkshire, “and we’ll be using the next week to prepare in a big way.”John Emburey, Middlesex’s coach, typifies the try-anything-once approach that is pervading the counties. “I remember back in 1969,” said Emburey, “when the Sunday League was launched, a couple of old fogeys from the Yorkshire team were saying one-day cricket was rubbish. But how wrong could they be, and they should have known better, especially since they came up through the Yorkshire leagues. I started a couple of years later and loved Sunday League cricket.”You won’t see slogging in this new competition,” added Emburey, whose unique tethered-feet swishing would have been gloriously suited to the format. “If you do, they’ll just get out. But you will see a lot of great improvised strokeplay and positive cricket, which has to be good for the game.”Indeed it has to be. But the proof of the pudding will be in the eating. As Cope concluded: “It will have done its job if it gets people hooked on the proper game.”That “proper game” may be a million miles and several sessions removed from this tip-and-giggle version, but cricket’s basic principles apply throughout. Like the batsmen who will be hoping to pull in the punters, the Twenty20 Cup needs to be given the benefit of the doubt.