Ultimately down to player power I think. Players like AB De Villiers have already made thinly veiled threats to retire from International cricket if the schedule isn't looked at. These blokes spend all year making a fortune playing T20 for various franchises around the World. Having a World event every two years also does threaten to devalue it a bit I think. They had a 5 year gap between fifty over World cups I think so they could have a World Cup rotating between 20 and 50 overs every two years.

You could watch top quality T20 cricket involving a lot of top players all year round if you want to the IPL starts next week I or least soon and you have major money flying about just about every else throughout the World. Even Pakistan and Banglasdesh now. If the schedule continues to piss off the top players what do you think they are going to give up, international cricket or the likes of the IPL were you can earn £800,000 and upwards for six weeks work? So every four years with the top players or every two with some giving it a miss?

Mind you've also got the Champions Trophy as well which is another 50 over tournament (which the West Indies aren't even in next time for not being good enough ) which they could get rid of to accommodate a more regular World T20.

I still think every two years is potentially overkill when you've got all the other T20 stuff going on. You have enough domestic T20 without flooding international cricket with it.

20/20 cricket is great but i would rather see England win the ashes in test cricket any day

Test cricket isn't deeply unpopular. Some of the crowds are poor in various parts of the World true. It might not be as popular for more casual watchers of the sport but global TV audiences watching it are pretty massive and TV companies still pay plenty of money for the rights.

Our T20 does need looking at, everyone else in the World does the franchise thing we need to follow the problem is keeping 18 counties happy and not out of pocket.

I prefer the longer format of cricket but I've only been to T20 or 50 over games because its the only way I can see a full game. Obviously the big hitting shorter format is exciting but I enjoy the complexities of the longer game.

This. Although I do enjoy 20/20 I feel it's a bit too over the top and a slog-a-thon. Part of the appeal of test cricket is the tactics, especially in a pressure-cooker game where runs are at a premium and the bowlers are on top on a decent pitch. 20/20 is just chuck the bat and put everyone on the boundary, pretty much.

T20 comes across as a bit weird once you realize that only singles and boundaries exist in reality.
I personally think a two-yearly world championship in any sport rubs the shine off the event (e.g., athletics), but that's not the reason given by the Powers-That-Be. Their reasons really do sound extremely lame.

Before the advent of mass professional 20 over cricket (I dislike the idea that T20 is a new thing when 20 over cricket has been played at lower levels for yonks) there was plenty wrong with the international calendar. Too many sterile tests infront of poor crowds and too many ODI's whose results were instantly forgot. At least the proliferation of T20 leagues forces the issue. Indeed, there are talks of trying to add more context to the international schedule by formalising teams into divisions in both tests and ODI's. Plenty of challenges are involved in this but it's good that the ICC are trying to sort something out.

There is still a stong appetite for test cricket it just isn't as overt as it is in T20. One of the problems is that the matches are taking place at a time when few can attend the games. This is where day/night tests could come in useful but there would be other ways around it too. Ensuring the first three days of a test are always Friday, Saturday and Sunday for instance.

T20 could be improved, IMO, by removing a lot of the restrictions on the fielding team. One of the reasons for introducing the "circle" in limited overs cricket was to encourage batsmen to be aggressive. I'm not sure they need encouragement now, it's just seen as they way you play the game. Removal of leg side wides, in so far as anything down leg is a wide, and restrictions on bouncers would also help.

Apart from the IPL is as bent as a 2 bob bit

Cricket is rife with Cricketing snobbery, and traditionalists.

The snobbery isnt from the upper classes either. Its from the cricketing fraternity.

T20 is crickets saviour. But no one at the ECB or the MCC would ever vote to make T20 the main event.

Look at those pathetic members at Lords?

Bunch of fucking retards them lot. Yet they are given higher credibility there than the players.

Test cricket is great, if like me, you just love cricket. Its top drawer when its against the Aussiesin the ashes.

But ultimately what does it mean? England win the ashes.........then what?

Nothing for 3-4 years. Unless you consider 3 tests v New Zealand and 2 v SriLanka the next big thing?

Its a farce. Unless they come up with a cricket test league or something, it will always remain the Ashes, then the rest.

And winning the Ashes counts for nothing, excpet bragging for the winner against the other.

Its not that far a step from the twatting boat race. Two teams that dont give a fuck about the rest of the world. Because ultimately nothing else matters.

T2O at least puts the ebst against the best, tournament style.

They may as well have it annually. It would never get stale.

You're right Dibble I've had it with cricket and its snobbery I'm off to contribute to your golf thread.

I agree with that, some of the cricket in the IPL is totally overrated as well.

couldnt be certain but I suspect I touched a nerve there.

Just a joke with with plenty of truth spoken a jest. But you can't really talk about snobbery on one hand then on the other say the Masters is the greatest sporting event

I haven't bumped into many people who don't enjoy T20 it is possible to love all forms of the game but I do understand why the ICC have done this even though I probably don't agree with it all told. In cricketing terms Test Cricket is the ultimate form of the game where time the very best players will excel, that does need safeguarding at the same as raising the profile of the game a and increasing its popularity with T20. It's not an easy balancing act but as I said loads of it is scheduled domestically without flooding international cricket with it. When it comes around it will be more greatly anticipated and have more meaning for the winners. I don't see people calling for a football World Cup every year?

I hate snobbery in all sports, and I have plenty of first hand experience of it in golf, that is pretty shocking, via my eldest lad that gave up the sport because of it.

It ruins many sports.

You'll have a World Cup every two years Chip though the 50 over one needs fitting in as well. They also have the Champions Trophy in that same cycle. But like I said earlier one of those 50 over events needs to go.

Cricket is essentially a series of contests between a bowler and a batsman. In this country we're lucky - variable atmospheric conditions and the way different pitches are prepared keep the contest interesting.

It's no coincidence that enthusiasm for short form cricket is greatest in the Indian sub-continent - where conditions and pitches nearly always favour the batsmen.

Who in their right mind would have the patience to watch a kid in Mumbai score 1,009 not out in a 4 innings match? I'm surprised the scorer didn't commit suicide to end the tedium.

T20 pitches are prepared to favour the batsman, who is put under pressure by the need to score runs quickly. Cricket as an easy snack - canny enough, but I wouldn't want to have to eat it all the time.

And if they ever bring in franchise T20 here we'll be expected to support the Newcastle Nonces, not Durham, so fuck that.

But you could support whichever team your favourite player played for.

And as all games are televised you neednt miss a ball.

I dont get the tribalism.

I'm sure that cockroach Peter Winkelman made the same argument to Wimbledon fans: " You can still watch your favourite players; I've even kept Dons in the name."

you really think thats the same thing?

Really?

T20 is going to have to be 100% franchises for it to work.

Imagine it was split into six or eight franchises and ours covered Durham and Yorkshire with matches split between the Riverside and Headingley. A team with the likes of Ben Stokes, Joe Root and four of the Worlds best T20 players?

If Durham get 5,000+ for a T20 game it's regarded by them as a decent crowd. For a supposed sports mad area the current format isn't appealing to enough people. Look at the crowds in Australia for the big bash, 80,000+ in Melbourne, 50,000+ in Adelaide. Unheard of in domestic. If we keep set in our ways plodding on with 18 counties we are going to fall way behind.

If big crowds were everything there'd be a very good case for moving Leicester City to Villa Park.

Team sport is tribal by its nature - or it's for armchair viewers like Colonel Dibble.

In terms of Durham, they do have smaller T20 gates than most and they only got floodlights in last season so people can get to games after work but unless they're driving, it doesn't have the best of transport links on an evening.

That's why I think franchise is the solution, you can't exclude smaller counties like Northants and Leicestershire completely because they already struggle massively financially and the current format as behind the times as it is still makes them the most money over the season. Plus they counties produce the odd England player they can't be discarded. Bigger counties like Yorkshire and Durham struggle financially

8 teams, over a four week period in high summer when no International Cricket is being played. Every game on Live TV, at least two games a day. Include all the counties split the pot as fairly and as evenly as possible. Even think outside of the box, games at bigger stadiums, why couldn't the London team or teams use the Olympic stadium or Wembley for example? Middlesex and Sussex get 20,000+ the potential is there.

I don't think the ICC are getting it completely wrong with the four year gap it's just come to forefront here in England because we did well in a successful tournament and lots of casual observers saw the potential of a format that has already been realised everywhere else. Like everything Twenty20 started here but we have somehow managed to fall behind the rest, set in our ways. It would benefit all formats of the game far more than a more regular International tournament that people just watch on the telly.

Competitive isn't the first word that comes to mind for Welsh Rugby regions in Europe.
The only sucessful European franchises at any level are the Irish provinces, who apart from this season have always done very well.
But if you talk to a Munster supporter from Limerick and mention Cork, he goes as bonkers as a Hartlepudlian would at the mention of Newcastle.