Twenty 20 Putting Strain On County Cricket

Exciting times lie ahead if you're a professional cricketer. Only a couple of months from now, we'll be watching the first multi-million pound game of cricket in the winner-takes-all Stanford Super Series. And for the 22 men involved, it could be the most lucrative three hours of their entire lives.

This is just the start of a new, financially attractive era in world cricket, and twenty 20 is at the heart of it. Along with the IPL, there's no better time to be a cricketer and for a sport that in the past has wavered in the Conference of the money league, it could soon be in the upper reaches of the Premier league.

Now we have the plans for our very own EPL twenty 20 competition, incorporating all 18 county sides and two yet-to-be-confirmed overseas teams. But despite this new league being said to take over the entire June schedule in the English summer from 2010, the powers that be have decided on a separate twenty 20 league spread over the last couple of months of the season.

I, for one, find this worrying. Not only does this smack of overkill for a form of the game that is still exciting but could ultimately become boring and predictable, but the other supposedly more important competitions could soon become obsolete.

For a start, the county championship should still be regarded as the No. 1 competition in English cricket. It's the format that develops our biggest talent in to Test cricketers and after all, Test cricket is surely still the major goal for any aspiring cricketer.

And I would find it very hard to believe anyone who thinks that beating Australia in the Ashes isn't the pinnacle in an England cricketer's career. It would upset me to think that some are becoming so obsessed with the money side of the game, that twenty 20 was all that they were interested in playing.

I also believe that the 50 over game should be given bigger priority. After all, is that not the format of the World Cup and Champions trophy?

Our own domestic 50 over competition will now have to be squeezed in at the very start of the year to allow for all the twenty 20 action. This, to me, just degrades a competition that seems to have lost its romantic tag as the FA Cup of cricket.

Don't get me wrong—I enjoy twenty 20. It's a game that sees big crowds, something that has been oh so rare in the county game of late. It's also bringing more interest in from generations of people who don't know much about the game, and that can only be a good thing.

For that purpose, twenty 20 has been excellent for the world game, but maybe now it's time to sit back and take stock of where our beloved game is heading. Things are changing too quickly, and I for one am apprehensive about the future.