Kevin Pietersen reckons a Hundred-style red ball franchise competition and not County championships as beneficial for England Test team.
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To say that the England men’s Cricket side had a forgetful 2021, would be an understatement. The year ended with yet another Ashes series loss Down Under, as Australia managed to retain the much coveted urn.
The English Cricket fans and experts had along expected lines began with their piercing words of humiliation and critiques after yet another hyped series went for a Toss.
A significant section of the aforementioned fans and experts jumped on to blame the participation of the England Test players in the various franchise leagues in the world, including their own product- The Hundred, as the reason for the downfall in the longest format.
However, someone like a Kevin Pietersen, who has played significant number of T20 leagues, has a different view point on England Test team’s downward spiral.
Kevin Pietersen reckons a Hundred-style red ball franchise competition
Post England’s Ashes series defeat at the Melbourne Cricket Ground (MCG) in the Boxing Day Test, Kevin Pietersen came up with a ‘proposal’ to save Test Cricket in England via a blog.
The 41-year-old has in fact defended the various T20 franchises around the world, and has weighed in on a red-ball franchise tournament in England, modelled around their recent addition- The Hundred.
Pietersen has went on to hail ECB’s concept of The Hundred as a ‘competition with some sort of value’, while opposing the County Championships with regard to its current form.
“With the money elsewhere in the game, the (County) Championship in its current form is not fit to serve the Test team,” Pietersen remarked in his Betway blog.
“The best players don’t want to play in it, so young English players aren’t learning from other greats like I did. Batters are being dismissed by average bowlers on poor wickets and the whole thing is spiralling.
“In The Hundred, the ECB have actually produced a competition with some sort of value.
“It is the best against the best, marketed properly, and the audience engaged with it. They got new people to the games and I can tell you that the players will have improved markedly for featuring alongside other greats. It’s such a valuable experience.”
Weighing on the need to introduce a red-ball franchise Pietersen wrote, “They now need to introduce a similar franchise competition for red-ball cricket, whereby the best play against the best every single week.
“They would make money available to attract some of the best overseas players in the world and the top English players would benefit from playing alongside them.
“It would be a marketable, exciting competition, which would drive improvement in the standard and get people back through the gates for long-form cricket.”
ALSO READ: When Pietersen threatened ECB with his Test retirement.
An eight-team round-robin league
The former right-handed batter went on to propose the format of the red-ball franchise competition.
“I see it as an eight-team round-robin league in the middle of the summer.
The pitches are monitored by the ECB so that we’re not seeing majorly bowler-friendly conditions like we do now. We have to have good pitches that reward and encourage strong batting techniques, batting for long periods of time, and that require skill from bowlers to take wickets,” he added.
“I can promise you that the current England team and lots of the best youngsters in the system still see Test cricket, in particular Ashes cricket, as the pinnacle.
“But the world’s best players are involved in the IPL, the PSL, the Big Bash, The Hundred, and so on, so it’s no good denying them the chance to make their millions anymore, as I was back in the day.
“We need to produce lucrative, high-quality, interesting competitions that reward and improve the best players. This could be one.”
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