PCA call for £1million T20 winners' prize

By Paul Bolton

The Professional Cricketers’ Association wants the England and Wales Cricket Board to introduce a £1 million first prize for the Friends Life t20 competition to attract the world’s top players back to the competition.

The proposal is included in a discussion document produced by the PCA following its annual survey of county players on major cricketing issues.

At present the Twenty20 Cup winners pocket £200,000, of which £123,000 goes to the players, but the players’ union believes that increasing the prize money would make the competition more attractive to overseas stars.

“We are trying to help counties to be more successful by making the domestic competitions the best they can possibly be  for attracting players, sponsors, broadcasters and spectators,” said Angus Porter, the PCA chief executive.

“If our T20 competition is not to be a second-rate domestic competition, we have to make sure that we have a great product and that the best players want to play in it.

“The figure of a £1 million first prize is what we think is an appropriate level for the competition if you compare it with the monies available to players in other T20 tournaments and the money that counties would have to forego if we are not going to participate in the Champions League.”

Around 70 per cent of the PCA’s 360 members responded to the survey and rejected most of the key recommendations of the Morgan Report, which was commissioned by the England and Wales Cricket Board last year.

The Report, compiled by former International Cricket Council President David Morgan, controversially proposes a reduction in County Championship cricket from 16 to 14 matches per county. The ECB has deferred a decision on implementing Morgan’s  findings and has opted to commission extensive consumer research before the report is considered again.

“The PCA has previously expressed a number of reservations about the domestic structure proposed for 2014 by the Morgan Review – not least of which was that despite widespread consultation which has been claimed at most only a handful of current players were asked their views,” the PCA report says.

The PCA survey redresses the balance and reaffirms the overwhelming support of current players  for the County Championship with 91 per cent of respondents regarding at as the most important domestic competition with 87 per cent rating the Twenty20 competition as second most important.

“Protecting the integrity of the LV= County Championship is regarded by the players as more important than creating space in the schedule to allow teams to compete in the Champions League and this in turn is a higher priority than achieving further reductions in the amount of cricket played in the domestic season,” the PCA report concludes.

The PCA would like to see Twenty20 cricket played in one block in the middle of the summer rather than the ‘appointment to view’ slots throughout the season proposed in the Morgan Report.

Players were split on whether the domestic one-day competition should be 40 or 50 overs with a slight majority – 51 per cent – in favour of the current 40-over format.

“The CB40 [50] competition needs to be subject to radical reappraisal,” the PCA conclude. “The current competition does not work well from either a financial or a cricketing perspective and the competition should be re-designed with a focus on quality rather than quantity and with the main purpose of providing players with the skills and experience needed to help England win World Cups.”


Date: 02/05/2012 09:38:36 by MBaldwin
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