Surrey call for knockout 50-over tournament including national counties

Chairman Richard Thompson believes the game in this country is "missing a trick" in not including the 20 teams below the first-class pyramid - formerly known as minor counties - in active competition

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Surrey have called for 50-over cricket in England and Wales to be played in a knockout format, with national counties given the chance to be giant-killers once again.

Chairman Richard Thompson believes the game in this country is "missing a trick" in not including the 20 teams below the first-class pyramid - formerly known as the minor counties - in active competition, as was previously the case with the old Gillette Cup (later the Natwest Trophy and Cheltenham & Gloucester Trophy).

The 50-over format will be effectively downgraded in 2020, with the Royal London Cup running concurrently with The Hundred and stripped of the vast majority of its leading domestic players.

Thompson says it makes sense to replace the tournament with a straight knockout.

"Why, when you consider we’ve got 38 counties, with structures in place, don’t we engage the national counties, and not play every competition in a league,” he told the Daily Telegraph.

^{Surrey chairman Richard Thompson}

"Why can’t we have a knockout that’s truly a national knockout? So, Cornwall might come here or we might go down to Truro and get beaten. Those types of things – cricket’s really missing a trick."

"You’re injecting a degree of romance into the game, you’re involving the whole country in a way that you’re not at the moment."

English cricket's summer calendar is overloaded in 2020, following the introduction of a fourth format in the shape of The Hundred.

The ECB's 100-ball experiment has been inserted into high summer, between July 17 and August 15. The T20 Blast group stages will conclude just before The Hundred begins, with the knockout rounds following in late August and early September.

Seven County Championship rounds will open up the season in April and May, with the majority of the rest of the four-day campaign shunted into September, leaving the Royal London One-Day Cup to take place alongside The Hundred in July and August. 

The 50-over final has been relocated from its traditional home at Lord's and shifted up the M1 to Trent Bridge. It will take place on September 19.

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