There was me thinking that I was going to have to wait until next April for another chance to watch the Rajasthan Royals play, but it looks like they could be in action again this fall. Yesterday’s announcement of a Champions League for Twenty20 cricket has set the cricket world alight. It has also given the Royals a chance to strut their stuff on the biggest stage possible. I suspect there is no one on the planet happier than Shane Warne right now.

But of course there are already questions being asked. How is the tournament going to work? Who gets to play in it? What happens if players are contracted to more than one eligible club? How will all this money affect club cricket? Is this the beginning of the end for test matches? I’m going to avoid talking about Agnew, because most of what he says is so stupid that I don’t want to waste my time rebutting it. However, there were some reasonable points made on Paul Allot’s excellent Cricket Writers on TV program this morning, and by the Sky commentary team as they watched England dispatch the hapless New Zealand side at Trent Bridge. Besides, I promised you an IPL wrap-up post. Hopefully I’ll address all of that here.

The meteoric rise of the IPL as the world’s richest cricket tournament has provided a number of major challenges for the game’s administrators. Had the tournament been a failure, as a few people in the UK are trying to pretend, then there would be none of this rushing around like headless chickens. But as it was a resounding success, despite the very short time in which it was organized, and coming on the back of the equally successful Twenty20 World Cup in South Africa last year, it has caused everyone in the cricket world to sit up and take notice.

The tournament wasn’t by any means perfect. The “Icon Player” system didn’t work well, though it may have help drum up some initial interest from the Indian fans. The fact that players kept coming and going from sides due to international commitments was frustrating for fans. And I think that there is an argument to be made (though I’m not 100% convinced either way) that the semi-finals and final should be played as 3-match series rather than as single games. Nevertheless, the IPL produced some superb entertainment, and a nail-biter of a final watched by an estimated worldwide TV audience of 99 million. That’s an amazing statistic for a cricket match. Clearly this format of the game has amazing potential, and only people with ostrich mentalities would want to avoid trying to capitalize on it.

So there need to be more IPL-like tournaments. The only questions are things like when, how and where? Some of the idiots on Test Match Special took the absurdly condescending position that of course the right thing to do would be to allow the winners of the IPL to compete in the English country Twenty20 Cup where a better class of cricket could be found. I’m delighted to see that someone has stamped on this piece of imperialist arrogance and is instead creating an entirely separate tournament that will be open to the most successful club sides from major cricket-playing nations. Right now only four countries – India, Australia, South Africa and England – will be involved, but I’m hoping that in the near future, once schedules are sorted out, that at least the other four test-playing nations will be invited to send representatives.

Scheduling is, of course, a major issue. Right now the world cricket calendar is geared almost entirely around test matches. This means, amongst other things, that the English players were unavailable to play in the IPL, much to their financial disadvantage. It seems clear that there ought to be one to two slots in the calendar in which club Twenty20 leagues can take place, and during which no test matches take place so that the world’s top players can take part. Two is probably the minimum number, because cricket is a seasonal sport and can’t be played at the same time in all countries. So I’m actually going to suggest three slots in the calendar: two for in-country leagues, and one for the Champions’ League.

The problem with such a set-up – as has already been raised by many people – is that the top players may end up playing in more than one league, and thus potentially be associated with more than one Champions League qualifier. Indeed, this has already happened. South African Albie Morkel has played for both the Nashua Titans and the Chennai Super Kings and could also qualify with Durham. Which team is he going to play for in the Champions’ League? While this is the sort of nerdy, statistical question that cricket fans love to debate, I don’t see it as a major issue. The same problem can occur with soccer because of transfers. They have rules that cover such possibilities. Cricket will develop similar rules, at which point the problem will go away. Personally I agree with Nasser Hussain – players should be associated with only one club at a time, but I can see that the seasonal nature of the game makes this harder to achieve than with soccer.

In some ways this is more of a problem for the poor fan. I mean, what am I to do? Obviously I want to support the Royals, but as a sometime resident of Melbourne I also support Victoria, who are one of the two Australian qualifiers for the tournament. And it is entirely possible that Somerset Sabres might make it through as well. We have, after all, won the English Twenty20 Cup once already. Thank goodness I don’t know much about South African club cricket, or I would be in a right pickle.

Of course, with all of these additions to the schedule something has to give. In England I think that everyone agrees that the 40-over contest is a dead duck. The only reason that the ECB is keeping it is because they have a sponsorship contract that they don’t want to break. Sooner or later, it has to go. Beyond that I think that the 50-over game is certainly at risk. The last one-day World Cup was a disaster, but the Twenty20 World Cup was a roaring success. That has to tell you something. I have no great fondness for the one-day game. I think that Twenty20 has all of the same advantages, and none of the drawbacks. We shall see.

Of course the doom and gloom crowd are all predicting that test cricket will fade away within a matter of years because all of the money is in Twenty20. I certainly hope that won’t happen, and I think a lot of the reasoning that leads to that conclusion is flawed. Firstly it assumes that the massive upsurge in interest in cricket that Twenty20 is bringing will not, in any way, lead to more money being available to the longer form of the game. That seems a pretty sweeping assumption. And secondly it is often based on the assumption that Twenty20 requires no skill to play. Ian Smith said today that the main result of the Twenty20 craze will be that clubs will drop their quality players and pick “sloggers” instead. Well guess what? That’s exactly the philosophy that the Deccan Chargers followed in the IPL, and look where it got them. Bottom of the table. If you want to succeed at Twenty20, you have to have good quality players. And there’s no better way for them to develop skills than in the longer form of the game.

Well, I’ve gone on for quite a while, and I’m not sure that I have addressed all of the issues. But then again, there may be no one reading my cricket posts. Hopefully, if people are interested, they’ll ask questions. If they don’t I’ll know I’m talking to myself.

Update 1: Details on Albie Morkel correct as per comments below.

Update 2: As if by major, the ECB has just announced substantial increases in the win bonuses available to England test players.