Australian great Greg Chappell believes a revamped domestic Twenty20 league is the way of the future and will help develop more cricketers to elite status.
Cricket Australia (CA) plans to expand its 20-over competition from the summer of 2011-12 to eight franchises, more games and an influx of international stars.
CA wants fans to adopt a franchise like they would teams in the AFL or NRL, as the eight sides will be dotted across the country and be marketed differently from the six state sides.
All states will have a city-based team, with two new sides to come from growth areas such as western Sydney and the Gold Coast.
Chappell said the expansion would bring Australia into line with countries such as India and England, which have embraced the Twenty20 boom.
“There’s no doubt that 20-over cricket is going to be a big part of the future of the game,” said Chappell, a former Australian captain and coach of India and currently head coach at Australia’s centre of excellence.
“The idea of expanding the competition is good, it fits in well with the development of young cricketers, it means some more young cricketers will get exposure at the domestic level.”
The major concern over the expansion is what impact it will have on the existing Sheffield Shield and one-day competitions, which could be truncated to accommodate more Twenty20 games.
CA will assess how best to commit to all three formats, but Chappell was opposed to any move to shorten the Shield season, as the four-day game is used to develop Australian Test teams.
“Four-day cricket is a very important part of our development process and even for developing players to play short-form cricket,” he said.
“There’s an element of the longer form of processes, of decision making, stamina, resilience – all those things that are an important part of the make-up of a player, whatever format he’s going to play.”
Chappell said the revamp would most benefit younger players such as those on show in this week’s Futures League Twenty20 competition in Melbourne.
Meanwhile, Chappell became the latest figure to condemn the new umpire referral system being used in Tests, as he said it made the sport look bad.
He said the player challenges should be scrapped so only umpires had the right to refer decisions to video replay if they were unsure.
“We were getting 90-odd per cent … correct decisions from umpires anyway,” he said.
“One of the great strengths of our game is that you’ve got to learn to live with the umpire’s decision.
“It’s good for your personal development and I can’t see with technology the way it is at the moment that we’re going to get a much better result.
“The downside of it is that the game can look bad and I’m not in favour of that.”
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