English cricket is considering a radical shake-up of its international and domestic structures to capitalise on the new-found riches available through the Twenty20 game. These include England playing more Twenty20 internationals against blue-chip opposition such as Australia and India and a shorter County Championship programme than has been seen in more than 100 years.

At the heart of the scheme is a plan to recast the domestic Twenty20 Cup, which has proved a huge success with audiences, on the lines of the Indian Premier League (IPL) — an English Premier League (EPL) that involves more overseas players and greatly increases the value of the next media rights deal.

The IPL, which is scheduled to start next month featuring more than 60 foreign stars, looks likely to make the Indian cricket board even wealthier than it is already, thanks to a lucrative media deal, the franchising of clubs and sponsorship from two principal backers, all of which will bring in for the board about £56m a year for the next five years.

The England and Wales Cricket Board (ECB) hopes it can create something similar, even if not quite as lucrative, before an unauthorised promoter attempts to set up its own event, as has happened in India with the Indian Cricket League, which is fronted by Kapil Dev and financed by Zee TV’s Subhash Chandra. Ultimately, teams might be franchised as they have been in India, some possibly fronted by high-profile English cricketers.

The key to the ECB’s plans lies with the next media rights deal, which is due to start late next year and which the ECB is set to resolve over the next six months. Members of the ECB’s broadcasting committee, which includes Giles Clarke, the board chairman, David Collier, its chief executive, commercial director John Perera and Durham chairman Clive Leach, have been holding informal discussions with broadcasters that have made plain their keenness to cover a greater number of Twenty20 matches.

Three days ago the ECB announced that it had asked a domestic structure review group to look into the viability of allowing counties to admit to an expanded Twenty20 Cup up to three overseas players per team — this year they are limited to one — plus staging “other competitions”, which would include lucrative international Twenty20 series. A three-match series between England and Australia would generate millions of pounds and could easily be reciprocated in Australia. The group has been asked to respond as a matter of urgency, because the ECB wants to know what it is selling to television and radio companies. The radio rights are expected to prove more valuable than they have been in the past, which potentially poses a threat to the BBC continuing to cover England matches. The last media deal, covering 2006-9, was the richest ever, worth more than £220m for four years, but that could easily be dwarfed by a deal promising more Twenty20 matches, especially as rights to an EPL could be sold on to other countries at a time of the year when there is little other cricket being staged around the world. Setanta has bought the rights to show the inaugural season of the IPL (which runs from April 18 to June 1) in the UK.

Outline plans for an EPL may be put to other delegates at a meeting of the International Cricket Council (ICC) in Dubai this week, although some already know of the ECB’s ambitions. Fears that the meeting might agree to tear up the future tours programme, which is the schedule of Test and one-day international cricket, in order that the world’s best players might be allowed to fulfil big contracts on offer from the IPL, appear to be unfounded, at least in the short term. One prominent cricketer in New Zealand last week expressed fears for the future of Test cricket, but an ICC source said that all members were agreed on the primacy of Test cricket and that the Indian board had given its commitment on this score.

Were an IPL window to be proposed, it is expected that the likes of West Indies would demand compensation from the Board of Control for Cricket in India and the Indian franchises, which at the moment are pocketing the vast proceeds of the IPL. As things stand, boards from outside India do not benefit, although they are giving up their leading players for some or all of the IPL season.

The reason that so few West Indian players — just Chris Gayle, Shiv Chanderpaul and Ramnaresh Sarwan to date — have been allowed to sign for the IPL may be that their board is holding out for compensation from India before agreeing to release more of them.

Similarly, plans for an EPL might explain why, so far, Hampshire’s Dimitri Mascarenhas remains the only England- qualified player to have joined the IPL. Surrey’s Alistair Brown is known to have turned down a contract, and several England Test players are known to have been approached through their agents.

IPL officials seem eager to keep their English counterparts on-side, even though the ECB is discouraging its players from joining. The efforts of India and England to quash the ICL seem to be taking priority at the moment. Last week the IPL agreed to postpone Morne Morkel’s contract so that he could play for Yorkshire, who appear set to lose the services of Naved-ul-Hasan, who has resumed playing in the ICL.

The Dubai meeting will also decide who succeeds Malcolm Speed as ICC chief executive. Inder Singh Bindra is favourite and would form a powerful Indian axis with Sharad Pawar, who will act as ICC president from 2010. “India is in a position where it can grow the game,” Bindra said recently. “Everyone should benefit from India’s position in the game.” Clarke intends that England should do so.

Fears among Caribbean administrators that some countries are in favour of a two-division world Test championship, condemning West Indies to play in a second tier with Bangladesh and Zimbabwe, also appear to have no substance. Even if, at some time in the future, some countries were prepared to keep their schedules clear for the IPL season, England do not seem willing to follow suit. Their season has long been congested, and the first home Test match, which is usually played at Lord’s in mid-May, is highly lucrative, bringing in £10m-12m.

England might, however, support a move, were there to be one in Dubai, for countries to be allowed to play more than seven Twenty20 internationals per year. Plans for a Twenty20 Champions League this year between the best domestic teams from England, India, Australia and South Africa, among others, are set to be put on hold for fear that it may not be legally possible to bar sides that select rebel ICL players. Former England captain Tony Greig, a member of ICL’s executive board, said on Friday that court action was inevitable to challenge the ban on ICL players in the English game.

For traditionalists in England, the most radical idea would be to reduce the length of the county championship season. Teams have been playing anything from the present 16 matches a season up to more than 30 matches since the late 19th century, and the competition has been regarded as a nursery for future international players, but matches have rarely been well-attended.

Nor in recent years have the brightest talents often played a full part, especially with the introduction of central contracts for England Test players. However, not until the advent of Twenty20 cricket, which was launched in 2003, have counties come up with a cricketing brand capable of generating serious revenues. Now that they have, many of the clubs are keen to play more Twenty20 cricket, if necessary under floodlights. The ECB recently announced that it was installing floodlights at all 18 county headquarters.

How the championship might be restructured remains unclear. When Lord MacLaurin chaired the ECB in the late 1990s, he proposed a three-conference championship in which each team played 12 matches, a model taken from American sport. The plan was widely criticised, but 12 matches was a practical number of games per side. Were each team to play the others in their division once rather than twice (as is now the case), their schedule would drop from 16 games to eight, which may be regarded as too few. The ECB would use the extra revenue from more Twenty20 matches to invest in amateur cricket, the bedrock of future participation.

There would also be more money for counties and possibly more for international players on a performance-related basis.

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