England’s white-ball captain Eoin Morgan has thrown his weight behind a 10-over tournament that is describing itself as ‘cricket’s new revolution’ and will see matches last 90 minutes, in line with football.
Morgan is one of six ‘icon’ players for the four-day event, which will take place in Sharjah on December 21-24, and could earn up to £30,000.
Other England players said by the tournament organisers to have expressed an interest are all-rounder Samit Patel, opener Michael Carberry and fast bowler Tymal Mills.
The six-team, 13-match T10 Cricket League, backed by the Emirates Cricket Board and T10 Sports Management, will be officially launched next Monday, along with a host of innovations, including breaks after five overs, when flash mobs will appear in the crowd, and people dressed as statues who will stalk the boundary and remain still after every dot ball.
Morgan and West Indian opener Chris Gayle are the only non-Asians among the icon players. With the competition aimed at the subcontinental diaspora, the other icons are Bangladesh all-rounder Shakib Al Hasan and three international retirees: Pakistan’s Shahid Afridi, India’s Virender Sehwag and Sri Lanka’s Kumar Sangakkara.
Competition organisers are pitting themselves against ‘the slow five-day Tests’, and say they are looking to ‘make history in sportainment’.
A video on their official website declares: ‘We believe that cricket, with its billions of followers, is ready to move to this quick and fun-filled version. The world’s best sporting events – like soccer, volleyball, basketball – are all 90 minutes of action.’
The event doesn’t need the approval of the ICC because the Sri Lankan cricket board have agreed to send a team – a move which automatically gives the tournament ‘bilateral’ status, thus removing it from the control of the game’s governing body.
Many will see it as part of the sport’s dumbing down, with Twenty20 on the rise and Test cricket’s traditions under threat amid talk of four-day matches.
Morgan himself has not played a first-class match since July 2015, when he made a pair against Somerset, and spends ever more of his time travelling the world playing in lucrative white-ball tournaments.
The piecemeal nature of his summer has done little for his form. His first-ball duck in the one-day win over West Indies at Bristol on Sunday took his tally in all cricket for Middlesex, Barbados Tridents and England to 20 runs in nine innings. A 10-over slog may not necessarily be the environment in which to rediscover his touch.
