Durham and Yorkshire not keen on unification plans
DURHAM chief executive David
Harker and his Yorkshire counterpart
Stewart Regan have
made it clear they do not favour
unification with long-standing
opponents as plans to create a
streamlined Twenty20 Premier
League in England gather pace.
England and Wales Cricket
Board chief executive David Collier
yesterday confirmed the ECB
is on course to create its own version
of the Indian Premier
League by the year 2010.
With a blaze of public and player
interest as well as large
amounts of money flooding the
IPL the talk of a domestic equivalent
in England has become a
hot topic in recent days.
American billionaire Sir Allen
Stanford has spoken of his belief
that cricket could become the
world's dominant team sport,
while also offering to invest heavily
in an ECB-sponsored initiative
to promote the format.
And it now seems the ECB are
firming up plans for their own
English Premier League with the
backing of Stanford.
Any plans for merging counties,
however, have received a
mixed response.
It will be the cricketing equivalent
of Arsenal and Tottenham
combining, according to Hampshire
chairman Rod Bransgrove.
Bransgrove and Lancashire
chief executive Jim Cumbes may
fall into a less entrenched bracket
than their counterparts in this
region - although all appear
sceptical at best over becoming a
regional band of brothers.
There is no need to secondguess
Regan.
I don't think Yorkshire and
Lancashire would play as a
merged side,'' he said.
That wouldn't appeal to me, I
don't think it would appeal to our
fans and it certainly wouldn't appeal
to our players.
I don't want to take Yorkshire
into something that involves a
new identity and mixing up with
other teams.
We are Yorkshire County
Cricket Club and we want to be
part of the solution, not jumping
in with AN Other party.''
Durham boss Harker is equally
disinclined to cede his county's
growing brand.
My gut reaction is to be dead
set against it for a couple of reasons,''
he said.
To throw us into a bucket
with Yorkshire and Lancashire
would be wrong.
We are 90 miles from Headingley
and 120 miles from Old Trafford.
So what connection do we
have with those places?''
At the centre of Regan's rationale
is the depth of tradition and
marketability of cricket in his
county.
We have probably got the
strongest identity of any of the
counties," said Regan.
Yorkshire people are Yorkshire
through and through. The
chant in Yorkshire at football,
cricket or rugby grounds is 'Yorkshire,
Yorkshire'.
Our identity is very strong. A
North team just doesn't have an
identity.''
Regan is predictably anxious
that his club makes the most of
the land of opportunity.
If you were to divide the country
into, say, eight zones, to participate
in this Super League,
then Yorkshire - given the size of
it - could quite easily be one of
those zones in its entirety,'' he
said.
Greater London could possibly
be another one.
This is a county with 1,000
cricket clubs. Fifteen per cent of
the cricket played in the country
is played in Yorkshire, and there
are five million people in the
county - so we have something
different here to other counties.''
Regan unsurprisingly prescribes
a condensed Twenty20,
with mergers elsewhere, placing
Yorkshire and other clubs with
Test grounds at the centre.
9:53am Saturday 26th April 2008
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