Ashes 2021-22: Kevin Pietersen suggests bold The Hundred-like red ball tournament to save Test cricket in England – Former England captain Kevin Pietersen has suggested a bold reform to the County Championship format in a bid to help England revive their fortunes in the longest format of the game. Joe Root’s side lost nine Tests in 2021 and are on the brink of a whitewash in the Ashes, having lost the first three games. While England continue to be a force in the white-ball formats, they have seriously lacked quality in Tests and changes are in order for Root and Co. Follow Insidesport.in for Ashes 2021-22 LIVE Updates.
Ashes 2021-22: Kevin Pietersen suggests bold The Hundred-like red ball tournament to save Test cricket in England
In his blog for Betway, Former England captain Kevin Pietersen has called for a revamp of England’s County Championship in a bid to revive their fortunes in the longest format of the game. Pietersen, who won the Ashes in 2005, 2009, 2010-11 and 2013, said the existing County Championship has lost its sheen and is “not fit to serve the Test team” in its current form.
He wrote, “With the money elsewhere in the game, the (County) Championship in its current form is not fit to serve the Test team. The best players don’t want to play in it, so young English players aren’t learning from other greats like I did. Batters are being dismissed by average bowlers on poor wickets and the whole thing is spiralling.”
Ashes 2021-22: Kevin Pietersen suggests bold The Hundred-like red ball tournament to save Test cricket in England
The 41-year-old praised the England and Wales Cricket Board (ECB) for its professional franchise-based 100-ball cricket tournament – – The Hundred and urged them to come up with something similar for red-ball cricket. Kevin Pietersen proposed an eight-team round-robin league where pitches encourage strong batting technique.
Pietersen wrote, “In The Hundred, the ECB have actually produced a competition with some sort of value. It is the best against the best, marketed properly, and the audience engaged with it. They got new people to the games and I can tell you that the players will have improved markedly for featuring alongside other greats. It’s such a valuable experience.”
Ashes 2021-22: Kevin Pietersen suggests bold The Hundred-like red ball tournament to save Test cricket in England
He added, “They now need to introduce a similar franchise competition for red-ball cricket, whereby the best play against the best every single week. They would make money available to attract some of the best overseas players in the world and the top English players would benefit from playing alongside them. It would be a marketable, exciting competition, which would drive improvement in the standard and get people back through the gates for long-form cricket.”
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As for the County Championship, Kevin Pietersen believes that the structure can be used to create a feeder system to the eight times featuring in the proposed tournament. He wrote, “I can promise you that the current England team and lots of the best youngsters in the system still see Test cricket, in particular Ashes cricket, as the pinnacle.”
“But the world’s best players are involved in the IPL, the PSL, the Big Bash, The Hundred, and so on, so it’s no good denying them the chance to make their millions anymore, as I was back in the day. We need to produce lucrative, high-quality, interesting competitions that reward and improve the best players. This could be one,” added Pietersen.
Ashes 2021-22: Kevin Pietersen suggests bold The Hundred-like red ball tournament to save Test cricket in England
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