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Revamp brief promised

Revamp brief promised

06/16/2010 03:53:54 AM

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Cricket Australia has promised to consult further with its elite players as the game's governing body forges ahead with plans to introduce split-innings one-day matches in domestic cricket this summer.

Australian skipper Ricky Ponting said before his team left for its tour of the United Kingdom last week that the players had not been consulted about the radical change and CA potentially faced a major fight to get the players on side.

CA will this summer will trial split-innings matches in the Ford Ranger Cup, with each state's innings divided into two blocks of 25 overs.

The format has been backed by the likes of one-day greats Dean Jones and Simon O'Donnell, with Jones labeling the matches ‘Test match Twenty20'.

CA chief executive James Sutherland said on Wednesday the country's best players would soon be briefed more extensively on the revamp.

"The ACA (players' union) has seen some of it but the players more broadly haven't seen that background and that's something over the next couple of weeks we want to make them more privy to," he said on Wednesday at the MCG.

The exact details of the new format, to be trialled in the latter matches of the Ford Ranger Cup after a handful of traditional 50-over one-day matches are held, remain unclear.

There is debate over whether, for instance, a batsman dismissed in the first block of 20 overs should be allowed to bat again in the second block, not simply carry wickets lost from one innings to the next.

Channel Nine's executive producer of cricket Brad McNamara has indicated his network, one of the key stakeholders of the sport, wants the game's best batsmen to have the opportunity to appear twice.

Sutherland said all options were being considered.

"We have interviewed a number of key stakeholders, that certainly has been one of the things that people have put forward, a 20-wicket game, if you want," he said.

"But from our perspective, we will continue to take all those things on board and try to fine-tune it."

"What we are very conscious about is we don't want to completely disband or move away from the current one-day format. If there are ways we can fine-tune it or innovate with that, that's exactly what we are looking for."

Another key project for CA awaits at the ICC executive board meeting from June 27 when former Prime Minister John Howard's nomination to become ICC vice-president will be voted upon.

If elected, he will assume the role of president from India's Sharad Pawar in 2012.

South Africa and Zimbabwe have yet to back Howard, with much depending on which way India leans, for its votes will influence the likes of Sri Lanka, Bangladesh, Pakistan and the West Indies.

Howard needs to clinch seven of the 10 votes to win the role.

"Our process was really to put forward a nomination. We have very much now put that in the hands of the ICC board and that's something the ICC board will deal with in the next three weeks," Sutherland said.

 
Photograph Copyright : Getty Images

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