Hants boss seeks Twenty20 rethink

Rod Bransgrove's plans would mean an end to international Twenty20 games.

Hampshire chairman Rod Bransgrove has called for international Twenty20 cricket to be scrapped.

Bransgrove, who has produced a report containing a series of radical proposals, wants three club Twenty20 leagues around the world instead.

"T20 is a light-hearted, gimmicky product, it should not be usurped by the international game," he said.

The Hampshire chairman will present his report to the England and Wales Cricket Board next week.

In the report Bransgrove claims that international Twenty20 is bad for the overall international game.

"It will cheapen international fixtures, cannibalise other international formats and render domestic T20 competitions uncompetitive by the removal of star players," said Bransgrove.

The amount of Test cricket being played should be significantly reduced Rod Bransgrove

Instead he proposes there should be an English (and Welsh) Premier League and a Southern Hemisphere Twenty20 League, as well as the current Indian Premier League.

These would all be played during international breaks so that the star players could be involved.

Another idea to come out of the report is splitting Test cricket into two divisions to try and reverse declining interest.

Each division would have five teams where relegation and promotion would be decided by an annual play-off between the top-ranked team from the second division and the bottom-ranked one in the first division.

"The amount of Test cricket being played should be significantly reduced and should be graded on a meritocratic basis into two divisions each comprising five teams," Bransgrove added.