Dear Sir/Madam,

I’d like you to evaluate my idea for a tournament involving the A-Teams of the ten Test nations.

My proposal contains an outline of the tournament format and the purpose of the tournament. It has significant benefits to the participants, players, counties, cricket fans, broadcasters, and media. These include:

· Showcasing players who are on the fringe of Test selection and providing a guide as to the depth of talent in each participating country

· Providing players with an important yardstick with which to gauge their readiness for Test cricket

· Minimising disruption by staging the tournament before or after the domestic season

· Offering Clubs who have players in the tournament positive high profile publicity

· Attracting more spectators to the county games as A-Team stars will not be away on international duties as much as Test players.

· Offering attractive opportunities for the media as the concept will be skilful, entertaining and exciting

· Providing opportunities to capitalise on the increasing popularity of interactivity in TV and on the Internet

· Give cricket fans a great opportunity to familiarize themselves with the new Test hopefuls as our research indicates that many ardent cricket fans want to be better informed about the 2nd-tier players and see them in action more often

· Prospective financial benefits to participants and partner organisations.

I hope you agree that an A-Team tournament would be a worthy addition to the cricket calendar. I would now like to commission a detailed feasibility study and explore the different financial arrangements that will make the tournament a success. I look forward to your views on this matter and the support of the ICC and ECB.

Yours sincerely,


Michael Dengler
World A-Team

© Michael Dengler, January 2004. All rights reserved.

__________________
Administrator

1. World A-Team - General Confidentiality

2. World A-Team - Intellectual Property

3. World A-Team – Purpose

4. Tournament Composition

5. Tournament Playing Criteria

6. Squad Examples

7. Tournament Seeding

8. Tournament Duration

9. Tournament Format

10.Venues

11. Finance

12. Summary

© Michael Dengler, January 2004. All rights reserved.

__________________
Administrator

1. World A-Team - General Confidentiality

This proposal and the materials comprising it are commercially confidential and the recipient is subject to the following duties of confidentiality:

To keep confidential and not disclose to any third party any confidential information supplied under this proposal without the prior written consent of Michael Dengler.

To maintain in the utmost secrecy and confidence all documents, data, reports, recordings, records, or information of any nature in any media that were supplied or conveyed prior to any written agreement being entered into between us.

Not to make nor authorise nor permit any copies of the proposal to be made at any time for any purpose whilst it is in the recipient’s possession.

To immediately return the proposal and accompanying materials to Michael Dengler upon request.

2. World A-Team - Intellectual Property

All inventions, copyright, design rights, trade marks and any other rights of any nature in any material in any media created by Michael Dengler included in this proposal shall be and remain at all times the sole property of Michael Dengler and the recipient shall have no claim to or interest therein of any nature at any time except as shall be agreed otherwise by the parties in writing.

3. World A-Team - Purpose

To provide a showcase for players who are on the fringe of Test selection and provide a guide to the depth of talent in each participating country.

4. Tournament Composition

The tournament will involve the A-Teams of the ten Test nations.

5. Tournament Playing Criteria

The age of the players will be under 30 and they shall have played no more than five Test matches.

Squads will therefore not comprise young Academy type squads or just uncapped players. They will be fringe players who are not established Test players although they may have limited Test experience.

© Michael Dengler, January 2004. All rights reserved.

__________________
Administrator

6. Squad Examples

Possible England and Australian A-Team squads have been researched. By way of example, 26/3 next to a name means that the player is 26 years old and has played 3 Tests.

A possible England XI would be:

Mark Chilton 27/0, Andrew Strauss 26/0, Ed Smith 26/3, Mark Wagh 27/0, Kevin Pietersen 23/0, Jim Troughton 24/0, +Geraint Jones 27/0, Gareth Batty 26/4, Paul Franks 24/0, James Kirtley 28/4, Simon Jones 25/2.

A possible Australia side would be:

Jimmy Maher 29/0, Mike Hussey 28/0, Martin Love 29/5, Brad Hodge 29/0, Michael Clarke 22/0, Andrew Symonds 28/0, Brad Haddin 26/0, Nathan Hauritz 22/0, Brad Williams 29/3, Nathan Bracken 26/3, Damien Wright 28/0.

Keen cricket lovers will enjoy contests between high-calibre squads like the two examples above.

7. Tournament Seeding

The seeding of teams in the first tournament will be determined by the ICC Test Championship rankings. Thereafter, the seeding for the next tournament will follow the finishing order of the previous tournament.

8. Tournament Duration

A game will be played over two consecutive days with one innings per team. The two-day format has been chosen to produce Test-like cricket.

An innings shall contain 90 overs with a new ball due after 70 overs.

Should the side batting first be all-out before Tea, the fielding side must begin their batting innings straightaway.

Should the side batting first be all-out after Tea, the fielding side may elect to begin their batting innings straightaway or at the beginning of day two. Alternatively, the side batting first may make a declaration before the completion of the allotted overs and put the opposition into bat straightaway.

Research indicates that in approximately 85% of Test wins, the winner had a 1st innings lead. In the County Championship 1st Division last year, research indicated that the final order would have barely changed had the order been determined on 1st innings bonus points alone. This shows that, in most cases, one innings is all that is required to determine the best team. It is unlikely that a tournament will ever be staged for the four or five-day versions of the game but the two-day version is regarded as a credible alternative to determine the order of merit of world A-Teams and Test teams.

9. Tournament Format

Fielding restrictions will be the same as in Test matches and the playing area will have a roped boundary in accordance with the dimensions normally used in the One-day World Cup tournament.

The tournament will be split into two groups to be determined by a preliminary round of matches. Group A consisting of the five winners will play for the A Team World Cup. Group B will consist of the five losers who will play for the A Team Plate.

There will be no knockout stage, semi-finals or final.

Within each group, the teams play each other once and the side with most points is declared the winner.

After the group matches are over and the winners declared an extra match would be played. It is a promotion/relegation match that pits the Group B winner against the team finishing last in Group A. The winner of this match will be seeded in Group A for the next tournament and, therefore, have an easier preliminary match to qualify for Group A, so the stakes are high.

There will be no coin-toss, as the lower-seeded team will elect to bat or field first.

The preliminary matches will be as follows:

1 v 6; 2 v 7; 3 v 8; 4 v 9; 5 v 10. (5 matches)

Group A:

Round 1: 1 v 4; 2 v 5; 3 bye // Round 2: 2 v 4; 3 v 5; 1 bye // Round 3: 1 v 5; 2 v 3; 4 bye // Round 4: 1 v 3; 4 v 5; 2 bye // Round 5: 1 v 2; 3 v 4; 5 bye. (10 matches)

Group B:

Round 1: 1 v 4; 2 v 5; 3 bye // Round 2: 2 v 3; 1 v 5; 4 bye // Round 3: 3 v 5; 2 v 4; 1 bye // Round 4: 1 v 3; 4 v 5; 2 bye // Round 5: 1 v 2; 3 v 4; 5 bye. (10 matches)

Relegation match:

5 (A) v 1 (B) (1 match)

Total: 26 matches.

By excluding semi-finals and final, the tournament is compact and each match outcome is meaningful.

© Michael Dengler, January 2004. All rights reserved.

__________________
Administrator

10. Venues

Preliminary enquiries have been made to most of the First-class venues in England and Wales. While venues wish to act on ECB recommendation, many have expressed some level of interest in the concept.

Feedback from the venues has suggested that grounds with a capacity exceeding 15,000 spectators may not be suitable given that the profile of ‘A’ teams is not as high as Test teams.

11. Finance

Should permission be forthcoming from Governing Bodies, the intention of World A-Team will be to commission a detailed feasibility study into all aspects of the concept. This will include a comprehensive Business Plan.

12. Summary

This tournament is not about revolutionizing cricket; it is about providing some much needed variety to the cricket calendar.

For the players, the tournament provides an important intermediate level between the first-class domestic competition and Test level.

In many cases, Test selection based on First-class domestic form has failed. Many players have struggled to adapt to Test level when selected and this tournament can provide players with an important yardstick with which to gauge their development and readiness for Test cricket.

The county clubs will not be adversely affected by missing players, as the tournament will be staged either before or after the domestic season. Clubs who have players in the tournament can benefit from the positive publicity this may generate and having A-Team star players in the club may attract more spectators to the county games as these players are unlikely to be away on international duties as much as Test players.

For broadcasters, the standard of play on show will be both skilful and entertaining. The preliminary matches may be uneven contests but the Group matches should provide many even and exciting contests. Although there are no finals, the matches in Round 5 would decide the final finishing order and, therefore, they would be tense affairs. To maximise viewers and spectators, Round 1, 3, & 5 will be scheduled on weekends with Round 2 & 4 taking place in midweek.

For the many ardent cricket fans that want to be better informed about the 2nd-tier players and see them in action more often, the current set-up is frustrating and inadequate. Broadcasting and the media tend to focus on the international scene and research clearly indicates that cricket fans are just as interested in discussing possible replacements and team selections as they are discussing the latest Test or ODI match in progress.

© Michael Dengler, January 2004. All rights reserved.

__________________
Administrator

County cricket is too broad and diluted and makes it difficult to establish player credentials for Test selection. For example, most cricket fans wouldn't have heard of Ed Smith or seen him in action before he was selected for Test match duties last summer. The same could be said of Andrew Strauss although more may now be seen of him in one-day internationals. Pooling the fringe players in a tournament will give cricket fans a great opportunity to familiarize themselves with the new Test hopefuls.

Interactivity in television and the Internet is growing in popularity. A-Teams are a great source of interest for cricket enthusiasts. Fringe players are often talked about on Internet message boards in relation to Test and ODI selections.

A radical idea to involve cricket fans with access to the Internet will be to establish a website focussing on players qualified for A-Team selection. Direct involvement in the tournament will be established to allow the participating squads to be selected by users of the website. Of course, the player selections for each match would still be the domain of the team captain and coach. This feature, alone, would make the tournament unique and generate considerable interest. The website will host message boards and provide news articles and interviews of the players under consideration for selection. With this purpose in mind, World A-Team has started a cricket discussion forum that has been active since early March 2004. It can be found at www.world-a-team.com

One of the prime reasons that football in England is so dominant is the amount of media coverage it attracts. Cricket needs to come up with more innovative ideas like Twenty20 to attract more media coverage. World A-Team believes both players and fans will welcome this tournament. It will provide significant news for a hungry worldwide readership, as in the future, the tournament could expand to include emerging cricket nations like Kenya and "All-star" teams from Europe, Asia, Africa and North America. These developments would be very newsworthy, as would the issue of talent depth mentioned earlier. For example, if Australia were relegated to Group B what tremors would that cause amongst the Australian cricket establishment?

As with Twenty20, some sceptics will disapprove of this idea. However, the Twenty20 experiment shows that a variety of different cricket formats and tournaments can increase the appetite of the cricket public.

The nine-day Kenstar Tournament in 2003-04 involved the A-Teams of Sri Lanka, Pakistan and India. Each team played the other twice and then a final. A tournament for A-Teams in the one-day format is already established in Asia and the World A-Team proposal seeks to progress the concept on a global basis.

© Michael Dengler, January 2004. All rights reserved.

__________________
Administrator

I welcome any feedback about the proposal especially from professional cricketers, cricket administrators and anyone involved in staging tournaments of this kind.

To open a contact form, please click here. If you leave an email address I will reply to you.

To see a printable version of this thread, please click here.

To see an HTML version of this thread, please click here.

To see how the England A team of 2004 was selected by members of the England forum click here.

Regards,

Michael Dengler

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Administrator

I don't think the ten test nations should play. I don't think Zimbabwe or Bangladesh would have any players outside of the top 5 in the national team that are remotely international class. An 8 team tournament is enough.

Paoli69, I agree that it seems pointless to field a Zimbabwe A or Bangladesh A team against the top Test A teams when even their 1st XI would struggle to be competitive. Therefore, I propose a better structure would be the top 8 Test A teams plus the Zimbabwe and Bangladesh 1st XI. Then, an expanded tournament could include some of the Associate member 1st XIs such as Kenya, Scotland, Netherlands and Canada.

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Administrator

Mmm....agree with the Zim and Banger part..

Not too much with the Netherlands, Canada, Scotland part