England's Twenty20 should adopt the Big Bash format, says Ian Bell
'It still feels like the old way of doing things,' Bell said when asked to compare the NatWest T20 Blast with the Big Bash League
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Your support makes all the difference.Ian Bell would love to see Twenty20 cricket in England adopt the Big Bash format of fewer teams rather than a competition based on the traditional structure of 18 counties.
“It still feels like the old way of doing things,” Bell said when asked to compare the NatWest T20 Blast with the Big Bash League. “[Our competition in England] is good fun, it’s organised well and finals day is absolutely fantastic, but the way the Big Bash League is set up here, with only eight teams and every match televised, it’s hard to compare.
“I hope at some point that we will organise our own competition like this. For me this is like playing international cricket again. There are full houses for every game. Around the city here you hear a lot of chat, a lot of talk about the competition. Everyone seems to be involved in it.
“You just don’t get that same feeling back in England, where we have two groups and not every game is on television. Hopefully at some point we’ll get there and I’m sure we would have the same success as they’ve had out here.”
He added: “There’s a lot of tradition and history involved with county cricket and no doubt we don’t want to lose that, but you feel there needs to be some sort of rejig. That feels the right way to go.
“We have to recognise the way the game is going when you look at the IPL, the Caribbean Premier League and obviously the Big Bash. The game is moving forward quite rapidly.”
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