Punting on a pyjama party

It had better work. The £250,000 the ECB is spending to promote Twenty20 cricket is a gamble based on the marketing department's faithful response to a survey. The ECB's annual report spells it out: "It became evident from consumer research ... that there was a considerable demand for a shorter, fast variation of the game."

For two weeks in high summer, starting on June 13, it will be a jacuzzi at Worcester and a pyjama party at Glamorgan. "A good night out and a few beers with your mates," say the marketing people. Atomic Kitten - our older readers might like to know that this is a fashionable pop group - have been hired to sing at the final on July 19. Westminster council found the prospect so forbidding that it refused the MCC a licence. The final will be at Trent Bridge, which has only half the capacity but neighbours who are more tolerant of amplified noise.

Stuart Robertson, the ECB marketing manager, gave a succinct summary of cricket's perceived problem at the launch of Twenty20 cricket in London on May 8. "The audience profile for cricket is disastrous: middle-aged, middle class and white. Kids think it's for oldies and women think it's for men. Twenty20 cricket is about addressing these structural barriers and the research says it is women and kids who want this sort of cricket." The idea is that a new audience will then transfer their attractions to the first-class game.

What they will get is 20 overs a side played over three hours. The 18 first-class counties have been divided into three regional groups and will battle for £108,000 in team and individual prize money. The game is a hybrid. It is part serious with rules from one-day cricket like fielding restrictions for six overs, bowlers limited to four overs and short-pitched balls limited to one an over. These are rules to suit batsmen. And it is part frivolous: microphone links to the players and the third umpire; the Sky Sports team interviewing players "direct from the dugout"; and batsmen being timed out if they take more than 90 seconds to reach the wicket. American baseball will be gratified that cricket is copying some of its principal features. No more jeers about it being like rounders, please.

Sponsors arrived late on the scene but there are three of them now: the Test sponsor npower, the Dutch electrical company Philips, whose screen will show instant replays, and Nectar, whose vouchers can be turned into bonus prizes. Now they are ready for the off, what are the prospects?

The most productive comparison is with New Zealand where a longer 40-over, four-innings version called Cricket Max started in 1996-97. "The formula was devised by Martin and Jeff Crowe as an off-beat, television-geared form of the game but public interest was minimal," WCM's New Zealand correspondent Don Cameron reports. "The offer of a NZ$1,000 prize to spectators to catch sixes failed to excite the few hundred fans. At some grounds wits reckoned it was a better idea to introduce all the spectators to all the players. The lesson seemed to be that you could put all manner of gimmicks into a package but people might not want to buy it."

When costs rose too high the tournament was scaled down; last winter's players' strike put paid to this year's tournament and Max is likely to languish as a too expensive event for regular competition among the six first-class teams in New Zealand. In Australia an attenuated version of Cricket Max called Super Eights - eight players on a team bowling 14 overs and a six counting eight - was used as a pre-season tournament but it lasted only two years and finished in 1997.

Perhaps neither example will prove relevant to the success or failure of Twenty20. The ECB's gamble will be difficult to judge this summer. A generous publicity budget ought to bring the crowds. It will be harder next year when the originality has worn off. The gamble is like a bet on a horse. There are no ifs and buts. You know whether you have won or lost. A win may alter the image for the good of the game. A loss will have damaged the integrity of cricket in England. That would be a disaster. Click here to subscribe to Wisden Cricket Monthly

The July 2003 edition of Wisden Cricket Monthly is on sale at all good newsagents in the UK and Ireland, priced £3.25.