Star-studded CPL poses threat to ECB’s plans for franchise T20 competition

ECB bosses are growing increasingly nervous about the rise of the Caribbean Premier League (CPL), which threatens to derail their own plan for a new city-based franchise Twenty20 competition.
Money from Indian Premier League (IPL) investors is flooding into the Caribbean competition, which is running concurrently with

England’s showpiece T20 tournament.
The past few weeks has seen an exodus of high-profile international stars from the ECB’s current T20 Blast competition — including New Zealand’s Brendon McCullum, Sri Lanka legend Kumar Sangakkara and West Indies star Chris Gayle — for the more lucrative six-week tournament in the West Indies.
ECB chairman Colin Graves and chief executive Tom Harrison have been sounding out county bosses before the ECB officially commence negotiations with Sky over a multi-million pound new TV deal for 2019. BT Sport are also expected to join the bidding.
Earlier this year Graves described the T20 Blast as mediocre compared to the IPL and Australia’s Big Bash, and it is understood that he

and Harrison are in favour of introducing a city-based T20 competition.
However, with multi-millionaire Indian businessmen and Bollywood stars lining up to pour money into the CPL, the ECB hierarchy are increasingly anxious about the growing pulling power of the West Indian league. The City-based competition in England would run in July, with a broader 18-county tournament running through the season, and senior ECB figures are understood to have expressed serious concerns to county bosses about the growing draw of the CPL and the growing interest in it from India.
The Trinidad and Tobago Red Steel franchise, which is part-owned by multi-millionaire Bollywood actor and Kolkata Knight Riders investor Shah Rukh Khan, was recently renamed the Trinbago Knight Riders, or TKR to mirror the IPL franchise.
ECB bosses know if the CPL morphs into an extended version of the IPL, their city-based competition in England would be blown out of the water with the Indian television market unlikely to be interested in a competition robbed of the world’s biggest names. (Daily Mail)