The Tamworth District Cricket Association will implement a major overhaul of its Twenty20 competition this season to attract bigger crowds to offset increased fees.
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The long standing franchise-based Twenty20 competition has been scrapped in favour of a club-based competition.
Under the new format, there will be one team per club and each team will play the other teams once.
The matches will be played on Friday night and there will be two Sunday gala days where all six teams will play at No.1 Oval in three matches.
The first and second-ranked sides play in the final.
TDCA president Ben Middlebrook said: “We’re trying to restructure it to see what we come up with and what works for us.
It’s a really big change we’ve got happening. Hopefully it will be a success
- Ben Middlebrook
“Obviously Twenty20 is a part of cricket these days. It’s something we’re trying to bring into our club-based structure.
“We’re hoping to attract crowds … It seems like it will be a goer, so we’ll see how things go.”
He added: “With the increase in fees, we need to get smarter with what we’re doing.
“It’s sort of like a trial period with the [fee] cap in cricket this year. We need to see what works and what doesn’t work financially this year.”
The Tamworth Regional Council has controversially restructured fees for council-owned sport facilities.
For cricket, Middlebrook said the fee increase was capped at $55,000 for the first year, with the cap set to rise over the next two years before being removed.
“So we need to get smarter about how we run cricket in Tamworth,” Middlebrook said.
The TDCA has also revamped it one-day competition so that coloured clothing and a white ball are used in every match instead of the limited usage of the past.