Love it or hate it, T20 has changed the landscape of English cricket for the better

Stuart Robertson, the creator behind T20, opens up on his invention and its influence on the domestic game

T20's invention represented perhaps the most seismic shift in the game since the official introduction of the County Championship in 1890 (Getty)

In the winter of 2002, the national summer sport faced an uncertain future.

Dwindling attendances – statistics suggested a decline of 17 per cent at domestic cricket grounds across the country over a five-year period – had the ECB in something approaching panic mode, despite the relatively healthy state of the national team.

At Lords, a team led by Stuart Robertson, the then head of marketing at the ECB, were under pressure to open up the game to an entirely new audience in a bid to secure both the future of the sport and the long-term health of 18 counties who had rarely experienced such financial uncertainty.

Their answer was a new format that was dismissed as a gimmick – a crash, bang, wallop form of the game that belonged in a sporting circus.

Back then, Robertson and his team had no idea of what it would lead to but, with a second English T20 tournament now being readied involving cities rather than counties, it’s clear that the work carried out all those years ago signalled a fundamental shift in the English cricket landscape.

In short, it represented perhaps the most seismic shift since the official introduction of the County Championship in 1890.

“I remember, and I’ll remember it until the day I die, going to Trent Bridge for a presentation on T20 a year or two into the programme,” says Robertson. “I had heard stories of members taking holidays specifically when the T20 was on. They not only didn’t want to be at the ground, they didn’t even want to be in the country!

A second English T20 tournament is now being readied involving cities rather than counties (Getty)

“Within two years, though, Nottinghamshire members made up the biggest proportion of those coming through the gates on T20 night. The game needed a refresh. We were purely focused on the immediate need of the county game to get people to go and watch it and to understand why people weren’t watching domestic cricket.

“There are no guarantees. It’s a very brave business that can sit there and rely on an ageing demographic who are happy to sit and watch a longer form of the game. If the game is going to survive for the next 100 or 200 years it needs to keep innovating and keep up with changes in society.”

They were two of the fundamental arguments behind the introduction of the new T20 tournament, which will come into existence in 2020.

Again, the decision to move away from cricket’s traditional locales has generated something approaching apoplexy in membership bases across the shires.

Robertson, now overseeing the sales and marketing strategy for the Ageas Bowl that Hampshire now call home, is, though, firmly of the belief that English domestic cricket has something for everyone, despite the enduring belief of plenty that T20 is in danger of cannibalising the sport.

Liam Plunkett celebrates the dismissal of Adam Rossington during the NatWest T20 Blast match between Yorkshire Vikings and Nothamptonshire Steelbacks last year (Getty)

“I’m certainly not saying that we ignore the older generation because the beauty of cricket and the beauty of what we’ve got in the three formats is that there’s something in it for everyone,” he says. “T20 was always created strategically as a means to an end rather than an end in itself.

“We were hoping that we would bring people into the game, that they would learn to love the game and eventually learn to love the longer format and the nuances that it brings.

“I don’t think we’ve really delivered on that. It has become an end to itself for some people, but it’s interesting that we weren’t producing this to become the only format of the game in the future. That was never the aim.”

Even the most ardent County Championship devotee must also look at the cold hard reality of what could have happened to the domestic game in this country if T20 hadn’t been introduced.

“A lot of people ask me if I ever think that I’ve created a monster but I don’t at all,” he says. “If you think about it another way, what on earth would have happened to the game if it hadn’t been created. Would we simply be administering a minority sport? How many counties of the 18 would still be in existence?

“In those days, £200,000 of ticket revenue would have been double the amount derived from any other competition. It was a proper cash cow to those smaller grounds and a life saver. Without Twenty20 at a professional level the domestic game in this country would be in a very precarious state by now.”

And that, whether you like T20 or hate it, is the long and the short of it.