Nasser Hussain believes English cricket must adopt the franchise format

Nasser Hussain, although reluctantly for a man who learnt his game in County Cricket and all its vagaries, concedes that the mooted Twenty20 franchise format is the way forward in this country.

Next week the counties are meeting up to vote on the introduction of a new franchise based T20 tournament in the height of summer that the ECB is desperate to introduce to help raise the sport’s and, in particular, the players’ profiles. The IPL in India and the Big Bash have shown the way but not all counties are keen. There will be fewer franchises than counties and turkeys don’t vote for Christmas after all.

But Hussain feels it is a must. “My gut feel is to give it a go,” he tells The Independent as we sit on a balcony overlooking the sunlit Lord’s outfield where next Saturday Warwickshire meet Surrey in the Royal London One-Day Cup final – or the “end of season party” as the former England captain puts it.

“I say that because I want to see the best players play against the best. And that is nothing against the T20 Finals Day we’ve just had at Edgbaston. It was brilliant: Northants, the underdogs winning.

“And I know what will happen if you have franchise cricket: the likes of Northants might disappear. I’ve heard those arguments. But I also see how successful the IPL, the Big Bash is. I see the atmosphere at an England v Pakistan T20 with a full house or when Middlesex play Surrey here and it’s a sell-out.

“I’m not as vehement as some, saying ‘get rid of our domestic set up, it’s rubbish’. Not at all. If you look at our crowds this year, the standard, the Finals, how Northants played, our T20 is a decent competition. I don’t like it when people deride it. But it could be better and what’s the harm in trying?

“I have to say that we should give franchise cricket a go.”

The key for Hussain is the overseas players and their pulling power that the current disjointed T20 format is not making full use of. “It frustrates me,” he says. “I’m off to cover a game for Sky and I’m asking, who’s, say, Hampshire’s overseas player? And it’s like ‘well, he’s come in and he’s gone…and someone else is coming in later…’

“I want a team. You look at the Big Bash or IPL: the overseas pro is a huge part of that team. AB De Villiers is Bangalore. When I’m covering a T20 game and Chris Gayle or Andre Russell is playing, that is a big buzz. People in the crowd know they could see something spectacular. So get the overseas players, try and get England players and increase the standard.

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“Look at the England v Pakistan T20. The fans were 70-30 Pakistan and the atmosphere was amazing. Imagine if we got Virat Kohli, MS Dhoni or R Ashwin. Surely, we would sell out all the games.”

And would more bums on seats help participation levels? An ECB survey carried out last year on 1,000 children aged seven to 15 showed that only two per cent nominated cricket as their favourite sport. Is that not a concern for Hussain?

“No, I don’t think so,” he says. “My two boys play cricket and love cricket. You ask them what their favourite sport is and they’ll say football. That is not a comment on cricket. That reflects how popular football is. Of course, you have to be concerned about the game and the future of cricket…”

I try another statistic. According to the same report, cricket is 11th among 15- to 17-year-olds on their list of favourite sports. It’s a struggle to name 10 other sports so surely that is a worry?

“That’s a different stat!” admits Hussain with a smile. “In the world I live in, I see cricket thriving: I coach at an Essex school, I take my boys to a club in Little Baddow. I see girls’ cricket thriving, I teach a girls’ team… You always have to be concerned about the future but I don’t think it’s doom and gloom.

“That stat is a worry, yes, but from what I see at grassroots level there are a lot of good coaches and a lot of hard work is going into the game.

“What will always be most important is how England are doing: if they are winning and being role models then kids will play. You can’t tell me the kids we see at grounds don’t want to be the next Stokes, Root or Buttler or Charlotte Edwards, Sarah Taylor. They have magnificent role models.”

All of which brings us to the England one-day side and their remarkable run-heavy summer. The game has changed since Hussain’s day and he only retired in 2003 with 88 matches, one hundred (the memorable one where he gestured to the Sky box he would soon be sat in to protest about their criticism of his batting) and a strike-rate of 67 to his name. It wouldn’t do now, he openly admits.

“I remember, I’d just signed with Sky and Duncan Fletcher [former England coach] came up to me and said: ‘well done, but you better keep your ear to the ground because in five years this game will have changed.’ I was like ‘yeah, whatever Fletch’. Three years later Kevin Pietersen is switch-hitting sixes. I was: ‘ahhh, this is what he means’.

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“I didn’t think he meant five years later you are going to get 444 off 50 overs [as England did at Trent Bridge this summer]. But I’ve watched these guys practice and they are phenomenal: the athleticism, bat speed, drills, Joss Buttler’s drill where he whacks the ball into a net so hard, it’s like a hockey shot. These things we couldn’t dream of doing 10 years ago.

“Batsmen have been helped in that virtually every tweak to the rules has favoured them: Pitches are flatter, bats better, bowlers aren’t allowed to bowl down leg. You basically know where the ball will be – in the slot –but don’t take anything away from them. When you watch them train, they call it range-hitting, and nine times out of 10 they whack it out the ground.”

Why has the game changed so rapidly?

“It is a cultural thing,” the 48-year-old says. “When I was growing up we played on school pitches, uncovered, dibbly bowlers nibbling it about. Your first thought was survival. I sound like Geoffrey Boycott here but you got in a county side and your first game is against Malcolm Marshall: it’s survival. Then in one-day cricket you are facing Marshall, Ambrose, Walsh, the last thing you are thinking is getting your leg out the way and hitting it over midwicket for six.

“Now kids are brought up learning to hit the ball. It has actually gone the other way and is why you see a few players who struggle to get into the Test side: Hales, Roy, Morgan, Buttler maybe because they are learning to hit the ball but not learning to keep it out. But I’d still go this way. You want kids to learn how to hit the ball, not just play in the V, front elbow high. Now it’s leg out the way and whack, reverse sweep, scoop.”

And with the Champions Trophy here next summer, just how excited should we be about England’s whacking, reverse sweeping, scooping one-day side? “They are phenomenal. With the potential of getting even better,” Hussain says. “That’s the exciting thing. You are going to have downsides like we had in the last ODI and T20 with a young side. But the potential is huge. They need to keep improving, they need to stop taking their foot off the gas at the end, both in Tests and ODIs.

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“But the brand, which has filtered down to the Lions if you look at Ben Duckett, Sam Billings, means there’s a lot to be optimistic about. The only thing they have to do is transfer it to tournament cricket which is a different pressure where you know if you lose, you’re going home. But from what I see the genie is out of the bottle – they are not going back now.”

Before the Champions Trophy though come the challenges of Bangladesh and India away, a different proposition to Sri Lanka and Pakistan at home. Are we not in danger of getting carried away? “Well, yes. Doing it this winter will be something else. But I don’t think [coach] Trevor Bayliss thinks they have solved all the problems. Far from it. This winter will be an eye-opener. When Ashwin is spinning it both ways and Jadeja’s darting them in and the crowd is going wild.

“Plus, the Aussies have just gone and won 4-1 in Sri Lanka, that’s a good effort. You’d still say Australia are the best but England are not far behind.”

And the five-day team? Was it not odd that they were a Test away from being best in the world? “It would have been flattering,” Hussain admits. “It’s a reflection of where Test cricket is: there is no stand-out side. A lot are good at home: India, England, Pakistan. But Pakistan have fragile batting, England too. It would have been odd because England would have gone to No 1 with three spots up in the air and heavily reliant on Cook, Root and Bairstow.

“But what they have got is those three,” Hussain adds, “and some fine bowlers in Anderson, Broad, Wood, Woakes. There is work to do, work on the fielding, the catching and again this winter spin will be the elephant in the room. Where is the next spinner coming from? There are areas to look at.”

With three batting spots “up in the air”, who is pushing to land one? “A few have put a hand up: Haseeb Hameed of Lancashire, Ben Duckett of Northants, Essex’s Tom Westley, Durham’s Keaton Jennings. I’ve seen a bit of Westley at Essex. He seems a good player. Duckett in particular you can’t argue with his runs and then he goes to the Lions and gets 180 and 200. These are phenomenal stats.”

For now though, it’s next Saturday’s one-day final and Surrey and Warwickshire vying to earn the right to party in style. In a few years it might be London v Birmingham so they’d better make the most of it.

Nasser Hussain was speaking ahead of the 2016 Royal London One-Day Cup Final which takes place at Lord's Cricket Ground on Saturday the 17th September. Tickets are priced from £30 for adults and just £5 for under-16s and are available to buy online now – www.lords.org/final