"Introduce a franchise competition like The Hundred for red-ball cricket" - Kevin Pietersen's radical proposal to revive Test cricket in England

Former England captain Kevin Pietersen has proposed revolutionary ideas to reform the country's struggling Test setup. He wants the ECB to introduce a new franchise-based competition for red-ball cricket on the lines of The Hundred to create quality cricketers for the Test team.

After disappointing performances against India and New Zealand at home, England slumped to a 0-3 defeat in the 2021-22 Ashes, losing the series with two games left to play.

Ever since then, the England Test team has been coping with heavy criticism from all quarters. While many have been blaming and bashing the players, Kevin Pietersen believes the domestic cricket system is at fault here.

In his blog for Betway, Kevin Pietersen shed some light on the path ahead for England in red-ball cricket and wrote:

"In The Hundred, the ECB have actually produced a competition with some sort of value. It is the best against the best, marketed properly, and the audience are engaged with it. They got new people to the games and I can tell you that the players will have improved markedly for featuring alongside other greats. It’s such a valuable experience. They now need to introduce a similar franchise competition for red-ball cricket, whereby the best play against the best every single week."

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"I see it as an eight-team round-robin league in the middle of the summer" - Kevin Pietersen on the format for a potential red-ball franchise tournament

Kevin Pietersen then delved into the economic and structural aspects of a potential red-ball franchise tournament. He chose the eight-team round-robin league format to be ideal and felt it could happen during mid-summer in the country.

According to Pietersen, a chance to rub shoulders with some of the best global cricketers in such competitions can prepare young English cricketers for the highest level. In this regard, Pietersen wrote:

"They would make money available to attract some of the best overseas players in the world and the top English players would benefit from playing alongside them. It would be a marketable, exciting competition, which would drive improvement in the standard and get people back through the gates for long-form cricket. I see it as an eight-team round-robin league in the middle of the summer."

He continued:

"We have to have good pitches that reward and encourage strong batting techniques, batting for long periods of time, and that require skill from bowlers to take wickets. The county system doesn’t necessarily need to change. It can be the feeder system below this competition, where players are developed until they’re ready to step up."

It would be interesting to see if the England and Wales Cricket Board (ECB) implement any such measures in the near future to revive the dismal state of the Test setup in the country.