Steve Elworthy, the ICC's tournament director, believes that the allure of international competition will enable the forthcoming World Twenty20 to rise above the fears of overkill that are currently circulating in English cricket, but warned that the ECB will have missed a trick if they fail to use the three-week event to attract a new audience to the game.
Speaking to Cricinfo on the eve of the tournament, Elworthy admitted that the game's administrators had learnt their lessons from the disastrous Caribbean World Cup in 2007, and were also mindful of overloading the calendar with too many marquee events. But regardless of the hype and glamour of the recently completed Indian Premier League, he insisted that tickets for the World Twenty20 were proving extremely popular in what he described as a "unique summer" for the ECB.
"The key point with any product is the exclusivity," said Elworthy. "You want people walking away at the end of a match wanting more, you want them to say: 'I can't wait for next season because I can't wait for the next Twenty20 competition'.
"[It's true that] there've been a couple of very big competitions in a fairly short space of time, but it'll settle down. It is a massive summer of cricket for the ECB, but it's a unique summer. It doesn't happen very often to get the Ashes and a world event in the same year and hosted by the same board."
