The England and Wales Cricket Board (ECB) held talks with Cricket Ireland over the idea during last September’s white-ball series.<\/p>\n
England’s presence would add commercial clout to the tournament and make it more appealing to broadcasters in addition to support with venues given the lack of international-standard grounds elsewhere.<\/p>\n
ECB officials have largely been lukewarm to the idea when similar ideas have been floated in the past.<\/p>\n
However, the performances at the recent T20 World Cup – both Italy and Scotland ran England close – and encouragement from the International Cricket Council has given the ECB food for thought.<\/p>\n
With qualification for the 2028 T20 World Cup already secured for England, courtesy of qualifying for the Super 8s, a European tournament would potentially provide an opportunity for emerging players.<\/p>\n
When asked if the ECB would be supportive, MacNeice was not definitive: “In principle it’s really easy to do. There are practicalities of logistics and existing broadcasting and all that sort of stuff. <\/p>\n
“That’s the complicated kind of piece that has to be pieced together. So that work is ongoing, but what I honestly believe is that it’s much more than a kind of fanciful idea.<\/p>\n
“This time last year, it was a fanciful idea. Now it’s something that’s progressing far more. It’s not quite there yet, but it’s heading very much in that direction.<\/p>\n
“We are certainly starting to consider how we can create room and build it into our future plans.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The England and Wales Cricket Board (ECB) held talks with Cricket Ireland over the idea during last September’s…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":553375,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[564],"tags":[64,63,740,85],"class_list":["post-553374","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-cricket","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-cricket","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/553374","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=553374"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/553374\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/553375"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=553374"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=553374"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=553374"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}