Martin Moxon, Yorkshire's director of cricket, has proposed that the County Championship be changed from the current two divisions to a conference system. There would be three six team mixed ability conferences at the start of the season, with each county playing 10 games. Then the counties would be streamed by results into three new divisions and five more games played. But all 15 games would count towards the final rankings. Cricinfo have done a story on the proposal which includes an interesting statement, "Andrew Strauss, the director of England cricket, is known to favour a fall to as low as 10 (first class) games." But also reports that six of the smaller counties led by Sussex's Rob Andrew support the Moxon proposal for a 15 game first class season.
At first glance it is hard to see much merit in Moxon's plan. One good point is the suggestion of increased prize money going down to 15 place, but you don't need the convoluted conference structure to achieve that. And as Essex have shown if small counties are fed up with being useless at 4 - day cricket they need to: Develop their own players and appoint a good coach (A judicious Kolpak recruit can help as well). Fiddling around with the system so no - one is at the bottom all the time is a good idea for school sport's day but no way to run a professional competition.
I have Posted before on the introduction of central contracts in 2000 and their impact on England's performances in test matches (You'll see I think performances probably have improved since 2000 but not by as much as you might think.) What I should have mentioned is a two division county championship also started in 2000 and would have played a role in improving test team standards. Moving away from the best playing the best and the discipline of promotion and relegation might well result in a worse test team.
But I wonder what is really going on here? 2020 will see the introduction of a new ECB 20/20 competition. It's always seemed unlikely the schedule the counties agreed to for 2020 and beyond will be what we end up with. For a start it implies the best county 20/20 cricketers won't play any domestic 50 over cricket. I think this is why Andrew Strauss is letting it be known he wants to move to a 10 game first class season (3 divisions of 6 teams playing home and away presumably). The counties especially the smaller counties are realising that if you give a bully what he wants the bully will come up with more things he wants, it's the bullying not the stuff they're after.
I rather suspect (and hope) the smaller counties are forming alliances and starting the debate rather than letting the ECB divide and rule as they did in the past. So I'm in an odd position: I think the proposal is a silly idea and would prefer three merit based divisions to three conferences. But I do like the fact the counties are standing up for themselves and are prepared for the debate to be in public.
Comments
Post a Comment