The England and Wales Cricket Board will present its blueprint for the restructure of the domestic game to the 18 county chief executives and chairmen this week, with a proposed reduction in the number of County Championship fixtures played having already been met by resistance.
The ECB’s chief executive, Tom Harrison, and chairman, Colin Graves, have been working together since the start of the year to create a new look to the English summer and in this time, after months of meetings with stakeholders, have learned that sweeping changes will be difficult to effect.
Proposals drawn up by the County and International Playing Programme Review committee, chaired by the Warwickshire chief executive, Colin Povey, will be discussed at Lord’s over the next two days. A dramatic overhaul looks unlikely at this stage but a tweaked 2016 fixture list is expected to show more Twenty20 cricket played in the school holidays and fewer 50-over games.
Harrison’s stated aim is to reduce the workload of players and thus increase the quality of cricket played. The former IMG executive knows he will have to work hard to achieve this in the long term, with his recent suggestion that the number of County Championship matches be reduced from 16 to 14 met by disgruntled noises from the counties.
Both Harrison and Graves have similarly been frustrated by the response to their plan to create an eight- or 10-team city-based Twenty20 league. The players are at least in agreement, with the results of a Professional Cricketers’ Association published last week showing 81.3% of their members agree that a new T20 competition is needed to rival the Indian Premier League and Australia’s Big Bash League.
While that idea looks to be on hold and the prospect of cutting the County Championship appearing a tough sell, the appetite for change among those at the top of the game remains high and the ECB maintain that any such setbacks are simply part of what is a continuing process.
