Ex-ECB chairman calls for county cricket overhaul

[The Omega Man]

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What a f***ing wanker. Never heard the calls for an overhaul when we were merrily stuffing the Aussies. Now that we've been trounced its all County Crickets fault. Not only that but the majority of the fuckers who lost The Ashes have hardly played county cricket in the last 4 or 5 years ie Anderson, Broad, Prior, Trott, Bell, Pietersen etc.

Cant see anything particularly noteworthy in what the bloke says.

Also "People don't watch county cricket", aye nee f***ing wonder when the games are played when everyone is at work.

Thoughts?

 

[Icarebecauseyoudo]

The last overhaul largely worked. Plenty young talent coming through, time to ditch a few older ones[DOUBLEPOST=1389657248][/DOUBLEPOST]Nobody is ever gonna watch 4 day county games, it has to be subsidized

 

[wayne entwhistle no9]

I agree with him that they are far to many counties and 12 would be a far better number. At the moment with 18 counties there quite simply is not a big enough pool of talented players to fill 18 sides. Thats why historically counties have signed overseas players who have access to a British passport and quite often they become key players in the side. It will never happen until counties actually go bust. I think this is the biggest reason why Durham has to sell itself as the north east cricket club because eventually regional cricket will come in, finances will dictate it.

 

[smoker]

Surely fewer teams chasing the same riches will discourage them from picking young local talent, much like the Premier League. I agree with the OP, nowt wrong with county cricket this time 2 years ago, it's pure knee jerk.

 

[Aidan11]

McLaurin is an absolute joke. Wanted a three tier conference system for the county championship and in the end had to settle for the much better idea of splitting it into 2 divisions with promotion and relegation.

That has worked well up to now. One disasterous Ashes series has nothing to do with how our domestic game works.

 

[vinegar hill]

If you're going to go down that road it probably needs to be even fewer teams maybe 8.
With all the best players concentrated on such a low number the standard and intensity of games would be higher.
In fairness when they made the change to 2 divisions it did improve the standards of English test cricket with something being at stake in more games.
There doesn't need to be a knee jerk here though because I don't think it was so much the standard of the players that was the problem in Australia,more that complacency seemed to have crept in.
It seems that since that fantastic win in India starting with the tour of New Zealand and since they've played pretty mediocre.

 

[smoker]

McLaurin is an absolute joke. Wanted a three tier conference system for the county championship and in the end had to settle for the much better idea of splitting it into 2 divisions with promotion and relegation.

That has worked well up to now. One disasterous Ashes series has nothing to do with how our domestic game works.

Twats overlooked most of the top players from County Cricket, eg Onions, Compton, Taylor, Chopra, Sidebottom.

 

[Twisted]

Also "People don't watch county cricket", aye nee f***ing wonder when the games are played when everyone is at work.

imagine how many people would go and watch a game 200 miles away from them? they mentioned the suggestion of merging kent and sussex, which would mean everyone having a 300 odd mile round trip...

i'm sure they would gladly merge durham, yorkshire, lancashire and notts into northern county and then keep all the southern counties as is mostly.

i think i would just give up on cricket if so...[DOUBLEPOST=1389735103][/DOUBLEPOST]I don't see how less teams means more opportunites for players either ;

If durham merged with yorkshire and lancashire just as an example would scott borthwick have made it? very doubtful. stokes probably would have done but the likes of mark stoneman and chris rushworth would have sank without trace after not pulling up trees for the first few years of their career, mark wood maybe would still have got a chance but jamie harrison, usman arshad etc who got to play reasonbly big roles last year would never got first class cricket, pringle, buckley too etc

 

[Greavsie]

Heard his moronic interview in the car on sunday morning with Zlamby backing him up.
County system has improved immeasurably and despite what His lordship says, is producing world class batsmen and bowlers.
We've had one bad series, cue thd bandwaggon jumpers back, knocking county cricket. We forget that many countries are envious of it and desperate for their younger players to play in it

 

[Twisted]

If you're going to go down that road it probably needs to be even fewer teams maybe 8.
With all the best players concentrated on such a low number the standard and intensity of games would be higher.
In fairness when they made the change to 2 divisions it did improve the standards of English test cricket with something being at stake in more games.
There doesn't need to be a knee jerk here though because I don't think it was so much the standard of the players that was the problem in Australia,more that complacency seemed to have crept in.
It seems that since that fantastic win in India starting with the tour of New Zealand and since they've played pretty mediocre.

i don't have the best memory for this perhaps but it seems to me that ever since we reached #1 test status we have been on the slide majorly, not sure where that coincides with the win in india?[DOUBLEPOST=1389738365][/DOUBLEPOST]

I agree with him that they are far to many counties and 12 would be a far better number. At the moment with 18 counties there quite simply is not a big enough pool of talented players to fill 18 sides.

but this means more cricketers get to actually play cricket? if there were only 12 counties do you really think they would sign no overseas players? you could argue with less financial strain [in theory] they could spunk more money on overseas signings, and it would take less overseas players to prevent english players getting game time. less cricket teams, less cricket players.

 

[Harry Lime]

Less counties means less youngsters being given the chance to progress through the system, meaning ultimately, less players for England to choose from.
It's been a double edged sword for the ECB in recent years, more ECB academies means more money and more resources are being diverted away from those at the top of the pile, which has put some noses out.

 

[Twisted]

what winds me up is the deride county cricket with 'nobody watches it' and then they make crass comments like this.

i am a big fan of county cricket and i love dccc. i want england to do well obviously but i'm not sure i do if it comes at the expense of durham county, if we became yokrurhamancashire for example.

i'd much rather we were a 3rd or 4th best test team in the world with a domestic scene full of history, tradition and importance than the #1 test team in teh world [which we have been with exactly this county system in place by the way] with a farcical IPL style loads of tripe national.[DOUBLEPOST=1389787300][/DOUBLEPOST]sport is supposed to be important, and i believe it is, but it is about more than just winning everything. it teaches you about humility as well as competitivity - we as safc fans know all about this obviously. it is ok to be beaten by the better team, or even a worse team sometimes, that is what sport is about ffs

this whole tearing up the whole program and start again approach to every lost series or competition really winds me up

 

[chelt_mackem]

The problem county cricket has is so many games being played while tests are also on. There was one very good suggestion made last summer about how to tweak the county game to allow international players to play more games and keep as many CC games as competitive as possible, which was to split it again into 3 divisions instead of 2, 3 leagues of 6 teams meaning only 10 games to be played through the summer, schedule them in such a way as to avoid clashing with tests and allow England players to be available for all of their county's 4 day games. Young players therefore get to learn from test players at county level, counties benefit from having their best players available to them and more people are likely to want to watch the games if the top players are involved in them.

The only issue could be the endless series of international pyjama games that the powers that be insist on playing, but getting rid of most of them would solve that problem and mean there would be less of it to bore us with, win-win.

 

[Twisted]

The problem county cricket has is so many games being played while tests are also on. There was one very good suggestion made last summer about how to tweak the county game to allow international players to play more games and keep as many CC games as competitive as possible, which was to split it again into 3 divisions instead of 2, 3 leagues of 6 teams meaning only 10 games to be played through the summer, schedule them in such a way as to avoid clashing with tests and allow England players to be available for all of their county's 4 day games. Young players therefore get to learn from test players at county level, counties benefit from having their best players available to them and more people are likely to want to watch the games if the top players are involved in them.

The only issue could be the endless series of international pyjama games that the powers that be insist on playing, but getting rid of most of them would solve that problem and mean there would be less of it to bore us with, win-win.

it is definitly a huge problem england players not appearing in the county game. it is also a huge problem england players having far too much cricket and playing all year round....

i just can't see a possible solution to these two problems....

 

[Randy Ostrich]

it is definitly a huge problem england players not appearing in the county game. it is also a huge problem england players having far too much cricket and playing all year round....

i just can't see a possible solution to these two problems....

The solution will take considerable courage as the cause is £££££££££££££££££££££

 

[Struts]

Won't happen, even though it has it's faults County Cricket is still the strongest system of it's kind in the world.

If there was to be a reduction then personally i think 14 would be the way to go. The 9 test counties with Sussex and Essex thrown in along with 3 regional teams: West Midlands, East Midlands & West Country.

 

[Twisted]

Won't happen, even though it has it's faults County Cricket is still the strongest system of it's kind in the world.

If there was to be a reduction then personally i think 14 would be the way to go. The 9 test counties with Sussex and Essex thrown in along with 3 regional teams: West Midlands, East Midlands & West Country.

i wonder how you would feel about it if you were from/in somerset or warwickshire.

glamorgan can fuck off, as can all those silly one day teams like unicorns and scotland. all teh university games could be scrapped. other than that keep it how it is, have england play one test series less per year and rotate the squad a bit more leading to less burn out from endlessly travelling and have england players play in teh county game more frequently.

and ideally play an extra test in each series [especially you south africa] play half the amount of odis so people may vaguely care about them and stick t20 in teh bin, cuz its utter shite.

 

[Randy Ostrich]

i wonder how you would feel about it if you were from/in somerset or warwickshire.

glamorgan can fuck off, as can all those silly one day teams like unicorns and scotland. all teh university games could be scrapped. other than that keep it how it is, have england play one test series less per year and rotate the squad a bit more leading to less burn out from endlessly travelling and have england players play in teh county game more frequently.

and ideally play an extra test in each series [especially you south africa] play half the amount of odis so people may vaguely care about them and stick t20 in teh bin, cuz its utter shite.

That solution relies on the ECB having the guts to put the welfare of the game and players ahead of the money.

 

[Twisted]

That solution relies on the ECB having the guts to put the welfare of the game and players ahead of the money.

aye, teh welfare of the county game ahead of supposed test success anarl, they would rather scrap county cricket if they thought it would lead to an extra 10 runs for england, total shite. i'd sooner have a great county game and an average national team than england be world #1 with just an ipl league here.

they could easily rotate the england side alot more and have more involvement in teh county game for england players though.

 

[Randy Ostrich]

aye, teh welfare of the county game ahead of supposed test success anarl, they would rather scrap county cricket if they thought it would lead to an extra 10 runs for england, total shite. i'd sooner have a great county game and an average national team than england be world #1 with just an ipl league here.

they could easily rotate the england side alot more and have more involvement in teh county game for england players though.

When our players are low on confidence or out of form they should be playing for their counties to build it back up - it's such a no brainer. It'd also be helpful if the Test captain actually had some experience of captaining with his county first.

What the ECB can do is stop shuttling the players here, there and everywhere. One winter tour instead of faffing around with tons of pointless 20-20s or ODIs. What the fuck are we off to the West Indies for? Let the players get settled, have a rest and prepare for the summer.