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Strauss and his stupid ideas....


My belief is that county cricket (in the long format) will be scrapped completely eventually. The ECB will use the money they can save subsidising it to put even more players on central contracts and play/tour more with the England B team (or under 23/25) playing 5 day matches. County cricket will exist in an ever reducing day/night limited overs format to develop players in preperation for the England white ball teams where they (may) progess to the 5 day England A/B teams.

The alternative obviously is that they will scrap the counties altogether for 6 or so regional teams but I suspect they would like to keep the greater number of teams/grounds as their feeder clubs.
 
I won't be paying money to watch a Franklin/North/ECB project. Complete waste of annual leave, time and effort. My current gold membership was about £700.
I think Gold Membership starting this year were around £800-£850 for this season so it's not exactly cheap at the moment either
You won’t pay that regardless mate
My belief is that county cricket (in the long format) will be scrapped completely eventually. The ECB will use the money they can save subsidising it to put even more players on central contracts and play/tour more with the England B team (or under 23/25) playing 5 day matches. County cricket will exist in an ever reducing day/night limited overs format to develop players in preperation for the England white ball teams where they (may) progess to the 5 day England A/B teams.

The alternative obviously is that they will scrap the counties altogether for 6 or so regional teams but I suspect they would like to keep the greater number of teams/grounds as their feeder clubs.
It won’t be
It will end up being the “big eight”
 
Always welcome in South East London, chief ;)
Don't know where the season has gone. Had all sorts of grand plans to get to some new County grounds but only managed Derby in April. Also managed to get to my favourite ground in the country, Chesterfield, last month and got tickets for the One Day Cup final but apart from that it's back to football again from tomorrow. Winter is here!
 
Why don't the ECB just accept that domestic cricket is never going to be a cash cow? Giles Clarke got turned over by Stanford and was probably pisssed off that their invention of T20 cricket was not making the kind of money the IPL is making.

Truth is it never will. Cricket is the no1 sport in India whereas here its football. International cricket in England made the money. Remember the ECB reserves of £73m that they spanked away on this 100 shite? I can't see that ever being clawed back.

I'm also suspicious about this Reliance/Mumbai Indians tour. There was talk last year of ECB inviting Indian businessmen over to see the 100. Do they think they are going to invest here like they have just done with a franchise T20 in South Africa? Nah. If they like the 100 they'll form their own just like the IPL.

aye, it's a shame they couldn't be happy with banking so much money they ended up with all that cash (would have been nice to distribute it to the counties and extra promotions to improve the t20 blast where maybe it could actually compete with the IPL) but no, greed won out.

imagine scheduling it so all england players could play in it, then instead of bribing each county with 1.3m to vote in the 16.4 they gave that to each county to spend on a few superstars and improvement to match day experiences. they could still have alot of that 70m in the bank and a much healthier game.
 
My belief is that county cricket (in the long format) will be scrapped completely eventually. The ECB will use the money they can save subsidising it to put even more players on central contracts and play/tour more with the England B team (or under 23/25) playing 5 day matches. County cricket will exist in an ever reducing day/night limited overs format to develop players in preperation for the England white ball teams where they (may) progess to the 5 day England A/B teams.

The alternative obviously is that they will scrap the counties altogether for 6 or so regional teams but I suspect they would like to keep the greater number of teams/grounds as their feeder clubs.
They do that and test cricket will cease to be a format England play. How can they scrap the county champ and still produce test quality players?
 
They do that and test cricket will cease to be a format England play. How can they scrap the county champ and still produce test quality players?
IMO they will do it by subsidising increased matches/tours for England B and under age teams in place of the county championship.

Is the County Championship a higher standard than up and coming players will face on international tours against other countries?

The counties will evolve to play white ball cricket only. Those showing potential will be elevated to England white ball cricket and from there a decision will be made to either send them on tour for 5 day cricket with the B or under whatever age team or keep them in white ball.

The county championship in 4/5 day format simply isn’t sustainable without ECB funding and if the ECB think they can provide better test cricketers in the future by sending them out to tour India, Australia, West Indies at a young age instead of English only seamer conditions they will do it. I think the ECB will eventually come to the conclusion that the future of England test cricket is better served with this model than a county cricket competition that rarely involves the top class players who are centrally contracted. In many ways I would agree with them looking only through the eyes of England cricket.

Counties will never get local support for the 4/5 day game but they will for the razzmatazz of the slogfests.

Just my opinion of course.
 
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