Championship cut gathers vital support

The prospect of a restructured county season - with a reduced Championship schedule and limited-overs cricket played in blocks - has come a step closer.

ESPNcricinfo understands that the county chairmen, despite the wishes of the majority of their chief executives, agreed in principle to many of the proposals outlined by the ECB executive at a meeting at Lord's on Wednesday afternoon.

As a result, the ECB will take those proposals - including a 14-game Championship season - to the management board at the end of this month when they can expect them to be rubber-stamped. Other proposals include playing fewer T20 games on Friday nights.

The aim of the proposals is to make more room in the schedule for more rest, recovery and practise. The ECB hope it will lead to an improvement in the standard of white-ball cricket, in particular, and aim for many of them to be introduced as early as 2016 in the hope they can help England progress in the 2017 Champions Trophy. The 2019 World Cup will, like the Champions Trophy, be played in England in relatively early summer.

But the development is likely to cause conflict around the counties. Not only will the proposals affect the integrity of the County Championship in the short term - it seems likely that the 2016 season will feature an asymmetrical fixture list with counties no longer playing all other sides in their division home and away - but they will alter the schedule of the domestic T20 competition, the NatWest Blast.

The Blast has been a success story for county cricket. Two years into a four-year experiment that features the majority of matches being played on Friday night, the competition has seen increased gates of around 20% this year alone.

Under the new proposals, fewer games will be played on Fridays and more games will be played in a block. While those plans will be favoured by many players and coaches - who say it will improve the standard and reduce injuries - it may leave the competition at the mercy of poor weather and spectators asked to pay more in a short period of time to attend games.

The fear from some in the county game is that by arresting the progress of the current domestic T20 competition, the ECB are preparing for the ground for a fresh attempt to introduce city-based cricket involving only eight sides. Some on the executive team insist that broadcasters will be willing to pay more for such a competition and that it will give the domestic game an opportunity to rebrand itself to a new audience.

The current audience may be underwhelmed, though. County members have not been consulted on the current proposals and, as recently as Tuesday - when the ECB held the first of two meetings at Lord's - the county chief executives rejected them. The reduction in the Championship programme will also reduce the possibilities of outground or festival cricket.

"I expect a very negative reaction from our members," one county official told ESPNcricinfo. "Much of the good work we have undertaken to drive up attendances will be undone."

Some of the more extreme proposals have been rejected, though. At one stage the ECB suggested that a 14-game Championship programme could be achieved next season by creating a top division of eight teams and a bottom division of 10 teams; a scenario that would have involved either three teams being relegated from the top division this season or one promoted from the bottom. The different sized divisions may still be introduced as early as 2017.

The suggestion that city-based cricket could be introduced in either 50-over or T20 cricket has also been rejected for now. But it is clear that the ECB executive, led by new chief executive Tom Harrison and new chairman, Colin Graves, are determined to drive through change. This may well prove the first step in the most radical change to the domestic game since the introduction of T20 cricket in 2003.

But with county chairmen and county chief executives split - even within individual counties - there may be some conflict ahead.