CMJ: Counties set for three-way split (6 Aug 1997)

Wednesday 6 August 1997

Counties set for three-way split

Christopher Martin-Jenkins

AT last professional cricket in Britain has recognised its shortcomings and reformed itself. The changes announced at Lord`s yesterday are the most important since the Gillette Cup was introduced 34 years ago.

There is every reason for their endorsement by the First Class Forum on Sept 15 and if they are accompanied by the proposed sharpening of competition in the upper echelons of club cricket, there is an opportunity at last for sustained improvement performances of the national team.

There will be a brand new 14-match championship next year based on three six-team groups of roughly equal strength, determined by finishing places this season, and seedings which ensure that local derbies will remain: thus, for example, Middlesex, Essex and Surrey will always be in different groups. There will be play-offs in September.

From 1999, in place of the abolished Benson and Hedges Cup and AXA Life League, a new 25-match league of 50 over matches will be launched, with two divisions of nine playing home and away games plus one against all nine teams in the other di- vision and annual promotion and relegation. The NatWest Trophy will become cricket`s FA Cup, with all 38 counties competing; and by 2000 the present second eleven championship will be abolished.

This is a radical rethink, even if there will not be two divisions of the County Championship next year; nor, except perhaps against the touring teams, regional cricket; nor central employment of England teams. All these ideas proved unacceptable to county clubs who still have the power to veto anything they consider too risky.

The consequent compromise looks on paper to be a fine piece of balancing by Lord MacLaurin, chairman of the England and Wales Cricket Board, chief executive Tim Lamb and John Carr, the director of cricket operations, but the slightly de- creased workload for county cricketers will not benefit the England team unless these three force the counties to use the 12 days for rest and practice rather than for spurious additional fixtures.

Equally, the board themselves, talking now of arranging six or seven one-day internationals each summer as well as "five or six Tests", must beware loading too much on to their best bowlers.

The changes to second eleven county cricket may be the most important of them all. They will pave the way for a much closer liaison between the best amateur cricketers and the professionals, allowing smaller county staffs and giv- ing good young cricketers in all parts of England and Wales a chance to compete for their counties as part-time professionals in a 38-county league, playing two-day, single-innings matches along Australian Grade Cricket lines in four regions. At least five players in each team will have to be under 25.

Played on Sundays and Mondays, these games will enable university students and those developing careers in other fields to test themselves against the best players in their area before deciding whether to turn professional.

The second eleven championship will be reduced next year from 17 to 12 three-day games and from 12 to eight in 1999 before being phased out completely in 2000. Non-professional sides from each county will meanwhile start a two-day `grade` competition in four regions and this will replace sec- ond eleven cricket in due course, improving what Lamb calls the `interface` between recreational and professional cricket. The Minor Counties will continue to play their own `declaration` two-day games but the board hope by `education and persuasion` to wean them onto the harder Australian two-day game.

Overs-limit cricket will be discouraged at all levels below the professional one and under 17 and under 19 county cricket will be under the `grade` rules which will also be encouraged for the best club competitions. There was no cast-iron guarantee yesterday that the board would be able to force through a premier league of the best clubs in each of the 38 counties, but financial inducements will be made to get them going and overseas cricketers will be limited. Between 6,000 and 10,000 overseas players are believed to be taking part in club cricket in England and Wales this season alone. It fosters friendships, which is good, but it is undesirable if husky colonials are scoring most of the runs or taking most of the wickets.

In many areas in the south a premier league exists in most counties already but much disentangling of entrenched interests in the north will be required if long-established leagues are to sacrifice themslves in the wider cause. No perfect blueprint was possible and this one is, inevitably, a compromise. It fails in one fundamental, namely the need to reduce the amount of oneday cricket played by county cricketers in proportion to the two-innings variety which produces players likely to prevail in Test cricket, the highest form of the game. But it is commercially attractive, which it had to be to compete with ever-increasing competition from other summer sports, and it has at last addressed the crucial question of why so many players of great potential have lost their way in the professional game in England between the ages of 19 and 25.

A County Championship with greatly increased prize-money divided into three conferences with play-offs to deter- mine final placings will have novelty value for a while. Its real test will be whether it makes matches in the second half of the season more competitive and attractive for both players and spectators. Each county will play only 14 four-day games, three fewer than they do now. Twelve games will be played against the counties in the other two conferences to determine three league tables.

The winners of each league will then play off against their counterparts to determine the top three positions in the final table; the second teams will play the other two finishing second to determine places four to six; and so on. Graded prize money for the final top 10 will ensure competitiveness to the end of the season and it is hoped that the later matches, which may in time become five-day games, will be televised.

The three groups of six will be different each season. Inevitably, however, with three fewer four-day games per county each season traditional festivals like Abergavenny, Bath, Blackpool, Cheltenham, Colchester, Colwyn Bay, East- bourne, Horsham and many of the other venues which are part of the weft and warp of county cricket, will be threatened.

It is not clear how the new format, apart from severing 12 days of cricket to give more preparation time for each match, is going to achieve the desire for greater competitiveness more effectively than would have been the case if the existing championship had simply offered vastly enhanced prizemoney for each game. Nor is the idea of play-offs nearly so simple as two divisions with promotion and relegation. But a similar, if not identical, system apparently works in American football and the perceived cricketing need for a slight but significant reduction in the amount of matches played made three groups of six rather than two of nine preferable to John Carr and the group at Lord`s who came up with the ingenious formula.

The new championship is a `cricket-led` reform as, to some extent, is a NatWest Trophy which from 1999 will in- clude 60 teams - two elevens from each of the first-class counties (the county eleven and the County Board eleven) one from each of the Minor Counties, plus Scotland, Ireland, Holland and Denmark. But the 50-over league is very much the commercial sop which will persuade the counties to take their leap in the dark. ECB officials, inspired by Lord MacLaurin`s business acumen, are in effect telling the counties to make of it what they will and giving them a wide choice of when to stage the matches.

AXA Life will no doubt want to sponsor it and television companies will certainly vie to offer live and recorded coverage, especially of Friday night floodlit matches which the likes of Surrey, Warwickshire and, if they can find in- vestors, Sussex, will now hope to arrange. Mike Taylor, marketing director of Hampshire, who will have a new ground by the millennium, said yesterday: "Until now county cricket has been run by cricketers for cricketers; now it is going to be run in the interests of those who want to watch it."

That philosophy may be the only realistic one. As Lord MacLaurin remarked: "You can have the most attractive window in the world but it is no good if no one comes into the shop." The fact is, however, that English professional cricketers play far more domestic one-day cricket than any of their rivals and that a great chance to restore the balance has been lost. The maximum number of one-day matches in the three competitions this season would have been 31. From 1999, players in- volved in all NatWest and National League games will play 30. But the minimum number of one-day games rises from 19 to 27.

Less four-day cricket; slightly more one-day cricket hardly seems the formula to improve a Test side wich has failed largely because England do not produce sufficient at- tacking bowlers of requisite quality. Therefore the blueprint for 2000 will serve its purpose only if the players coming into county first teams from the new 38 county two-day competition are significantly better prepared for tough two-innings cricket.

Source :: The Electronic Telegraph (https://www.telegraph.co.uk/)