Championship Preview: Two divisions an invitation to cutthroats (8 September 1997)

Monday 8 September 1997

Championship Preview: Two divisions an invitation to cutthroats

By Christopher Martin-Jenkins

NOW, almost certainly, there are only three possible winners: Kent, Glamorgan and Yorkshire. It is just possible that if there were an utter disaster for Glamorgan this week against Essex and a wholesale triumph for Kent at Headingley, Kent would be sure of the Britannic Assurance County Championship before the final round of matches. But it is unlikely and that is all to the good, because the thrilling climax might yet persuade the First Class Forum to step back from the brink of a straight split into two divisions, with promotion and relegation for three or four counties a year.

Perhaps it is a coincidence, perhaps not, that voting representatives of the three counties I have watched most recently in the championship (Kent, Hampshire and Gloucestershire) have all expressed unease about the polarisation which might result from two divisions. They believe it to be a lesser evil than the three-conference championship proposed in Raising The Standard, but they are not convinced that it is truly any improvement, in terms of competitiveness - which is the reason for change - on the present straightforward league of 17 fourday matches between 18 first-class counties.

Members of the England and Wales Cricket Board will be faxed within the next 24 hours with any amendments to the blueprint as preparation for the FCF vote at Lord`s a week tomorrow which will decide the structure of the game for the next few years. "No change is no option," Lord MacLaurin has said, but it remains to be seen whether the status quo will be officially proposed, along with three conferences and two divisions.

If it is a straight decision between the latter two, it is an open secret that the three-conference idea will be rejected by everyone. It was ingenious and well-meaning, honestly designed to limit the number of matches to the amount believed to be just right for the production of first-class county cricket of the highest possible quality. Fourteen matches, the cricketing brains at Lord`s believed, would spell more practice, less fatigue, higher quality. But the members of clubs have had their say and sanctioned their committees to oppose less championship cricket, not to mention slighty more oneday games.

Given that so many counties are still fearful of the implications of two divisions and that a population of 52 million in England and Wales should comfortably be able to sustain 18 first-class clubs, it would be possible for the ECB to come up with a third proposal today: an unchanged championship but with more prizemoney and additional financial incentives for the successful.

I suggest two: the first would be an end-of-season bonus for counties who have produced England players during the season, based pro-rata on their number of international and Test appearances, by the day. If a player has moved from the county for which he first played, the relevant sum would be equally divided between his first and present counties.

The second incentive, assuming that everyone agrees that the one-day league should not exceed 16 or 17 games, would be some sort of brief play-off cup tournament for the top four teams in the championship. Semi-finals could be played on the home grounds of the first two, with a final at Lord`s (history has proved there is room for two of them) as an added bonus.

The `Top Teams Trophy` might have to be played the fol- lowing season, because of the disadvantages of September weather. It would only add two games to the workload of the sides reaching the final, in return for considerable extra income for a high-profile, sponsored and televised tournament. To add to the novelty, and provide a logical link to the proposed format for county second XIs in future, the semi-finals might be twoday single-innings games.

Perhaps either or both of these ideas might already have occurred to the executives at Lord`s. If so, they might have more appeal to the majority than promotion and relegation. Beguiling as two divisions sound, they might be an open invitation to the cut-throat commercial world of professional football and rugby - a world which makes many rich but brings absolutely no guarantee of a stronger national side.

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