Return to 50 overs is no solution

Praise for the ECB is seldom in vogue, but there is much to cheer in the county schedule for 2014. The 16-game county championship has been retained, while the dystopia of Twenty20 without end has just about been avoided, with 14 group games spread over the summer.

But the elimination of 40-over cricket, and its replacement by the 50-over game, may prove less welcome both for the England side and the county game itself.

What has been the problem with England's batting in the past two World Cups? Overwhelmingly, it has been a failure of power and innovation. And in the county format there is less need to develop these traits when the game is contested over 50 overs rather than 40.

The ECB are right that England suffers because its domestic one-day cricket has little in common with one-day internationals. But paradoxically their solution might exacerbate the problem.

The underlying issue is not with the number of overs in the innings but with the conditions in which games are played. Too often matches are played on seaming wickets in overcast conditions in May; they don't resemble 21st century ODIs so much as one-day first-class games, with solid techniques and nagging swing bowling the route to victory.

Ironically, at least the 40-over game placed more emphasis upon the big hitting and death-bowling skills that England have lacked since the 1992 World Cup - thereby making the game actually more akin to ODIs.

For England's technicians like Ian Bell and Alistair Cook, domestic 40-over cricket has helped them develop the range of shots necessary to succeed in ODI cricket after early struggles. Cook was a far better ODI player in 2011 than 2008 - even though he played 40 rather than 50-over games for Essex in the interim period. Indeed, the requirement to be more aggressive in 40-over cricket was exactly what Cook needed: if he has approached ODIs since as if they were 40-over games, it certainly hasn't harmed England.

The crux of England's problem is that their conditions are less conducive to high scoring than those of any other Test nation. This has certainly helped them become a formidable ODI side at home but it is less of an asset when World Cups are played overseas.

One bold solution would have been to continue playing 40-over matches but with the same number of Powerplay overs as in ODIs. Playing more Twenty20 isn't enough: batsmen and bowlers approach 20 overs with a fundamentally different mindset to how they approach 50, whereas 40-over games are akin to the 50-over version but with the tedium edited out.

Dealing with the boring middle overs has never been England's biggest ODI problem, yet the ECB's decision effectively means middle-over skills will become more important in domestic one-day cricket and clearing the infield comparatively less so. Especially considering the reality that so many 50-over games will be played under cloudy skies, the ECB might just have made domestic one-day cricket resemble ODIs less rather than more.

For county marketers, the ditching of the CB40 is also bad news. The results of the survey of 25,000 county fans showed "no compelling preference from spectators for 40 over cricket rather than 50 over cricket"

This sounds like ECB speak for a majority favouring 40 overs. And it's easy to see why: 40 rather than 50 overs amounts to a difference of at least an hour and a half. In practical terms, it means day-night games will have to start at 2:30 rather than 4, while the opportunity to do something on a Sunday morning - even, whisper it, actually play cricket - before watching a game has effectively been destroyed.

For those considering making a Twenty20 fling into something more enduring, an additional twenty overs, especially as they will probably be the least eventful overs of the day, may seem too long. One hundred overs really are a lot: just a few years ago, the ECB limited the number of overs in a championship day to 96. Cricket's middle format - its platform for converting Twenty20 fans into cricket fans - really shouldn't have the longest day of all.

Superficially, the restoration of the 50-over format to county cricket appeals as a rare sign of county CEOs putting the national side first. But the reality is more sobering. The ECB are making it even harder for county cricket to develop an attractive product. And the gains for the England side will only be illusory.