Coverdale's wail

County cricket lost its longest-serving chief executive at the end of January when Northamptonshire's Steve Coverdale left Wantage Road after 19 years with the club.

Coverdale, who also sat on the ECB's management committee, hopes to stay involved in the sport, but is preparing for his first summer out of cricket since he joined Northants as secretary in 1984.

His parting with the county at 49 follows a review of the management of the club, although Coverdale says he had been planning his departure for more than 12 months. "Being honest I haven't really enjoyed the past couple of years," he says. "I've been in the job so long I need a fresh approach and a new challenge. I'd known for some time that 2003 would be my last full year with the club and it is time to move on but to what I don't know yet."

The review, conducted by management consultant David Beckett, concluded that communication was poor and morale within the club was low. Coverdale was also not helped by the cricket manager Kepler Wessels's increased power-base. Northamptonshire advertised Coverdale's position in the national press during January, but an appointment may not be made before the start of the season.

Coverdale had become the public face of the club at tough times and the job of sacking players, coaches and captains fell to him. "Quite often you are the last involvement or face that player will have with the club and that is the last memory they have. Friendships can be lost and strained through it." His position was also undermined by his comments on Sky TV last season when he claimed the majority of Northants members would rather see their county performing well than England beating Australia. It was an off-message comment for a man on the ECB management board.

Coverdale's role at the ECB has enabled him to help shape changes to the county structure while at Northants he felt the impact of those changes. "The two divisions have created greater pressures. If you get relegated, then you are criticised and there is far less job security around, which doesn't lead to people having a long-term perspective.

"In the late 1980s the Team England ethic first came to the fore. Despite what a lot of people have written the counties bought into that at an early stage. If you look at the things that have happened, virtually all of them have been introduced willingly by the counties to benefit the international side, and yet the counties are still criticised."

A county such as Northamptonshire, with a membership below 3000 and failure to produce an England player over the past decade, would be a strong candidate to disappear if a reduction in the 18 first-class counties became a reality. "Turkeys will not vote for Christmas and I believe mergers are out of the question," Coverdale says.

"If there is a reduction, it will be dictated by market forces - counties going out of business. It concerns me that we think we can improve our skills by doing less. I believe levels are improving in the county game but that will not happen if we play less and less cricket. Nobody has given me a decent reason for fewer counties. If you removed Northamptonshire and Derbyshire, for example, then geographically young players in this area would have to travel to Chelmsford or Birmingham. They would suffer accordingly. I think counties will survive for the next half-dozen years, but after that I don't know."