Cricket Board Plans On Hold Till Spring (13 Dec 1995)

Electronic Telegraph Wednesday 13 December 1995

Cricket Board plans to be put on hold until spring

By Charles Randall

THERE will be no new dawn for English cricket today as delegates assemble for the two-day Test and County Cricket Board meeting at Lord`s.

Hopes that a re-structured authority, the England Cricket Board, would be formed provisionally - with the TCCB putting themselves out of existence - have been extinguished at least until March.

The turkeys will not be voting for Christmas, or even Easter. There will be no vote at all.

Some people running the game had hoped that the professional counties would agree that an ECB management board of 11 directors, should run the game without having to squeeze decisions through a 20-member synod that met only three times a year.

The main item on the agenda has become a 28-page report by David Acfield`s cricket committee assessing the county game. Recommendations include retaining one championship division with adjusted prize money and retaining all three one-day competitions.

The ECB financial stakes have risen through television money, and several counties are opposed to radical reform, suspicious of the complication.

One chief executive said yesterday that any new structure should be simple. "We`re all working together and, just for once, we`re not being parochial about it. There`s an awful lot of work still to be done."

Another chief executive said: "There are ways to improve the TCCB without fundamental change. What the proposals for the new England Cricket Board have done is to provoke new thoughts and concentrate the mind on the existing system. There is a fear of the unknown."

The counties already accept that the voting system will have to be changed to allow recreational cricket to have influence

Sussex and Northamptonshire are two counties to have circulated ideas among the board members. They expect support opposing radical change.

One important step will be taken if the TCCB nod through the requirement that each of the 38 counties, including Huntingdonshire and Wales, form a single association to administer all cricket locally.

The funds specifically earmarked for the 18 professionals counties under the ECB proposals were to be #16.7 million for 1996, #19.2 million for 1997 and #22.1 million for 1998, though an exact commitment looks unlikely to be approved.

The counties already accept that the voting system will have to be changed to allow recreational cricket to have influence, perhaps through the National Cricket Association, who have never had a vote in the 20-member TCCB. The Minor Counties Association have one vote and the MCC the other in what for decades has been a lop-sided, parochial mess.

Officials of the TCCB had been hoping last summer that the move to a new England Cricket Board would be speeded up. They have succeeded there, because the issue has now accelerated to snail`s pace.

Somerset have signed Shane Lee, an Australian Cricket Academy graduate, to replace Mushtaq Ahmed as their overseas player.

Lee, a New South Wales all-rounder, was recommended by Kerry O`Keefe, the former Australia and Somerset leg-spinner. Bob Cottam, the county`s coach, flew back from Sydney recently after watching Lee.

Replacing Mushtaq, who is on tour with Pakistan, with a young player in only his second first-class season in the Sheffield Shield is a gamble for Somerset.

Durham announced yesterday that Norman Gifford, who resigned his post as Sussex manager last season, is to join them as a fulltime coach in the New Year.

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