Minor Counties Championship Causes Disquiet (24 Nov 1995)

The Electronic Telegraph Friday 24 November 1995

Minor counties: `Amateur` league causes disquiet

By Charles Randall

A FIGHT to save the 100-year-old Minor Counties Championship from extinction has surfaced as the formation of the new England Cricket Board moves ahead.

Proposals by the Test and County Cricket Board to form a 38- county `amateur` championship have met with firm opposition from the Minor Counties Cricket Association.

The ECB is due to be voted into existence as a limited company at the TCCB meeting on Dec 13, but the fate of the minor counties is far from certain.

The concept of across-the-board `amateur` competition - Middlesex`s club players versus Hertfordshire, for example - is not an essence of the ECB`s formation, but the authorities seek a marketable, monolithic competition, as intimated last summer.

Minor counties, in their centenary year, want `first-team` cricket, but their representatives, John Pickup, of Cheshire, and Derek Bridge (Dorset), have become worried after inconclusive talks with the TCCB.

"We want to play our part in setting up the future, but we`re not happy with what has been laid out"

Pickup, a Northwich lawyer, said: "We want to play our part in setting up the future, but we`re not happy with what has been laid out."

Some observers predict that a concentration of power at the proposed ECB 11-director management board, though desirable, will tend to isolate the authorities from the rank and file.

The total paid-up memberships of around 150,000 people, who form the ECB democracy, seems only a small proportion of the millions who follow the game.

Richard Hill, editor of an occasional but worthy magazine called Cricket Lore, has formed a fledgling `national cricket membership scheme` as a non-aligned public opinion vehicle, with the possibility of negotiating nation-wide admission to county grounds.

Hill said: "It could provide cricket`s administration with a valuable source of information and advice upon the expectations of its `customers`. It`s an attempt to mobilise the views of the vast numbers of cricket enthusiasts."

Anyone interested in details of the scheme or in attending a public meeting in January is invited to contact Hill at Cricket Lore, London N16 0HS.

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