What happened to the Schofield Report?

A grand talking shop about the future of Test cricket is to take place in rural Leicestershire. Andrew Strauss and former England captains will be attending. It is a spacious venue, an old country house suitable for an Agatha Christie murder, perhaps in the Orangery. The trouble is that the delegates will have no room for manoeuvre, writes Scyld Berry in the Daily Telegraph.

The conference has been organised by the England and Wales Cricket Board, and it is a good idea. But there would have been much less need for it if only they had heeded the two key recommendations of the Schofield Report, which they themselves commissioned after the last Ashes debacle.

Reduce the amount of cricket which the England team have to play so they can focus on quality instead of quantity; and do the same at domestic county level.

.........................................

England fly off to the West Indies on Wednesday on their first stage of a year so packed and over-loaded that only terrorists can stop it. In the West Indies until early April, a home series against West Indies in May, the Twenty20 World Cup in June, the Ashes in July and August, a seven-match, one-day series against Australia in September, the Champions Trophy running into October, then off to South Africa for three months – only if their tour of Pakistan this time next year is cancelled will England stop. Quality? No, sir! The primary object of the exercise is the England team earning enough to subsidise the counties.