Yorkshire open title defence at home to Hampshire

Andrew Gale, the Yorkshire captain, will face an early test of his opposition to the ECB's controversial new rules for the toss in County Championship fixtures when Hampshire, the visitors, are offered the chance to bowl first in the champions' first outing of the 2016 season, at Headingley on April 17.

The 2016 County Championship, which gets underway a week earlier on April 10, is the first in which the toss is not mandatory following the ECB's decision to allow the visiting side to bowl or opt for a toss of the coin. The first group of visiting teams to have that option will be Gloucestershire, Kent, Somerset, Sussex and Warwickshire, as well as newly promoted Surrey, who mark their awaited return to the top flight with a first-round trip to Trent Bridge.

The 2016 schedule contains none of the more overarching restructuring that had originally been proposed but has now been pushed back to 2017. However, there is a subtle tweak to the 50-over competition, the Royal London Cup, which will now be staged in two blocks from the start of June.

In 2015 the competition did not begin until the last week of July but next year it will form part of a concentrated period of white-ball cricket. The opening round of matches will take place on June 5, a group of games that includes defending champions Gloucestershire taking on Somerset in a South West derby in Taunton, It will run concurrently with the NatWest T20 Blast, which starts on May 20 and will again predominantly be played on Friday nights.

While not a radical change, shifting a portion of the 50-over matches forward by seven weeks should bring a few benefits. Aesthetically it could help the tournament feel less of a late adjunct to the season, but on a more fundamental level it provides a couple of rounds of matches before England play their one-day series against Sri Lanka, so there is an an opportunity for fringe players to stake a claim.

It should also ensure matches take place on better pitches as surfaces will be less tired than they are getting in late July and August. June is also when periods of the 2017 Champions Trophy and 2019 World Cup will be held, both of which are a priority for the new England management. Another impact of shifting a block of the Royal London Cup is that it allows more County Championship cricket in August with 32 four-day games starting that month instead of 15 last season which it is hoped will aid the role of spin bowling.

The Royal London Cup then takes a break from mid-June, when T20 and County Championship matches continue to intermingle, until a second set of matches in late July which lead towards the quarter finals in mid-August. The final will take place on September 17 at Lord's.

There had been plans for a more comprehensive overhaul of the county programme but those moves have been delayed by a year after counties voiced their concerns that they had not been consulted sufficiently on the process which is likely to include changing the Championship into divisions of eight and 10, rather than the two nine-team split that is currently in place.

The ECB has promised that a decision on the structure of the 2017 season will be confirmed before next summer begins so that counties know what they are playing for, especially in terms of any changes to promotion and relegation in the Championship. Any significant changes to the T20 competition are unlikely to take place before the next cycle of TV rights kicks in 2020.

With Lancashire and Surrey back in the Championship top flight, following the relegation of Sussex and Worcestershire last season, eight of the nine Division One clubs are now Test match counties. One notable omission from the 2016 fixtures list is Sussex's Horsham festival, which had been under threat two years ago but has now seemingly paid the price for their second-division status.

Internationally, England will again play seven Tests during the season - three against Sri Lanka and four against Pakistan - alongside 10 ODIs and two T20Is. England Lions will play a triangular one-day series against Pakistan A and Sri Lanka A, England Women will play one-day and T20 series against Pakistan while England Under-19s will face Sri Lanka.

Yorkshire, as County Champions, will take on the MCC in Abu Dhabi in a four-day match from March 20.