Hold the Back Page! ECB Sees sense!

It was very reassuring to read of the ECB's decision not to endorse David Morgan's plan to downgrade the County Championship in favour of Twenty20. I wouldn't mind betting that most of the 25,000 fan responses to the questionnaire, mine included, were of that opinion. Lined alongside the support of the players themselves, the Board had little alternative but to agree on a schedule which includes an unchanged first-class format.

Replacing the CB40 with a 50-over competition is probably the right decision as long as one-day internationals remain popular. The games are long enough to test different skills from those required by T20 thrashes, and the number of matches will be reduced sufficiently to stop another ridiculously early start to the season.

Having T20 games mainly on Fridays is a good move, I think. Sky TV may disagree, but tough! That day enables families from attending without facing struggles to wake up for school the next day and means cricket gives the sporting weekend a cracking start without a clash with football. The concentrated period of group matches was a double-edged sword. It created a bit of hype, rent the Championship season in two yet left T20 fans waiting another six weeks to find out who won the blooming trophy!

Foreign mercenaries jetted in for half a dozen games, or even fewer if they suddenly became wanted by their countries, none in the case of Chris Gayle! Critics may argue that the competition will be the poorer for the lack of such superstars. However, it means that the proper overseas cricketers and county pros will get the chance to show their skills instead of being usurped in favour of an occasional two-over burst by a so-called specialist earning five times their salary for a few weeks' work. Yes, it's nice to see a Nannes, Murali, Styris or Warner, but watching David Miller strike those sixes at Cardiff, Mascarenhas or Azeem Rafiq tie batsmen down or any amount of brilliant fielding shows that T20 works as a spectacle whoever is playing.

Hopefully we won't experience many more summers as cold and wet as 2012 but, let's face it, even South Africa has had its share of rain during the Champions League this week. Having a sensible schedule which doesn't require teams wearing several sweaters on a pitch swept clear of snow, before the Easter eggs have been opened, has to be applauded.

Will Player Power defeat Morgan?

The Morgan Report into the future structure of domestic cricket in England had already come in for a huge amount of stick before today's publication of the survey of the people who actually play the game. David Morgan was never going to win over everybody. If there had been a blindingly obvious solution to all the sport's problems, even the ECB would have adopted it by now. As with every other sport, money is the crucial issue. English cricket cannot survive purely on the revenue generated by the hardy souls who brave the elements on a grey May day in Leicester or Liverpool to watch day two of a County Championship game. There are sponsors to consider, Sky TV, the eighteen counties and the demands for a structure which supports the national team in all three of its guises. There are other clubs and schools, too, not to mention the fans, but their opinions don't really count. Morgan spent a long time consulting with the great and the good in the game, tiptoeing through the politics and the vested interests and, towards the end of last year, came up with a wishy-washy mess of a compromise. Tinkering with the Championship to reduce first-class cricket fixtures, extending the T20 competition through the season and bringing back the 50-over format at the expense of the restored CB40 aroused deep criticism, but not necessarily from everyone about all the elements. Some people want fewer counties in order to reduce fixture congestion, as long as it's not their county which goes. There have been calls for the 'weaker' or 'poorer' counties to be axed yet ironically it is the Derbyshires of this world who are breaking even while the big guns pouring money into stadia fit for Ashes Tests who are making unsustainable losses. I don't hear many pleas for Lancashire, Surrey and Yorkshire to be culled! In some ways, English cricket is a victim of its own recent success. World Test No.1s and T20 champions with largely different players, three exciting County Championships in recent years with increasing audiences, a popular CB40 competition and T20s bringing in new and large crowds - but there simply aren't enough days in which to fit them! Then there is the ever-burgeoning international calendar, with the English season topped and tailed by the IPL and the Champions League. I was brought up on seeing the world superstars like Viv Richards, Zaheer Abbas and Richard Hadlee performing year after year for their respective counties, That can no longer happen because these superstars are playing for their clubs, countries and franchises all over the world, all year round. The PCA members who responded to the questionnaire on the Morgan proposals seemed to want an IPL-style block of T20 games in order to give the English competition real kudos and attract the world's best for more than just a fortnight. Fine, but please not a two-month yawnfest of meaningless league games! I was, however, reassured by the players' support for the Championship as the pinnacle of the game. Presumably Kevin Pietersen neglected to submit his response! However it was telling that the professionals rated the first-class competition only slightly more important than the Friends Life T20. Something would have to give if player power is allowed to steer the decision-making process, and that would be the one-day formats. But where would that leave preparation for the 50-over internationals which are so lucrative and popular around the globe and form the basis of the sport's World Cup? So what now for the ECB? They will have to make a decision quickly before the cricketing diaries fill up and the world's players sign their contracts, if they are still worth the paper they are written on. I sincerely hope they abandon the proposed tinkering with the County Championship. I admit that T20 has to stay as a money-maker but as a fan I'd like to see more of a knockout element. Perhaps instead it would be a 50-over competition which disposes of round-robin games in order to retain its existence but freeing up more dates for T20. I feel sorry for David Morgan and the 'suits' but they should listen to players and fans at the very least when it comes to supporting the continuation of the world's oldest competition, the County Championship.

ECB out to destroy County Cricket?

English cricket currently stands proud on the top of the world. OK, so India may claim to be the champions of the only true World Cup but England are officially T20 kings and number one on the ICC Test rankings. Some years ago, they pulled the plug on the top national players representing their counties unless it was in the 'national interest' and in 2011 they even sanctioned the captain to play for a county to which he wasn't even contracted! They were supposed to play too much cricket and it was doing them harm and wearing them out. Even the world's oldest T20 competition was losing audiences last summer as cricket fans warmed to the traditional five-day international format, and the County Championship produced another exciting climax.

Now Strauss and co are the cream of the crop. So what does the ECB do? Recommend the reduction in first-class cricket and increase the number of T20 matches from 2014. I can't argue with the restoration of a 50-over domestic trophy, much as I like the old Sunday afternoon 40-over games, because it mirrors the ODI format. However, why tamper with the two-division Championship which guarantees each side in a division plays each of the others home and away, totalling sixteen four-day games a season? That has to mean some teams will not have to play the weakest county twice and some will. That is patently unfair. It has been mooted that Division One may be reduced to eight teams but will that mean the second tier play eighteen games? Or are the ECb banking on burying the likes of Leicestershire and Derbyshire during the next two summers? Actually, it's the big guns like Lancashire and Surrey who are in the worst financial situation so are they to be thrown to the wolves? I think not.

I know I'm a bit of a traditionalist but I do recognise the value of Twenty20 as gimmicky entertainment to attract new audiences. Of course I will cheer when Chris Gayle hits the winning six for Somerset in the 2012 final. Yeah, right! What cannot be disputed is that first-class cricket is the foundation of the sport all over the world and the Championship is the cornerstone of England's success. It's not an easy competition to win. It is full of fine players from the youngsters to the veteran pros, classy Koloak-ers and jetlagged overseas superstar signings. Cook, Broad, Anderson, Bell et al are not the products of the Big Bash. Not even Eoin Morgan, Jonny Bairstow, Craig Kieswetter or Alex Hales.

David Morgan's review purports to ease the fixture congestion but I can't see the two-match reduction in the Championship and having extra T20 games doing much for that. Mind you, the ECB have really surpassed themselves in 2012. The opening Championship games start on 5th April. That's before the Easter Eggs have been unwrapped! The counties warm up (surely an ill-chosen phrase) against the Universities in March. The sweater and finger-heating manufacturers will have trouble meeting demand of frozen players. I remember seeing the Indian players shambling on to the pitch at Taunton last July, hands in pockets. And that was mid-summer! The international fixtures here are a crazy mess. Here a West Indies, there the South Africans and for some reason a clutch of pointless ODIs against the Aussies. Of course it's all about cash, with Sky wanting to televise games every day of the summer so that nobody knows who's playing who, in which competition, when and at what time of day? It's a shambles.

I know it's not helped by the rapid expansion of the worldwide game, with many top players missing because of IPL, rival Test and ODI series and the pointless Champions League which is blatantly another money-spinner for the IPL franchises who are given a clear advantage. One rule for Somerset and another for the Mumbai Indians. Roberto Mancini's head would explode with the unfairness of it all. However, we have to persevere with the integrity of the domestic competitions. The County Championship has constantly been reduced but now seems a ridiculous time to cut it further. Apply the shears to the one-dayers instead. Have a proper knockout competition and prune the ODIs before the crowds dwindle even further. Just please, please, please allow Somerset to win all their finals this year. Just one would do....