Sir Andrew Strauss’ High Performance review has arrived and, despite everyone broadly agreeing with its recommendations, it appears nobody wants to implement any of them.
‘Essential To Ensure Quality And Intensity’
Strauss’ review is the culmination of the ECB’s almost ritualistic self-flagellation that traditionally follows an Ashes series defeat in Australia. The former test captain’s proposals come with a clear objective in mind: to make England the best team in the world across all formats within the next five years.
Within the 37-page document, Strauss writes that “a reduction in the amount of cricket played is essential to ensure quality and intensity.” For Strauss’ recommendations to be adopted, he will need 12 of the 18 counties to vote in favour of them. Fortunately for him, the idea of slimming down the current hectic fixture schedule has been a popular one in recent times. Speaking in August while still in his role as the chair of Surrey, Richard Thompson described the county schedule as “the worst game of Jenga ever.”
Strauss’ solution is a proposed reorganisation of the County Championship into three leagues of six, and a reduction to the amount of home games each county would play in the T20 blast.
The review states that 61% of county supporters and 94% of directors of cricket believe there are too many games played during the summer. Despite the apparent widespread support for his proposals, the early polling does not look good for Strauss.
‘There Has To Be A Comprise’
Speaking to the BBC in response to the review’s publication, Sussex chair Jon Filby said “In T20 we fill our ground up and we make around £100,000 per match in terms of profit … There has to be a compromise somewhere between what we have now which is unacceptable and what Strauss has proposed which in many ways is equally unacceptable.”
The Kent chairman, Simon Philip went even further as he warned that counties should “consider the unintended consequences and possible irrevocable change to the essential nature of county cricket” that the changes would bring.
Perhaps the personification of the counites’ doublethink can be seen in the chair of Essex CCC, John Stephenson. He immediately welcomed the results of Strauss’ review on the day of its publication in a statement that read, “We are pleased with the initial outcome of the High-Performance Review and the Club, our members and stakeholders can now plan accordingly for the 2023 season.” Then, in an interview on BBC Essex conducted the very same day he said, “As it currently stands, we would not vote in favour of any reduction in the County Championship, any reduction in red-ball cricket, and we wouldn’t vote in favour of any reduction in home T20s.” Go figure.
Persuading the various county chairs to agree with each other, or even themselves, is notoriously difficult. Critics suggest that each county is simply concerned with improving their own finances and see the growth of the wider sport as a secondary priority.
Sceptical
The domestic game’s biggest fear from the review was that it would encourage a reduction to the number of first-class counties. That has not proved to the case but there is still suspicion, perhaps fairly, that a reduction to the amount of domestic cricket would lay the groundwork for a reduction to the number of counties in the future.
In its own way, all this muddled thinking is quite enlightening. The culture of vested self-interest and mistrust from all parties, the ECB included, does go some way to explaining the sport’s problems at both international and domestic level. That being said, the counties’ ideological struggle to maintain the old-world order may end up as a form of seppuku that only speeds up the rate of their demise.
External links/Reference
https://www.essexcricket.org.uk/2022/09/22/mens-high-performance-review-publishes-final-report/
Edited by Malachi Gowie
