Strauss Has at Least One Fan - Michael Vaughan

"Counties have a simple choice – back Andrew Strauss's reforms or watch red-ball cricket die"

Michael Vaughan

The high performance review by Sir Andrew Strauss presents the game with an unmissable opportunity to improve first-class cricket and make the Test team a better side for the long term.

If the counties do not take this chance then red ball cricket will wither and the championship will eat itself. Players don't want to play 14 games a season and have other options now in white ball leagues around the world. That didn’t exist 10 years ago. Times have changed.

If we carry on playing 14 games, the standard will continue to go down, we will have the same debates about schedules again the next time England are beaten in Australia and the championship will become even more irrelevant.

Cricket is in the dark ages if it is not going to listen to this review, which is a good piece of work. The high performance review has had criticism because Strauss consulted people like Dave Brailsford and Dan Ashworth - figures from outside cricket - but I think cricket needs people from outside to give it new ideas. It is a very insular sport. Strauss has gone away, gleaned advice from people who know about high performance and transferred those findings to cricket.

A six-team top division would concentrate the best versus the best and by playing fewer matches it will allow players more time to prepare and groundsmen to produce better pitches. We need to promote fast bowling, more high class spinners and batsmen who can bat for a day-and-a-half and score double centuries.

Yes, there will be teams outside the top division who might decide they want to concentrate on white ball cricket but that happens now anyway. There will still be a T20 Blast that the counties love.

They are keeping the 50-over competition and I like the fact it will become a tournament with more knockout games, which means performing under pressure more often.

The Hundred is here to stay. I know the haters won’t like it but that is a fact. It is a prominent part of the commercial side of cricket and will grow the game. As we have seen this year there is more of a family-feel to the Hundred than the Blast, with mums and dads taking their kids to games, which is great.
Strauss proposals not ripping up tradition

The review is a very thoughtful piece of work but it is not radical. I personally would have made it more radical and not have 18 teams playing first-class cricket. I would have gone for 12. I also think whatever happens with this review, that debate will happen again in five to 10 years' time.

I don’t see why people are so angry. County members are crying out for 14 or 16 games but commercially it does not make sense and it also does not make cricket sense - it just does not leave enough time to prepare properly, and produces poor cricket in April and September on juicy pitches. The members are still guaranteed five home games per year with an added two or three for friendlies as well.

There is not even a huge reduction in four-day cricket, with friendlies planned in August during the Hundred. There could be a Yorkshire v Lancashire match at Scarborough, for example, or festival weeks around the country. It is not a case of Strauss ripping up tradition because what he is proposing changes very little.

Some will say England have won five out of six Tests this summer and use that as an example that nothing needs to change but look at the game over the last 40 years. England have only been No1 in the world once and that was for just 12 months under Strauss.

Over the next few weeks, when this is debated and ultimately put to a ballot, the county chairs have to grasp this chance to change the game and forget self-interest. This is about doing the right thing for the future of English cricket.

We have had countless reviews over the last few years. If Strauss cannot get this passed, and it is not even that radical, then what is the point? We will continue to produce mediocre Test teams who win the odd big series but never put together a long run of results and dominate the world stage.

Accept reforms or face player exodus, says Strauss.
Nick Hoult.
London Daily Telegraph.
Wednesday, 7 September 2022.
PTG 3990-19623.

Andrew Strauss has warned counties that English cricket faces an exodus of its playing talent unless reforms to the England and Wales Cricket Board’s (ECB) domestic game are adopted.  Strauss’s high performance review is proposing a six-team Premier Division in the championship and two divisions of six teams as feeder leagues or conferences. Play-offs will determine the champions and promotion and relegation, on a one-up, one-down basis.

Strauss has called on county chairs to look beyond self-interest and vote for change.  He said: “Revolution is all our players going off and playing domestic white ball cricket abroad - which, by the way, is not a million miles away.  We need to be cognisant of this. The world is moving around us, and we can't stick our head in the sand and pretend it isn’t.  There are loads of domestic franchise tournaments out there, likely to be one or two in the English summer starting pretty soon so our players have never had more options. The players as part of this review have said very strongly, ‘We play too much cricket, we don't have enough time to practise and prepare. The schedule is a mess”. If we don't listen to them then they're going to start voting with their feet”.

Strauss has spent the past few weeks consulting the counties over his ideas, which also includes the option of playing ‘festival week’ four-day friendlies during the Hundred to give county members more first-class cricket and red ball cricketers some match practice.  He takes his final recommendations to the ECB board on Wednesday, which will be chaired for the first time by Richard Thompson (PTG 3986-19601, 3 September 2022). The board will decide what to propose to the counties in a formal ballot to take place provisionally on Sept 20, although is likely to be delayed for further consultation. The changes will come into force in 2024. A majority of twelve votes is needed.

“I'm hoping that they [counties) don't oppose it”, said Strauss. “The truth is, whenever you talk to anyone in the game, they always look at it from their own point of view, like, what does this mean for me? So if a team finds themselves potentially not in the first division in the championship, they're probably not going to like that very much. And then, of course, you know that they're rightly worried about how their members will feel about potentially playing less four day cricket or not playing as many championship games". 

“This is a pragmatic solution to the issues we've got. This is not a revolution because the game's not ready for revolution like that. But if we found ourselves in a situation of paralysis on this, I don't think anyone wins out of that. And I believe that everyone can see their place in this. There's no reason why any team can't see themselves going ‘right we can be in that first division’. There's a way of us getting promoted to get that. But our standards need to improve. We need to improve the quality of our players. We need to improve the quality of our pitches. And ultimately, if we do all of that, we're going to get rewarded better for it. Is that not a good thing? I certainly think it is”.

It is understood there is support for the innovations among the larger counties but others are resisting change that will upset their membership. Strauss has tried to allay their fears.  “What we're saying is we want a smaller first division. The recommendations we put in front of the game of a six team top division”, said Strauss. “We want less championship cricket, but that doesn't mean there's necessarily less first class cricket because I think there's an opportunity to play first class cricket in August during the Hundred window. But ultimately, we can't keep everyone happy”.

“If we are serious about high performance, we've got to make sure that our domestic structure is ticking that high performance box and we're raising the standard, we're making it more challenging, more intense, we're developing spinners, we're asking bowlers to bowl quicker, we're playing on flatter pitches that will force players to develop the skills they need for international cricket.  That's what we've got to do here. But there's still going to be loads of cricket. We play more cricket in this country in a shorter season than anyone else in the world by a long way. So it's still going to be loads of cricket for people to watch and and hopefully it'll be better standard and more compelling cricket as well.”

Radical change is not an option because the ECB has sold the Hundred in an August window to broadcasters until 2028 and the counties will not back down on fourteen Blast games (PTG 3984-19567, 6 September 202). It limits what Strauss can do.  “Those constraints are an imposition. We're not starting with a blank sheet of paper, but that doesn't mean there's not a lot of things we can do”.

Wisden preview

Scrap Bowling Bonus Points - Strauss

3 Points for a win, one for a draw (Bonus points if you win)

Observer Points

Evening Standard Points

Current Div 2 with the Strauss Proposals system

Notts    11   29

Glam    10   24

Midx    11    22

Derb    11    17

Worc    10    17

Dur      10    10

Susx    11      9

Leic     10      4