Chris Waters: Blueprint for change will only drive away county cricket lovers

At a meeting at Lord’s today, representatives of the 18 first-class counties will discuss recommendations put forward in the Morgan Review.

This proposes a reduction in County Championship games and an increased programme of Twenty20 fixtures.

Although the meeting is ostensibly a continuation of a dialogue process, it is effectively little more than an exercise in fine-tuning and an inexorable step towards the brutal butchering of the county system.

Uppermost on the agenda are plans to restructure our beloved Championship.

These proposals are so preposterous they might have been put together for the purpose of a bet.

Morgan, the former ECB chairman and ICC president, has consulted with cricket supporters (allegedly), commentators, officials, current and former players, counties and sporting bodies and concluded that counties should play 14 matches per season instead of 16.

Even worse is the alterations to the fixture list being mooted to accommodate his hair-brained strategy.

At present, the 18 counties are divided into two divisions of nine, with each county playing the others in its division home and away.

It is a symmetrical system and one that works well, ensuring an even-handed and equitable tournament.

Under Morgan’s strategy, the two divisions of nine would be retained – as would the existing policy of two-up, two-down.

But the move to 14 matches would see each club play six teams in its division twice and the other two once, thereby taking a sledgehammer to the symmetry and a chainsaw to common sense.

According to Morgan, two criteria would be used to determine which pairs of counties meet only once:

1) Identify all attractive local derbies and ensure they are all played home and away.

2) Ensure that the overall difficulty of opposition faced by each first-class county is as equitable as possible; this will be via a seeding system based on the previous season’s finishing positions.

Explaining his rationale, Morgan said: “The current 2x9 model is established, regarded as working well, and requires a compelling reason to be changed beyond the reduction to 14 matches.”

He added that “with title, promotion and relegation at stake, it is appropriate to show that the loss of the full round-robin structure need not lead to unfairness or reduced integrity of the competition” and that the change “allows counties still to play the most attractive matches in their division home and away.”

Morgan’s blueprint also proposes alterations to the one-day tournaments.

This would see counties playing 14 Twenty20 group games instead of 10, with two groups of nine divided on a north-south basis, with each team playing six clubs twice and two clubs once – mirroring the new-look Championship.

In addition, 40-over cricket would be scrapped in favour of 50-over cricket to reflect the duration of international fixtures.

There would be two groups of 10 – one with nine counties and Scotland, the other with nine counties and a combined team representing MCC Universities, MCCA and the county boards.

The counties would be placed into groups by a random draw and each side would play 10 group matches.

Bizarrely, the first group game would be against a team from the other group.

The effect of all this tinkering would be to reduce the number of days’ cricket from 86 to 80, thereby fulfilling a widespread desire – not least from Team England – to reduce the amount of county cricket played.

It is expected these changes would take effect for 2014.

As you will doubtless have concluded, the Morgan Review is bunkum and baloney.

If that is the best he can come up with after months of in-depth consultation, heaven help us.

In my view, there is nothing wrong with the existing Championship structure – save from the fact it is shoe-horned around the Twenty20 Cup.

It has produced some wonderful cricket in recent times, helped by the move to two divisions.

County cricket should not exist for the benefit of Team England, as it sometimes seems to do, or even for the players.

First and foremost, it should serve the spectator, who sustains it despite a plethora of competing attractions.

No spectator I have talked to wants a reduction in Championship matches, while few seem hungry for more Twenty20.

What spectators want, first and foremost, is a better appointment-to-view and not to have to go weeks on end without seeing games on their own doorstep.

Spectators also would not mind seeing a few more centrally-contracted England players from time to time, but that’s a debate for a different time.

Unfortunately, cricket appears to take spectators for granted.

It assumes they will watch through thick and thin.

But there is only so much they can take of this mindless tinkering, this inability of administrators to see beyond the financial bottom line.

Morgan’s recommendations, far from sorting out the mess of the county schedule, merely complicate it and exacerbate the problems.

So, what’s the solution?

Keep the Championship as it is and cut the plethora of one-day fixtures.

Arrange matches for the benefit of spectators and keep their interests uppermost.

Because, if they walked away now, who could blame them?

And another thing...

AT the risk of inviting the accusation of “pots and kettles”, one of my pet hates is the increasing number of inane questions posed to football managers on satellite television.

Seemingly no live Premier League game can begin before interviewer X has asked football manager Y something so preposterously absurd that you find yourself hurling expletives at the hapless interlocutor.

My biggest bugbear is the “how” question. This involves said interrogator enquiring along the lines: “How much of a boost is it to have (insert name of star player) back for tonight’s match?” Or “how important is it that you get back to winning ways this evening?”

The answer, 99 times out of 100, is “very important”, which is guaranteed to inspire further expletives hereabouts.

I know I must have fallen into this trap myself during my equally hapless career, but the problem has reached epidemic proportions.

Just listen out next time you sit down to watch a live game and count the number of times it occurs.

In the meantime, dare I ask how much you have enjoyed reading this column?

I jest, of course, while I fear I might already know the answer to that one.