IPL, Major League Cricket, could force the County Championship the way of the Royal London Cup - Chris Waters

The old maxim might need updating now that Harry Brook is lighting up the Indian Premier League with the so-called “Orange Army”, but the future of county cricket is no laughing matter owing to the rise of T20 franchise competitions and an overcrowded schedule.

As Yorkshire’s County Championship game against Gloucestershire in Bristol fell foul of the weather, with no play possible across the four days, it was possible to see in that soggy outcome, the remarkable performance of Brook in pummelling a 55-ball century for Sunrisers last Friday, and the fact that The Hundred takes up the prime summer month of August at the expense of the Championship, a lot to be concerned about for county cricket followers.

Not only are the best players such as Brook mostly unavailable for their clubs, with the additional demand of international commitments on top, but the Championship has become increasingly marginalised, predominantly confined to the graveyard months of April and September.

As it has been cold enough lately to freeze the balls off a brass monkey, as they also say in Wath upon Dearne, not to mention exceedingly wet, the situation is far from ideal, even if the weather can be a capricious animal.

However, if anyone seriously thought that April was a better time of year to be playing cricket in England than in August, you can bet your bottom dollar that the England and Wales Cricket Board would have ring-fenced April instead for its 100-ball foul-up.

As it is, its priorities stand out more clearly than the bright orange jerseys of Sunrisers, for it is white-ball, not red, that brings in the cash, even if the latest financial figures relating to The Hundred show that even stupid people can see through the worst kind of stupidity.

That supposed cash cow has reportedly lost £9m in its first two years, rising to £37m if one includes the additional money paid to the counties and the MCC to support the idea, one played nowhere else in the world and beneficial only to the women’s game, as helpful as that is.

Men’s county cricket is being impacted in the opposite direction, though, and The Hundred is sounding the death knell for the traditional Championship as, in its own way, is the IPL (which clashes with the start of the English season) and now the Major Cricket League in the United States, which begins in July.

The MLC is likely to have an increasing impact on county cricket going forward, clashing with the T20 Blast and, with future expansion, possibly The Hundred (every cloud...).

Even more concerning – for the future of Test cricket, never mind county cricket – is talk of a new T20 tournament in the Middle East in a tie-up between those old romanticists, the Saudi Arabia government, and the equally “the game is all about the glory” IPL franchise owners.

As the latter already have stakes in tournaments all over the world, players could be offered lucrative, all-year-round deals to play for linked franchises in multiple T20 events – the nightmare scenario for lovers of the red-ball game, who will surely not see those players for (gold) dust.

The landscape of the sport is changing at speed, driven by vast sums of money that cannot help but turn the heads of players, who can earn much more from franchise events than they can from already lucrative central contracts from their own governing body.

What incentive is there for emerging young players who seem to have little knowledge of, and affection for, the game’s rich history anyway – raised on a Test game so devalued by the powers-that-be that it must at least effect those players subconsciously – to bother with Test cricket for a fraction of the cash they could earn from T20?

Even increases in match fees, or the introduction of multi-year contracts can only go so far towards stemming, let alone reversing, this tide. After all, how can the ECB – intensely skilled, infinitely resourceful operators that they are – hope to compete with Saudi oil barons?

Quite where the poor old Championship fits into this depressing picture is difficult to quantify, suffice to say that it may ultimately go the way of the Royal London Cup.

The 50-over tournament is now nothing but a glorified development affair, giving chances to youngsters, however valuable, but lacking the substance and quality of the old one-day stuff.

As the best players rarely turn out in the Championship anyway, it is easy to see the talent pool becoming further eroded by the rise of these head-turning franchise events.

With top overseas players also hard to come by, at least for any length of time to justify the hype and considerable expense that so often attends their invariably delayed visas, the Championship increasingly has the air of a second-rate event, little more than the best of the “best of the rest” in a lottery that depends, ultimately, on which players are available.

Alas, T20 has cannibalised the sport and the ECB has sat back and allowed the Championship to rot, pushing it into the far corners of the season, disregarding and disrespecting the views of county members in the process in the inexorable race towards the sad bottom line.