Three-day Championship and four-day Tests would help ease schedule - Chris Waters

Of course, it’s the elephant in the room that no one wants to address - including, it would seem, Root, who plays for the Hundred team Trent Rockets.

Clearly, the schedule is, as Root rightly observes, in need of reform, but it’s strange how the same howls and protests don’t go up when it comes to the Hundred, with its big fat pay cheques for precious little work.

Calls to cut the schedule followed research by the Professional Cricketers’ Association (PCA) which found that fourth-fifths of players are concerned about the physical demands of the fixture list, and three-quarters worried about unsafe travel between games, amid suggestions that they could even doze off when driving home after returning in the early hours on the team bus, for example.

Although such rhetoric is alarmist (county cricketers of yore played far more cricket and had to drive themselves everywhere in the days before motorways), the fixture list invariably throws up ridiculous situations, with teams criss-crossing the country from one day to the next.

At present, clubs play 14 County Championship games, 14 T20 Blast matches and eight One-Day Cup fixtures, amounting to 78 days’ cricket discounting knockout contests.

Largely because of the Hundred, and the inexorable spread of white-ball and the commercial imperatives, seven of those 14 Championship rounds are crammed into the first eight weeks of the season, something that benefits no one - players, spectators, or the national side.

The problems and pressures are well-established - as is the time-honoured question as to whether the county game should exist for its own sake, or primarily for the benefit of Team England.

The key question is: what can be done about it? In this view, the first thing that has to be accepted from the outset - however unwanted and unpalatable - is that the prevailing picture is here to stay.

In other words, the Hundred is going nowhere (according to Colin Graves, the Yorkshire chair who was instrumental in its inception, it is already worth some £800m to the English game, with stakes in its sides and the competition itself set to be sold to private investment).

Like it or not, franchise cricket now dominates the global landscape. The point of no return has already been reached, so there is little point having a romanticised take on things, however understandable.

If the Hundred is going nowhere, and if counties do not want to cut the number of T20 Blast games because they bring in the cash, the obvious threat is to the Championship, and for those of us who love it the dilemma is this - how do we best protect it in an atmosphere increasingly hostile to the first-class game?

A further move towards 10 Championship games is the likeliest outcome of the PCA’s intervention, one unpalatable to most Yorkshire members and their county brethren, so perhaps it is time to consider alternative ways of protecting the tournament.

What about a return to three-day Championship cricket and a reduction in the length of Test matches from five days to four?

Although not ideal, this could be better than the alternative, with so many Tests finishing inside four days anyway, and the problem of too much international cricket another factor.

Even if you had as many as 16 three-day Championship games per county, that would free up eight days in the schedule, which would rise to around two weeks if Tests were trimmed.

Of course, a return to three-day Championship cricket would throw up another problem - how to ensure enough positive results? There are various ways that this could be done.

You could tighten up on over-rates, with tough runs penalties.

You could offer substantially more points for a win than a draw - say 50 for a win, 10 for a draw, and modify the bonus points system.

Again, for the sake of argument, you could have 20 points for scoring 450 in 90 overs, 10 for scoring 400, 5 for scoring 350, 1 for scoring 300; then 15 for taking 9-10 wickets, 5 for 6-8 wickets, 1 for 3-5 wickets, or whatever the permutations are.

You could also scrap - as Ottis Gibson, the Yorkshire head coach, has suggested - the heavy roller, which deadens pitches.

Why, if you’re really desperate, you could offer each winning team a year’s free subscription to The Yorkshire Post’s cricket coverage.

If that doesn’t do it, well… that doesn’t do it.