Yorkshire's planning on hold following fixtures scheduling delay

The England and Wales Cricket Board had promised to announce the size and format of next year's competitions amid proposals to cut the number of County Championship, Twenty20 and Clydesdale Bank 40 games.

But despite having had all summer to sort it out, the governing body have opted to set up a "small working party" to discuss the matter further and will not now make a decision until November 17.

It has left Yorkshire and their county brethren unable to finalise fixture arrangements and, in some cases, set budgets and work out membership packages.

Yorkshire last week attended a meeting of the 18-first class counties at Lord's to give their views on next summer's schedule.

They fought to retain the current format of 16 Championship games per county, with two divisions and promotion/relegation, and to slash the number of Twenty20 group games per club from 16 to 10.

Every Test-hosting county apart from Glamorgan is understood to concur with Yorkshire's desire to reduce the amount of Twenty20 cricket, but smaller counties are diametrically opposed.

They depend on gate receipts from such matches – Essex, for instance, pulled in more than 500,000 in Twenty20 gate money last season, while Somerset estimate they would lose circa 80,000 for every home Twenty20 game removed from the schedule.

Martyn Moxon, Yorkshire's director of professional cricket, said all counties need to know where they stand.

"The game has had a long while to sort this out but here we are at the last minute," said Moxon. "There's all the fixtures to arrange, the hotels, the second XI fixtures that can only be sorted out once you know what the first-class fixtures are, and so on.

"In my view, someone at the top has to make a strong decision – one that takes the cricket and financial decisions into consideration.

"It's not just about money; we need to make sure the players have sufficient rest and preparation time."

The working party will be chaired by ECB chief executive David Collier and include representatives from the Professional Cricketers' Association and what the ECB term "the wider county game".

It will report back to the ECB management board pending a final decision.

Due to the ongoing confusion, tomorrow's planned fixtures meeting at Lord's has been cancelled.

The fixtures were supposed to have been announced next month.

Moxon said the mood at last week's meeting had been narrowly in favour of cutting Twenty20.

"The majority wanted to reduce it," he said. "It was something like 10-8 in favour of reducing it and we argued as a club for 10 group games.

"I'm hoping the Championship format will stay the same, while the difficulty with plans to reduce the number of CB40 games was that Holland, Scotland and Unicorns, who make up the groups, had been guaranteed three years of cricket, I believe, so it would be difficult to go back on that.

"We just need everything resolved as soon as possible."

Yorkshire hope to complete the signing of former England pace bowler Ryan Sidebottom on Tuesday.

Sidebottom, 32, is set to join on a three-year deal following his decision to quit county champions Nottinghamshire.