Well done on getting the names together.
Well done on getting the names together.
Yes indeed. No mean feat at Lancs they only need 100 signatures to trigger theirs. Good going getting 260+ and I hope it has an impact I know we don't want the rancour at Edgbaston that they seem to have up at Old Trafford for example but nor should members wishes be ridden roughshod over
I will add my congratulations on a great achievement. With that backingand knowing the effort required to get there surely the club has to listen and take note of the membership's wishes.
It’s a great effort. Well done!
I hope the rule change goes through and will make sure I’m there. Above all I hope the members’ committee have the gumption to realise they are there to represent members and not to suck up to the Club Board. I hope they are embarrassed by this.
On-line feedback on a Surrey members' forum includes:
"ALL the county cricket directors want to end Kookaburra cricket balls .... only one person in favour haha.
Steve gave wide ranging update into other matters including feeling confident at this round of discussions 14 game CC will remain for next season."
Yet more garbage proposals from our very own chair mark McCafferty quoted by Will McPherson . Are moves afoot to unseat this buffoon before he does to cricket what his ilk has already done to rugby?
I was told McCafferty wants to be ECB Chair and that’s why he’s pushed the reduction so hard.
Goodness knows why we ever picked him.
CVC the organisation he came from ran F1 for many years, not very successfully. It seems that CVC and it's staff are only interested in the maximum profit, not the sustainable health of a business.
George Dobell in The Cricketer reports that:
" it seems probable - though not certain - that the counties will vote on a proposal which would see the Championship schedule cut to 12 or 13 games (six teams contesting promotion, relegation and the championship title would play 13 matches) in the coming days. If that proposal is rejected, the schedule will remain as it is now with 14 matches per team per season."
There was a leaked article on it here (from our Chair?)
Hope the counties stay strong and block this nonsense and we get our SGM!
Further developments - The Cricketer reports:
"Plans circulated by the ECB suggest that, if the counties agree to a cut in the number of County Championship games, they will effectively be compensated by an increase in the number of games in the 50-over competition. At present, each county is guaranteed to host four ODC matches with scope for further games if sides achieve a home quarter or semi-final. For counties which do not host Hundred games, this can result in as few as four days of cricket at their grounds in August.
The new plans would guarantee each team a minimum of five home games. This would see the counties split into three groups of six and playing the other five in their group home and away."
Not bribery by the ECB, of course.
Hope the counties tell the ECB to feck right off. They should have the 2 extra games in August anyway given it's 2nd Xi fayre. Better if it was 2 Championship games mind and back to 2 divisions of nine and 16 games per county
According to an article in the Guardian, the PCA (DVB Darryl Mitchell who seems intent on killing his own county stone dead and our very own OHD et al...) are pissed off with the members of the counties they represent.
The PCA needs to get real and reduce the number of June July and August golf bookings they make.
Let us consider the prime argument they offer for a reduction in the cricketing schedule - i.e. Players workload.
The total number of days currently allocated to cricket is
CC 14x4=56
T2014x1=14
1D/H8x1=8
Grand total of 78 days but short form cricket lasts <4hrs and very few, if any, players will be involved in all games in all tournaments. Additionally very few, if any, players, will be actively involved throughout all 4 days of a CC game. The current cricket season is spread over 176 days.
That equates to a 3 day week, outdoors in generally pleasant conditions.
Mental and physical overload!!!?????? - tell that to the general workforce - either white or blue collar.
It's as hideous and fallacious an argument as Franchise cricket being the saviour of the game.
I feel very dismayed reading that. It seems very similar to the suicide note recently written by the Welsh Rugby Union to cut down their sport. It's just that they're further along in the decommissioning process than the ECB.
There seems to be no real interest in preserving the 4-day game instead wanting more limited overs, despite the fact that the bedrock of the Test team is the County game.
T20 is fantastic for a mid-summer beer on a long evening, but less is more: dead rubbers kills it if too many games are played. 50ovs is interesting but is too dependent on the pitch and batting second.
All the ECB seems to want is the 16.66ovs thing. Viewing figures are down and nobody seems to be interested especially as they launched it too close to the EPL season. I just wonder if these latest proposals to cut cricket have anything to do with the ECB's hawking of 16.66ov franchises to football clubs, the middle east, Ryan Reynolds and even MLB teams? They need to offer investors that they'll be no competition.
edit / update 1 Sep: sadly despite an encouraging drop in viewers in 2023 and 2024, the figures for 2025 show an uptick of idiots watching the 16.66ov abomination. cricket is doomed. : (
County CEO's lobbying the Union to see the players go on strike now, honestly...
Going on strike so you can work less, a lot less in fact, and stay on the same wage, jeez...
Surrey, Middlesex, Yorkshire, Somerset, Kent, Derbyshire and Essex have said they are uncomfortable with a cut in the number of Championship fixtures. Gloucestershire are prepared to accept a cut but do not like the current suggestion of a bottom division of just six teams.
That leaves those wanting a cut well short of the two-thirds majority required to make a change.
Hopefully the players take their advice and walk the fuck out in fucking November. I find it utterly ridiculous that the players do all this 'training' for months on end in the cold depths of winter and then can't get through more than 3 championship matches in a fucking month without breaking down.
I thought today was supposed to be the final vote? Now because they can’t get the two thirds they want more talks and then a vote in a few weeks.
The ECB (led by our “Chair”) is getting more and more like the EU.
It would appear that the PCA are not planning strike action but Daryl Mitchell, their CEO, informed a meeting of county chairs at Lord's that three county CEOs had suggested the players should strike in a bid to push through change. So it's those CEOs who are the real villains. Who could they be? Obviously not those of Surrey, Middlesex, Yorkshire, Somerset, Kent, Derbyshire Gloucestershire or Essex, which narrows it down a bit.