ajones1328 wrote:

Surrey chairman on future of county cricket

https://youtu.be/2m-kgGtRshg?si=d8AwghGU1a1SwZRx

Key takeaway

At a vote, all Surrey players want a 14 game County championship 31-0.
Surrey CC are clearly proud of the CC and its their main priority and the membership and attendance shows that.

Baffles me that Warwickshire's playing staff wouldn't be on exactly the same page as the Surrey playing staff and not want any reduction to the county championship. Ditto most of the other sets of players across the counties.

So either were being misled by the PCA and the Warwickshire hierarchy or else we and other clubs have a playing squad that just doesn't like playing cricket????!??

Which in a way would chime with the overall poor results over the past ten seasons for Warwickshire just one slightly fortuitous county championship title in that time and continual failure in the Blast and ODC. A sign of a very badly run club at least from a playing aspect.

The hierarchy at Warwickshire should be nowhere near deciding they can instruct a successfully run county like Surrey or Somerset that they have to reduce fixtures IMHO

And down the line the Warwickshire members shouldn't put up with this regime for much longer either

I have just seen that Nottinghamshire members do not want a reduction in CC games. How about a 100% reduction in Hundread games, we would see many votes for that.

I can see why the different counties would want different things to be honest. I saw from the players poll that Surrey have 31 players, surely we don't have anywhere near that amount so they are naturally better rested. In addition they are probably younger, better paid, better resourced and have decent crowds in to watch them guaranteeing more exposure. These differences and more besides are spread across all clubs in the country and influence those votes.

mad wrote:

ajones1328 wrote:

Surrey chairman on future of county cricket

https://youtu.be/2m-kgGtRshg?si=d8AwghGU1a1SwZRx

Key takeaway

At a vote, all Surrey players want a 14 game County championship 31-0.
Surrey CC are clearly proud of the CC and its their main priority and the membership and attendance shows that.

Baffles me that Warwickshire's playing staff wouldn't be on exactly the same page as the Surrey playing staff and not want any reduction to the county championship. Ditto most of the other sets of players across the counties.

So either were being misled by the PCA and the Warwickshire hierarchy or else we and other clubs have a playing squad that just doesn't like playing cricket????!??

Which in a way would chime with the overall poor results over the past ten seasons for Warwickshire just one slightly fortuitous county championship title in that time and continual failure in the Blast and ODC. A sign of a very badly run club at least from a playing aspect.

The hierarchy at Warwickshire should be nowhere near deciding they can instruct a successfully run county like Surrey or Somerset that they have to reduce fixtures IMHO

And down the line the Warwickshire members shouldn't put up with this regime for much longer either

George Dobell says of the Notts members' vote: "The club's hierarchy have never made any secret of their desire to cut the number of games and previously announced their backing for a 12-match season. The relationship with members is generally strong, however, and those leading the club are keen to react respectfully to the views outlined at the EGM."

Following on podcast discussion of what GD wrote during the week

https://youtu.be/fiFeCJMT6fY?si=X7BSxw6w0OAadTCO

Interesting podcast.
We all know that the reason that the County Championship is so messy (everyone doesn't play everyone else; matches are pushed into the fringes of the summer) is that there are too many competitions and the competition that so many cricket lovers don't like (the one known by us Latin scholars as C) is untouchable so everything else has to fit around it.

Gerry X out of X for a perfect explanation for the state of the game!

LeicesterExile wrote:

Gerry X out of X for a perfect explanation for the state of the game!

Not sure if you're giving me 10 out of 10 or a kiss (hopefully the former!)

The Notts stuff is interesting. As well as the vote on reducing the county championship there were votes of no confidence in all of the member elected board members, none of which were carried (i.e. the board survived unscathed). I think it shows member's are very reluctant to get behind anything that seems confrontational. And as the Notts vote showed you can call an EGM and win on the resolution but that doesn't necessarily mean anything under the club rules. I'm still hoping to get our rules changed to give the member's a vote on fixture list matters. I have the necessary support of 250 members but if there's anybody else who would like to sign up, please message me, the more the merrier. I'm also planning to attend the Stuart Cain update which I think is on the Tuesday of the Essex game.

"Who do you think you are kidding Mr Moody if you think old Warwick's done?"

The ejits over the M5 are one of the county sets of bods in favour of reducing county cricket selling off New Road and taking all that dosh into the sunset of course

Disgraceful from the pears hierarchy

PCA letter to counties, and Worcestershires response

https://wccc.co.uk/news/worcestershire-shares-pca-letter-on-domestic-playing-programme/

They already have 3 days between CC games the truth twisting chunts

Selfishly the rotten Pears would quite like to finish bottom and still not be relegated

And they should get the extra fixture in August in any case - preferably a CC fixture but 50 overs will do for now. No actual need to trim the CC for that

Yours,
King of Spain

From what was said at the Derbyshire members' Forum yesterday, apparently the claim that 87% of players want to play less cricket needs to be 'revisited'.

Porky pies from the PCA?

Well the players have really worked hard over this week.!!! The more I read of players wanting to play less cricket the less interested I get in the game. I do believe the one day formats have made them lazy.
Bowlers only have to bowl 4 overs in a match and most times do not even have to bat. Batsmen are only out on the field for a few overs and when fielding it is no more than 20 overs or even 16-6 overs.

You do wonder what happened to their love of the game they must have had before turning professional.

I see the Club are advertising next year's membership by saying: "Prices are frozen, benefits are bigger, and you can be part of it. Be a Bear."
They don't mention that with the reduction in the number of Blast games and the possibility of reduced County Championship matches, there will be actually fewer days of watching the Bears.
If you went to buy a car and the salesman said "we don't know quite what next year's model will be like because the design boys are still working on it. It won't be quite as good as this year's but the price will be the same," you probably wouldn't buy.

In the USA Major League Baseball players play 162 games between April 1st and Sept 30th, including up to 4 games on successive days, with late night finishes and a long flight to the next city, often arriving c 3-4am and starting a game about 7pm the same day.

It makes the workload of cricketers seem very light indeed.

Even though there was no one-day cricket before 1963, the CC then along with other first-class games, could see you play 28 games a season of 3 days, that is 84 days of cricket potentially and if a player was in form or not, the team was picked to be the strongest possible. Bowlers regularly bowled 800-1000 overs a season and with poor transport and no motorways, it must have been a slog. Players today need to be reminded about this plus the very poor pay that most cricketers received and maybe all the talk about 'Burn Out' will be kept to private conversations and not for people like us who have to pay to watch fewer days cricket. Any player who complains and then plays in The Hundred should get a bloody good slap for being a clown and an idiot. I bet the Test players do not suffer when they look at their bank statement to see their fee for just one Hundred game. The overs in the CC have also been reduced since I started watching when it was 110 overs a day and lack of drinks breaks enabled them to get through this amount and moving around quickly between overs helped as well.

Highveld wrote:

In the USA Major League Baseball players play 162 games between April 1st and Sept 30th, including up to 4 games on successive days, with late night finishes and a long flight to the next city, often arriving c 3-4am and starting a game about 7pm the same day.

It makes the workload of cricketers seem very light indeed.

I remember being in St Louis for a week back in the '90's. Found I had a free evening and noticed the Cardinals were playing 4 or 5 evenings on the bounce. I then looked at their fixture list and couldn't believe how they play these series on successive nights. And because they do not have draws the games can go on past midnight!! Makes you wonder exactly what our cricketers are moaning about!

In most cases the players are at the stadium several hours before the game for fitness work, meetings and batting practise, so they are putting in a full days work.

Yeah we've discussed it on these boards a few times. I can't see how the baseballers have it easier but it isn't quite the same, the games are around the same length as a T20, albeit with the potential to longer, though players can and do get subbed out of games a lot while a pitcher will only realistically start one game in five, they're properly rotated. You do also get slightly low key games where a glut of scoring happens early and means both teams throw in the towel, go through the motions, mass substituions and basically move onto the next game with plenty of the game in progress yet to be played.

Cricketers do need to take heed of this when they say they play too much, but I wouldn't want cricket to morph into something like baseball, it's a worse reality I think.