Here’s the report
BosworthBear wrote:
Here’s the report
I think the report as a whole is much more balanced than the quotes in The Guardian from one of its authors.
I quite liked this summary:
'Amid a global game increasingly centred around short-
form franchise cricket, and with an uncertain outlook for
the sport’s finances, questions have grown over whether
county cricket will remain relevant and can prove financially
sustainable.
Yet, compared to elsewhere in the world, in many ways
domestic cricket in England and Wales is admirably strong,
helping explain why – following investment from IPL team
owners, US tech billionaires and private equity firms into The
Hundred – a key question within the game is how the future
of the 18 first-class counties can be preserved, in the ECB’s
words, for “generations to come.” '
You say balanced my heart sank several times reading that propaganda puff piece
Somerset's Chair is outspoken and makes some interesting points:
“We don’t want less Blast matches ...we like the Blast and the players like the Blast.
If you take a home game away from us we not only lose substantial revenue, but also a key opportunity to inspire the south-west through cricket, so we are against reducing the number of Blast games, even if we turned out to be the only county who believe that.
Regarding the County Championship proposals we are also opposed to a reduction in the number of matches played. On this subject we have one or two supporters among the other counties.
A catalyst for change has been PCA player survey data indicating workload concerns. We are very sympathetic to this, particularly our players who play all formats but see this as a situation for the Club to manage in partnership with players and coaching and science and medicine staff – it is not the job of the fixtures.
There are also a number of players in our squad who would like more cricket rather than less."
Reasonable and fair rather than outspoken
Perhaps plenty of counties feel like Somerset's chair
I sure hope they do for all of our sakes. It should not be up to the eternal failure counties to dictate what the shape of county cricket should be like going forwards