ECB Management Board proposals

A series of Tweets from the usually reliable Lizzie Ammon today talking about the inevitability of the done deal and the effects on competition in Division Two.

Signing both Rabada and Latham is a real statement of intent by Kent.

With only one team going to be promoted is going to be quite a scrap at the top of division 2 this season.

Still to be rubber stamped but it's going to be two down one up to get 8 teams in div 1. Ten in div 2

And in reply to a question about sponsorship of the CC:

Specsavers (genuinely !)


Clearly there won't be room for any nonsense about umpiring calls in the Championship - or are Specsavers playing it for laughs?

We haven't seen the details of the new two div T20 Blast for 2017, which we are told is due to be rubber-stamped on March 7, other than that the premier division will consist of the eight quarter-finalists from this year plus the ninth best side.

But I have been thinking about what happens from 2017 , and the ramifications are such that every county this summer will have to make reaching the T20 quarter-finals their paramount aim.

Why? Well think about how it will work. Logic says that from 2017 there won't be any quarter-finals, because if you have them there is no point in two divisions with promotion and relegation. All but one of the clubs in Div One automatically make the q/fs? That makes no sense at all. Top four from each division? Basically what we have at present and negates the entire concept of reorganising the comp. into two meritocratic divisions.

Fortunately the loss of revenue by not having q/fs will be more than compensated by having every team playing 16 rather than 14 games at the divisional stage.

But what about finals day? Presumably it will still take place and logically it has to be between the top four sides in div one.

But think about what this means if Sussex's T20 campaign goes badly this season and the county finds itself in Div Two in 2017. No quarter-finals and ineligible to compete for a place on finals day, with the only prize on offer finishing in the top two to gain promotion in order to become eligible for finals day in 2018.

I'm a county championship kind of guy. Always have been and always will be. But on the basis of the above, I concede with some sadness that Sussex's number one task in 2016 is not the CC but securing a place in the T20 q/fs in order to make Div One of the revamped T20 competiton.

Kent have smartly realised this and it is why, after no overseas players at all last year, they have signed two for this year's T20. I'd say Sussex surely need to sign a second overseas player for this season's T20 group stage.

In a way I'm surprised the counties are reported to have agreed so readily to a plan that logically must mean that nine of them each season will be debarred from competing for finals day.

But it is going to make the Premier Division full of drama - which is what the ECB wants, of course. Four counties will go to finals day and two will be relegated, leaving only three who will have an 'undramatic' season. And if those three miss out on finals day by a single point or avoid relegation on run-rate or whatever, they, too, will be heavily involved in the drama.

Div Two, by contrast,  is going to be pretty undramatic with seven out of nine counties going nowhere. Can't see Sky scheduling many Div Two matches when Div One is going to offer not only better quality cricket but so much more competition, drama and excitement.

In effect, the plan will more or less give the ECB the IPL/Aussie Big Bash model they wanted, wirth the added drama of promotion and relegation. The only aspect it fails to deliver is a gaurantee that  the Prem Division will  automatically be based on the TMGs - although  the economics make it pretty certain that is how it will largely pan out, in the same way that Div One of the CC now contains eight TMGs with Somerset the only exception.

I thought Dobell had mercifully agreed to shut up with his wild flyers and guesswork journalism for a couple of months while he ghosts Trott's 'authobiography'!

Clearly there is no way that a city-based franchise is suddenly going to materialise betweeen now and meetings that will decide on Monday week.

But it also seems clear that some powerful voices will not let the idea die - and I'm glad about that. How times have changed, though, when the tomato-and-egg tie brigade is leading the revolutionairies...

I'd be pretty sure that the two division promotion and relegation model will go through and will operate for three seasons from 2017.Those advocating a more radical alternative are merely putting down a marker for the next change after 2019.

Once the two division scheme has bedded in and the lesser counties in Div Two realise that their gates are falling and they aren't being televised, we will then get a proper city franchise league from 2020, with the acceptance of the non TMGs bought by having their mouths stuffed with more money than they are making from staging Northants v Derbyshire or Sussex v Leicestershire in an almost irrelevant and totally ignored Div Two.

You can see why Glamorgan are arguing for a city franchise - it's probably the only way Cardiff will stage matches in the top flight. Warwicks have always wanted it, from Colin Povey's lead role in Project Victoria back in 2007/8 to renaming themselves the Birmigham Bears in readiness. But as for Bransgrove's Hampshire - a city-based franchise??? The Ageas Bowl is located in a tiny village. When we went there for the T20s finals one year and used the park-and-ride, even the bus driver got lost on the way to the ground and had to stop and ask for directions!!!

With this 2 divisions lark, what if Northants, Derbyshire, Worcestershire, etc. end up in Division 1 with the likes of Middlesex and Yorkshire in Division 2?

Unlikely? Not so much; look at the history of the competition so far. It is much easier for the smaller clubs to compete over 20/20 overs, for a multitude of reasons. You can't buy a winning team. Middlesex and Yorkshire have been among the constant also-rans - possibly partly because they knew that they could get in the crowds regardless. On the other hand, Leicestershire, Northants and most recently Worcestershire have made a big effort to be successful.

While it would be almost pure fantasy to think of Northants or Worcestershire challenging for the County Championship, they could readily win the t20 and could even prove a top side for several years in succession.

Sounds a little odd. Would the play off determine a relegation/promotion situation between the two teams?

What happens to the top 2 in Div 2? Do they get automatic promotion?

Do the 8th and 9th in Div 1 get relegated?