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[MD2812]

There shouldn't be fashionable counties. There should just be the best 12 players picked for they squad from whoever they play for.


Having said that, does anyone think the way cricket works. With you generally playing for your county all your career, actually work for a good international side?
Granted there are exceptions to this rule, but there is no where near the transfers an such that go on in football.

I think cricket should be more close to football. The top division has the best sides.w oh have the best players. That way. The best players are playing against the best players every week, week on week out. Through in a few high quality internationals. And the level of the top division improves.

Then when I player is picked for international cricket, the gap shouldn't be so huge, that they have a better chance of settling in.

Granted this would make a huge divide between divisions. But surely that's worth the cost to have a better international set up?


IMO opinion no 2nd div player should be considered for England, and if a 2nddeivision player believes he's Good enough. He needs to get in a div 1 side and prove it.
Not moan he's being looked over,m

Does this not Stagnate the league though?

Also means that a relegated team would struggle to get back up.

I was of the thought that the 2 league set up was simply so that each team could get an away and home fixture against each team?

[keysersolze]

England do the usual and look for South African talent and ignore young rising British talent!!!!!

[ProCricketer1982]

There shouldn't be fashionable counties. There should just be the best 12 players picked for they squad from whoever they play for.


Having said that, does anyone think the way cricket works. With you generally playing for your county all your career, actually work for a good international side?
Granted there are exceptions to this rule, but there is no where near the transfers an such that go on in football.

I think cricket should be more close to football. The top division has the best sides.w oh have the best players. That way. The best players are playing against the best players every week, week on week out. Through in a few high quality internationals. And the level of the top division improves.

Then when I player is picked for international cricket, the gap shouldn't be so huge, that they have a better chance of settling in.

Granted this would make a huge divide between divisions. But surely that's worth the cost to have a better international set up?


IMO opinion no 2nd div player should be considered for England, and if a 2nddeivision player believes he's Good enough. He needs to get in a div 1 side and prove it.
Not moan he's being looked over,m

More like football Noooooo!!! It's getting to much like football anyway! IMO what a bad idea. Just my opinion though mate

[joeljonno]

IMO opinion no 2nd div player should be considered for England, and if a 2nddeivision player believes he's Good enough. He needs to get in a div 1 side and prove it.
Not moan he's being looked over,m

Interesting concept.  Wouldn't work.

For example, I am playing for England during the summer and for Yorkshire in the county circuit.  I play every T20, ODI and test match and average 100 with the bat and 20 with the ball. Constantly taking 8 wickets plus per game.

Yorkshire, due to the fact that I and several others players play for England, are relegated.

Does that mean I have to negotiate to leave Yorkshire and sign on with another county before the winter tour starts?

[ProCricketer1982]

Interesting concept.  Wouldn't work.

For example, I am playing for England during the summer and for Yorkshire in the county circuit.  I play every T20, ODI and test match and average 100 with the bat and 20 with the ball. Constantly taking 8 wickets plus per game.

Yorkshire, due to the fact that I and several others players play for England, are relegated.

Does that mean I have to negotiate to leave Yorkshire and sign on with another county before the winter tour starts?

Which would push teams towards overseas players, colpaks etc. what incentive would counties have to produce home grown talent??

[ProCricketer1982]

There shouldn't be fashionable counties. There should just be the best 12 players picked for they squad from whoever they play for.


Having said that, does anyone think the way cricket works. With you generally playing for your county all your career, actually work for a good international side?
Granted there are exceptions to this rule, but there is no where near the transfers an such that go on in football.

I think cricket should be more close to football. The top division has the best sides.w oh have the best players. That way. The best players are playing against the best players every week, week on week out. Through in a few high quality internationals. And the level of the top division improves.

Then when I player is picked for international cricket, the gap shouldn't be so huge, that they have a better chance of settling in.

Granted this would make a huge divide between divisions. But surely that's worth the cost to have a better international set up?


IMO opinion no 2nd div player should be considered for England, and if a 2nddeivision player believes he's Good enough. He needs to get in a div 1 side and prove it.
Not moan he's being looked over,m

Plus the games 'best league in the world' has t exactly helped England/Scotland Wales produce better national sides!! Just more foreign imports and over payed prima donnas

[Sam]

ECB won't do that thought as it will kill all ticket sales for division 2 clubs. I'd personally also stop buying membership if all talent was moved to division 1  .

[Alvaro]

I think that there is an argument that because of the reduction in quality overseas and Kolpak players there has actually been a detrimental effect on homegrown talent.

First, they don't have to fight past a gnarly old b*stard to win their place
Second, the clubs get money for fielding them whether they've got a snowball's chance of actually playing for England
Third, all the blokes in the other teams are exactly the same so the standard is pap, said homegrown 'talent' learn nothing about cricket from older players who've been there and done that.
Fourth, maybe we need Kolpak groundsmen too, so that the pitches move away from being torpid puddings on which kids like Sibley score 3 day double hundreds when the ball neither bounces higher than his ankles nor moves off the straight.

[smilley792]

Interesting concept.  Wouldn't work.

For example, I am playing for England during the summer and for Yorkshire in the county circuit.  I play every T20, ODI and test match and average 100 with the bat and 20 with the ball. Constantly taking 8 wickets plus per game.

Yorkshire, due to the fact that I and several others players play for England, are relegated.

Does that mean I have to negotiate to leave Yorkshire and sign on with another county before the winter tour starts?

Once your picked for England and on a central contract, your not really classed as playing for that county anymore. How many games did root and bairstow play for Yorkshire last year? Very few,
So if Yorkshire do get relegated. Your not really being picked from a div 2 side. As your already playing for England.

If you get drop by England, and lose your cental contract, you should use your epicly great skills at county level(avg 100, and 8 wickets a game) to single handily get Yorkshire back into div 1. Will only take a year,
But then if you really are that good, you wouldn't lose your central contract in the first place. Would you? So that's mute.





Whatever the solution, and mine was just an idea. County players that are on the verge of England, need to be playing high quality cricket week in week out, so the step up isn't such a gulf that it is at moment.
Currently not many seem to manage the step, as they are playing below there level most weeks and get used to that level. Then bam, you get your chance and Johnston/steyn/ajmal make you look like a lemon, and yours took playing county cricket for rest of your life. When you could have been good enough.

[smilley792]

ECB won't do that thought as it will kill all ticket sales for division 2 clubs. I'd personally also stop buying membership if all talent was moved to division 1  .

I went to a division 1 game last year and was less than 50 of us in the crowd. Very Dissapointed.

[Sam]

I went to a division 1 game last year and was less than 50 of us in the crowd. Very Dissapointed.

Wow mate, which county was it? Every division 2 game I went to last season had a minimum of 3x that many people. Would also affect the T20 and OD teams though.

[Manormanic]

WHilst I would hate to see England adopt a division one only policy, there is  massive gap between the two divisions and I struggle to see how someone who has only got experience of and form in the lower one can relaly be expected to make the step up to Test level.  It isn;t that there are no good sides in the Second division - last season you had Lancashire, Hampshire and Northants for example - but that you have so many really poor ones; a batsman last year for Lancashire might have hoped to play more than half of his cricket against Gloucestershire, Leicestershire, Glamorgan, Worcestershire and Kent, all of whom fielded a rag tag gaggle of kids, has beens and never weres.  Even if that player struggled against some of the better teams, they had ten knocks to flesh out their stats against the rest.

To highlight the gap that seems to exist between the divisions, I tried to put together a "Best XI" from the Second Division last season, obeying the rule that I would only have a single overseas player and would not select Kolpak players (if I had, SImon KAtich would have come in for Liam Dawson), and would try to maximise ECB age related pay outs (on this note, Kyle Hogg was unlucky to be left out for Matt Coles) .  I have taken averages/performances into account but have used them to inform my choice rather than allowing them to be the defining factor.  The results are quite startling...

1. Liam Dawson (Hampshire)
2. Michael Carberry (Hampshire)
3. Ravi Bopara (Essex)
4. James Vince (Hampshire)
5. Moeen Ali (Worcestershire)
6. James Foster (Essex, capt)
7. Matt Coles (Kent/Hampshire) or Luis Reece (Lancashire) depending on balance of side
8. David Willey (Northants)
9. Trent Copeland (Northants)
10. Rees Topley (Essex)
11. Simon Kerrigan (Lancs)
 

[Manormanic]

I went to a division 1 game last year and was less than 50 of us in the crowd. Very Dissapointed.

to be fair, it was raining heavily all day, right? 

[ProCricketer1982]

WHilst I would hate to see England adopt a division one only policy, there is  massive gap between the two divisions and I struggle to see how someone who has only got experience of and form in the lower one can relaly be expected to make the step up to Test level.  It isn;t that there are no good sides in the Second division - last season you had Lancashire, Hampshire and Northants for example - but that you have so many really poor ones; a batsman last year for Lancashire might have hoped to play more than half of his cricket against Gloucestershire, Leicestershire, Glamorgan, Worcestershire and Kent, all of whom fielded a rag tag gaggle of kids, has beens and never weres.  Even if that player struggled against some of the better teams, they had ten knocks to flesh out their stats against the rest.

To highlight the gap that seems to exist between the divisions, I tried to put together a "Best XI" from the Second Division last season, obeying the rule that I would only have a single overseas player and would not select Kolpak players (if I had, SImon KAtich would have come in for Liam Dawson), and would try to maximise ECB age related pay outs (on this note, Kyle Hogg was unlucky to be left out for Matt Coles) .  I have taken averages/performances into account but have used them to inform my choice rather than allowing them to be the defining factor.  The results are quite startling...

1. Liam Dawson (Hampshire)
2. Michael Carberry (Hampshire)
3. Ravi Bopara (Essex)
4. James Vince (Hampshire)
5. Moeen Ali (Worcestershire)
6. James Foster (Essex, capt)
7. Matt Coles (Kent/Hampshire) or Luis Reece (Lancashire) depending on balance of side
8. David Willey (Northants)
9. Trent Copeland (Northants)
10. Rees Topley (Essex)
11. Simon Kerrigan (Lancs)

Sounds like we need to sack off a few county teams full stop!  Complete waste of money paying kids, has been sand never will he's if they aren't doing much other than sucking money out the game!

Don't get me wrong, these guys are light years ahead of me but there is some utter trash on the pro circuit that really shouldn't be here.. The goose is a bit fat currently within county cricket... Lots of hangers on it seems

[Manormanic]

Sounds like we need to sack off a few county teams full stop!  Complete waste of money paying kids, has been sand never will he's if they aren't doing much other than sucking money out the game!

I'm not going to say we should or shouldn't do this because it is a very emotive issue.  What I will say is that there were five counties last season - Gloucestershire, Glamorgan, Leicestershire, Kent and Worcestershire who survived purely on ECB handouts, and whose sides had no one with the remotest chance of playing Test cricket for England who could not have gone elsewhere (the only two I can immediately think of are Moeen Ali, which is at best 50/50 and Shiv Thakore, who will be at Notts by then in any event).  I'm not saying that the grounds should be incinerated, but I wonder whether a 13 or 14 team first class structure with the remaining sides joining the Minor Counties wouldn't work.  Pie in the sky thinking - if the Minors were given a bit more prominence, they could act as the flagship of the recreational game that would pull together the issues we talked of earlier.