The long-awaited restructure of the County Championship could be delayed by another 12 months after a crucial meeting of club chairs broke up on Wednesday without resolution.
With no consensus emerging following the summit at Lord’s, a planned vote on a proposal to cut the Championship to 13 matches next season has been put on hold, leaving the entire restructure in doubt.
The counties agreed to cut the Twenty20 Blast from 14 matches to 12 earlier this season following recommendations of the players union, the Professional Cricketers’ Association, but their call to trim the Championship has proved more difficult to execute.
Four proposed new structures from the current 10/8 divisional split had already been rejected before the meeting, when a convoluted compromise that would involve most counties playing 13 Championship games from next season also failed to win sufficient support. In the model discussed on Wednesday, a 12-team County Championship Division One would be split into two pools of six, with the remaining six clubs in Division Two.
At least 12 out of 18 counties must vote in favour to alter the structure of the Championship, which has led to a standoff. Surrey, Yorkshire, Middlesex, Essex and Somerset have publicly stated they will oppose any reduction to the 14-game season, while Derbyshire, Sussex and Kent are also yet to be convinced by the various alternatives offered to the status quo.
The 10-strong advocates of a restructure are equally reluctant to back down, however, which led to more informal discussions between the counties on Wednesday over whether any of the previously rejected models can be revived. Those include three conferences of six, a single 18-team league with a Champions League-style Swiss-model fixture list, a midseason split similar to that of the Scottish Premier League, as well as several different variants of the current 10/8 divisional makeup.
With 83% of players in a survey last year expressing concern over their physical wellbeing because of the volume of domestic cricket played, the PCA will continue to lobby hard for a cut. The possibility of a players’ strike has been mooted by some of the unhappy county executives, although that dramatic course of action has yet to be discussed in any detail.
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With just three rounds of the County Championship this season remaining, beginning next week, the most likely outcome is a further delay with the vote taking place during the winter if an agreement cannot be reached before then. The PCA has not given up of persuading enough counties to change their position in time to for a positive vote this month, however.
