There is a story in the Yorkshire Post today (to which I followed a link, I don’t read it habitually) claiming that Yorkshire want a three division County Championship structure with fourteen games a season. (Presumably they think it will be easier to avoid relegation that way.) The proposal that their chairman will advocate at the ECB meeting on 12 January is one to have three divisions of eight teams with the addition of minor counties and university sides.
It’s a poor idea for a multitude of reasons. The original proposal in the Morgan review to reduce the number of Championship matches was met with widespread scepticism, both from fans and from those in the media, and this idea is actually worse. And like the Morgan review, this would not effectively ease fixture congestion, but simply make more of the congestion due to limited overs matches. Furthermore, increasing the number of sides playing in the Championship would spread the ECB’s money even tighter and it would decrease the amount of revenue sides can raise from matches. It is an absolutely terrible idea with no redeeming features that are readily apparent. That isn’t too surprising though; it’s from the same club who earlier advocated dropping two sides from the Championship. The irksome thing is that the ECB may well take the proposal seriously as they will the Morgan review.
Defensive Indifference 