An overwhelming majority of professional cricketers in England and Wales believe that Test cricket remains the pinnacle of the sport and that the LV= County Championship is still the most important of the three domestic competitions.
Those conclusions are among the findings of a survey of current contracted players conducted by the Professional Cricketers’ Association in recent weeks. Current players have responded to the survey which was designed principally to understand player views on the current domestic schedule, and also to see if views expressed in past surveys are changing.
The survey shows that as many as 98.3% of players remain of the view that Test cricket is the pinnacle of the sport, but, many acknowledge that things are changing. There is an acknowledgement that white ball cricket is growing in importance relative to Test cricket with 73.8% of the survey respondents stating that they strongly agree/agree that there is a need to address the balance of our domestic programme accordingly.
Views about the relative importance of the different formats of the game are consistent with previous studies with 85.2% of players ranking the LV= County Championship as highly important and 14.4% as important. The NatWest T20 Blast is ranked second (65.1% highly important, 33.2% as important) and the The Royal London One Day Cup third (14.4% highly important, 55.5% as important).
The survey also suggests that the current domestic playing schedule is not at all popular, with the two primary issues being the constant switching between red and white ball cricket, and workload (both playing and travelling), with 87.3% of players strongly agreeing/agreeing that a reduction in the volume of cricket would improve the quality of performances.
The survey concludes:
1. We must address the playing and travel challenges inherent in the current domestic schedule. A reduction in the volume of cricket is probably necessary to achieve this.
2. We must respect the County Championship as our premier domestic competition, and only change the format of the competition if the prize is a significantly better overall schedule.
3. Whilst recognising the commercial and scheduling challenges of doing so, from a cricketing perspective, the T20 competition should revert to being played in a block – and it will significantly improve the quality of the product if England and other international players feature more regularly than currently.
4. The 50 over competition is seen as less important and of lower quality than the other competitions, and the cricketing arguments for retaining the competition in its current form are correspondingly weak, although the Lord’s final remains a major attraction to players.
5. We must recognize that while a key goal of domestic cricket is to create cricketers of international standard, it must also be respected as having great value in its own right. Any changes we make must consider the long-term impacts on the health of our domestic game, and measures such as age-related performance-related fee payments, which have compromised the quality of the domestic product without yielding any of the promised benefits for the England team, should be withdrawn.
6. If a meaningful reduction in the volume of cricket is achieved for all of the desired reasons, ECB must ensure that measures are in place to prevent counties from creating new fixtures to replace any that are removed.
