Jon Lewis: ECB come up with a winning formula
ECB officials met with the county chairmen and chief executives at Lord's to thrash out a new structure for next season and, as far as myself and my colleagues at Gloucestershire are concerned, the outcome was just about as satisfactory as we could have expected.
In my opinion, it was always asking a lot to expect the 18 first class counties to rip up their schedule and rearrange their season in order to accommodate the ill-fated P20 and the BCCI-run Champions League.
Once it became clear the top Indian players were not going to be available and the TV revenues would not be quite as lucrative as first predicted, the P20 was in trouble.
Now I'm enough of a realist to know that Twenty20 is essential to guarantee the future financial wellbeing of cricket in these difficult times. But we have to be careful we don't force it down people's throats by having too much of it in the schedule.
Whatever the real reason behind the ECB's decision to drop the P20, going with one short format tournament spread over a longer period of time seems right to me.
I trust the planners will seek to retain as many local derbies as possible while scheduling games when people are most easily able to attend. Just as football fans have become accustomed to watching games on Saturday afternoons, so supporters of cricket can get into the habit of watching their favourite teams play Twenty20 on a weekly basis on Friday evenings.
Dropping the P20 means the two-divisional County Championship will remain unchanged, with teams playing each other twice on a home and away basis over 16 matches. And we get to keep the popular 50-over tournament, which will again be scheduled during the first part of the season.
I have always maintained that four competitions was too much and the decision to axe the Pro-40 League from the domestic calendar makes good sense. That will save us eight days next season.
Of course, four of those days will be taken up by an extended Twenty20 tournament if, as expected, the authorities opt for a two-divisional structure with teams playing one another both home and away.
Given that the winners of the domestic Twenty20 will feature in the Champions League in September, there is a massive financial incentive to do well in this newest form of the game.
If they abandon the current regional structure in favour of two divisions, it will undoubtedly add to our travelling. But I'm sure players are willing to commit to that given the money at stake for those who reach the Champions League.
In order to allow English counties to take part in the Champions League in September, we are having to move the start of the season forward from April 16 to about April 7.
Personally, I don't buy into the argument that this will lead to more matches being lost to bad weather. As we have seen in recent seasons, it can rain at just about any time during the summer.
I know Gloucestershire's bowlers are relishing the prospect of playing on nice juicy wickets in April!
By changing our season about, we are allowing the Indian authorities to dictate our schedule to a degree. But as they control the TV companies and have such influence within the International Cricket Council, that is something we are just going to have to live with if we want to cash in on the Champions League.
It seems inevitable that Twenty20 will eclipse the 50-over game sooner rather than later. The ICC are already talking about ditching the traditional one-day international format in favour of more Twenty20 and, if that happens, the ECB will almost certainly follow suit.
I will be sad to see our domestic 50-over tournament disappear from the programme, because it offers the prospect of showpiece Lord's final, something not currently available in Twenty20.
But that is possibly still some way off and, while they continue to play 50-over cricket at international level, we must mirror that at county level.
Like many other county players, I was relieved by the ECB's decision to leave the four-day Championship well alone. By keeping the two-division system with promotion and relegation and teams playing one another home and away, the competition has at least been permitted to retain its integrity.
Since the current structure came into being 10 years ago, it has definitely promoted greater competition and raised standards. In turn, that has benefited the England Test team.
Although the ECB have finally come up with the right decision, the way in which they have arrived at it has been nothing short of a shambles. It was ridiculous to even consider that two domestic Twenty20 tournaments would ever be feasible.
Unfortunately, the ECB agreed to it without first discovering whether or not it would work.
In the end, it was counties who realised it could not possibly work and who brought pressure to bear on the game's administrators.
With a little more joined up thinking, they could have sorted the structure and schedule for 2010 much earlier and saved us all a lot of hassle.
Interview: Andy Stockhausen
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