It’s quite usual for there to be a root-and-branch overhaul within a sport when it hits rock bottom.
Sometimes the changes are predictable – a football manager who fails to take England to the World Cup, for example, is unlikely to remain in the post for very long.
The authorities in other sports can have a little more patience. Cricket, for instance, doesn’t always have a complete gutting of the set-up every time things go awry.
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England’s tour Down Under, however, was such an unmitigated disaster that change was expected. It has come quickly, too, with the resignation of coach Andy Flower and the axing of Kevin Pietersen.
These changes are not knee-jerk, either – England’s form has been on a steady decline for some time. The performances against New Zealand were an ominous sign of what was to come; and even though the Ashes were won in England last summer, most objective observers would admit that the 3-0 series victory was a margin that flattered the hosts.
But while a change of personnel at the top was possibly expected, one of the more unusual suggestions has been a call by a former senior administrator within the sport for some of the English counties to merge.
This didn’t hit the headlines in the same way that a suggestion of a tie-up between, say, Aston Villa and Birmingham City would have done, mainly because county-cricket fans are a more benign bunch.
But you can bet that members up and down the country were quietly spitting out their G&Ts in disgust when they heard the comments of Lord MacLaurin, a former ECB chairman.
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“I think 12 counties would be a far better producer of Test cricketers than 18 first-class counties, and some of the counties are playing pretty average cricket,” MacLaurin told the BBC.
MacLaurin said he wanted to see mergers rather than abolitions, and he went on to give some examples of the counties he thought could be amalgamated.
“You could put Sussex and Kent together for one, because they are near, and maybe in the south-east of England you’ll get some very good players coming through in a bigger county,” he said. “You could go Warwickshire and Northants, you could go Gloucestershire and Glamorgan or Gloucestershire and Somerset. You could do it easily.”
Unsurprisingly, the idea was swiftly rejected by the counties.
“Every time England do well, the ECB pat themselves on the back, the game says ‘Well done’ and we are all very proud about it,” said Kent chairman Jamie Clifford. “As soon as England go through a sticky patch, county cricket is often pointed out as being the cause or to blame for that. It is no surprise it has taken a matter of weeks to look at the county game.
“We got to number one in the world and we had three consecutive Ashes series wins. We did that with 18 counties. I am not sure there is a link between the number of counties and the success or failure at Test level. If anything, I would argue the more counties there are, the more coverage we have in terms of identifying potential Test cricketers and developing them ready for that next level.”
Sussex, another county with a non-Test match ground, have won the county championship only three times in their 175-year history – but all three titles have come this century. No surprise, then, that chief executive Zac Toumazi was another to kick back against MacLaurin’s suggestion.
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“I know (MacLaurin) very well but I didn’t hear him saying we needed to reduce the number of first-class counties when England retained the Ashes in the summer,” Toumazi said. “It is only now after we have been beaten that the performance of the England team is the fault of the counties, so I find it hard to accept.”
Aside from England’s prospects, there are some very real financial issues with some of the 18 counties, and the likes of Hampshire and Glamorgan – which have invested heavily in smart new grounds – have struggled to balance the books.
Yet while the “smaller” counties have just been getting on with things and, generally speaking, are keeping their heads above water, it seems to be those counties that MacLaurin has his eyes on. None of his suggested partnerships involved two counties with Test match grounds.
English cricket has been tinkering with its structure for years. The introduction of two divisions in the four-day game, central contracts for international players, the endless messing around with the various one-day formats – all of these changes give an impression of a sport that has yet to find the right formula.
But change for change’s sake can often make things worse. It’s clear that something is wrong with the England team at the moment but rip ping up an established county structure is unlikely to be the answer.
That there are financial problems at county level is certainly true, and if a club were to go to the wall then a tie-up with a neighbouring county might be one possible solution.
But things are not all bad with the finances.
Twenty20, for example, goes from strength to strength, and last summer saw a large increase in revenue from that competition. The rebranded Natwest T20 Blast is expected to continue to draw in crowds for the counties, including for current champions Northamptonshire – one of the teams MacLaurin suggests might be ripe for a merger.
David Smith, the chief executive at Northants (and a former Warwickshire batsman), said it was unfair to blame the domestic game for England’s problems.
“Don’t forget that this is the county that produced Graeme Swann and Monty Panesar, we have David Willey in the England Performance Programme and Ben Duckett and Ollie Stone in the England Under-19 system,” Smith said.
“So we are producing good players. Our number one agenda is for Northamptonshire to be competitive and to play good cricket. If we do that, good players will come through. For me, county cricket is doing its job in producing good young players.
“To blame county cricket because we have had a poor Ashes series is unfair.
“County cricket seems to be an easy target every time we do badly at international level and yet no one pats us on the back when England do well in an Ashes series. To suggest a reduction in the number of counties misses the point.”
County cricket might not be the fearsome giant that the football Premier League is, and its administrators might not have the same financial clout that other bodies have, but it seems that Lord MacLaurin’s suggestion is a step too far for them.
Financial pressures might yet force some kind of change to the domestic set-up in the future, but linking the county structure to England’s woes looks to be a non-starter for now.