Interesting from this telegraph article that many counties want the blast to be a mainly Friday night event - this compromise might not suit every fan but could help secure a sensible and familiar schedule for the season instead of the complete dogs dinner we ended up with this year;

Counties are pushing for more Twenty20 Blast matches to be played on Friday nights to better promote the competition as part of changes to the domestic schedule from 2024.

Matches on Friday nights are generally the best supported. This season, the need to finish the group stages of the competition as early as July 3 meant that counties played fewer games on Friday than many would like. Some counties played as few as four T20 Blast matches on Friday nights, and only two at home.

But there is a strong desire among many counties to schedule more T20 Blast matches on Fridays. It is also thought that more regularity in the schedule would make it easier for fans to know when matches are being played and make it easier for them to be able to afford to attend multiple matches over the season – especially significant given the current cost-of-living crisis.

Many counties believe that the congested scheduling of T20 Blast matches undermines support for the competition. This year, for instance, Yorkshire played six home Blast matches in the space of 15 days at the start of the tournament.

The T20 Blast is the most lucrative county competition for the 18 first-class counties, with its commercial significance particularly great among the 10 sides who do not host a team run the Hundred. But there is a strong belief among many counties that the schedule this season did not maximise interest and that greater emphasis should be placed on the ‘Friday Night Blast’ concept.

While other short-format competitions are played in small windows, with matches on every day of the week, many county chiefs would like the Friday night element of the T20 Blast to be at the core of the tournament’s identity.

With the Hundred due to begin at the start of August each year, a number of county chiefs support the T20 Blast running from the middle of May until the end of July, allowing each county to play around eight group games on Friday nights, with four at home.

There is significant support T20 Blast matches being played alongside the County Championship, with Blast matches generally on Fridays and Championship matches running from Sunday to Wednesday. This is viewed as a way of pleasing both members who prefer first-class cricket and fans of the T20 game.

But there remain significant disagreements between counties among many aspects of the domestic schedule, which are being discussed ahead of the county chairs voting on the domestic schedule September 20. A two-thirds majority of the 18 chairs is needed to vote through any changes.

A number of counties – principally the ones that host Hundred venues – favour reducing the group stages of the T20 Blast from its current 14 games to 10, which would mean a reduction from seven to five home games each. But some counties are opposed to any such a cut. There is even some support for increasing the size of the group stages to 16 games, meaning eight home games per side.

My worry is of course all the disagreement between counties will lead to the ECB getting its way with drastic cuts to proper cricket

Friday nights work. Three week windows like in the early days of T20 works. Hybrids don't tend. to. Hundred has the window so Blast should get Friday nights so it stands out has its own identity

Then county championship can have a set Sunday start 14 or perhaps 16 games a season

Spreading the Blast over a longer time makes it less likely that counties will be able to sign overseas stars but I agree that a regular slot has an appeal, as does supporters not having to cram in and pay for too many games in a short time.
For me, everything comes back to the fact that we are all tiptoeing round the giant elephant in the room known as The Hundred, which is supposedly untouchable.

There should definitely be more Blaat games on Friday nights.

Agree they can't all be Fridays but this year we only had 2 home Blast games on Friday nights.

Thursday is a decent one, likewise Sunday. Chuck a Saturday evening game in there too like we did in 2017.

Some overseas 'stars' would still play in it. Main thing is to make a schedule that is sensible benefitting spectators. Like the old Sunday League which worked because every fortnight on a Sunday there was a home game to go to. Plenty of overseas pros would still come. Perhaps they'd play a bit of club cricket at the weekend and help out with the coaching/community work during the week. There'd also be a week or two where there'd be no championship game on so extra Blast games could be slotted in

8 weeks of Fridays 4 home 4 away plus some weeks with extra games on assorted days while the championship takes a breather I think'd be a good compromise avoiding the need to shove championship cricket entirely into April May and September

There was a draft schedule floating around (I get too much stuff of Twitter which I then end up losing so don't have source) which had a blast game a week over several months still with finals day before August. Then three rounds of CC in August overlapping The 100. August CC would be inherently development rounds. Pros and cons, but it's likely anything more revolutionary isn't going to get done maybe before 2024.

Yes I did see that it was a very good effort it plotted for 2023 or 2024 space for 16 rounds of CC in addition to 3 rounds of whatever red ball cricket they deem worthy not play in August with Blast games on the Fridays from May right through to the start of the hundred. Plenty of scope within that for rest weeks.

I've just read - if you think our fixtures are bad with this enormous gap wait till you hear this - Worcestershire are away this week and next week which means that over a span of 53 days during late July, August and early September their members will have been able to see just 4 measly days of white ball RLODC cricket

It's just shit that is. About time county chiefs got shit like that sorted. Should be Warwick at home one week Worcester at home the following week

The draft schedule you saw is far superior to what's been reported by the telegraph regards Strauss proposals

Couldn't believe the reference I saw to what games they might consider putting on in August.

A review designed to improve the national side is now committed to helping Zimbabwe, Afghanistan & Scotland too...

🤣🤣🤣

This is Zimbabwe who've more or less given up on first class cricket already and like Ireland/Netherlands are intent to focus on 50 and T20

Back of a fag packet springs to mind. Strauss and his team of accountants have had, what, 6 months to come up with drivel like this????!!!!?

I’m getting puzzled by this: not the proposals but the process. When I was involved in consulting, I was told that the client usually knew what conclusion he wanted so your first job was to write the final report. In the second phase, you gathered evidence to support the conclusion and in the final phase you “sold” the ideas to those people who were going to be affected.

So far, so ECB. The conclusion was always going to be that there should be less red ball cricket in order to make room for more hit-and-giggle. The “evidence” is transparently rigged to support that. (The suggestion that The Hundred is “best v best” is up there with “there were no parties in Downing Street” when it comes to non-credible assertions.) But then the final phase, where Andrew Strauss is being dispatched to indoctrinate the troops, is being horribly botched. It’s difficult to see how the ECB could just blunder on with what they’ve got given what appears to be unanimity amongst press and supporters that it isn’t a workable solution. So what are they going to do? Throw another bone to the Counties in the hope that the turkeys will vote for Christmas again as they did with The Hundred? Tear the report up and start again? Come clean that they find first class cricket an annoyance that gets in the way of making money?

I was going to ask for answers on a postcard but, actually, the back of an envelope would probably do better than the ECB can manage.

I worry its expectation management.

Float out extreme bad ideas and then anything will look a more reasonable compromise.

"Highlights" of the interview with the new ECB Chairman in the Telegraph, with my thoughts in brackets:
He voted against The Hundred but he is now backing it, arguing that he was simply representing his members’ interests in his former role. [Not good news!]
He will conduct an immediate cost review of the ECB – “the question is, can the ECB afford to be a big organisation,” he said – and wants to bring more cricket knowledge to the board, with two first-class chairs shortly to join as observers. [Good - but why only as observers?]
"Careers are defined by what they do with a red ball but I think the issue of how many matches has to be debated as part of the whole schedule." {coded way of saying fewer matches?]
“Accommodating four competitions is very hard, but we have to work hard to make sure all four can flourish, not with one at the expense of the other.” [You can't get a pint into a quart pot but he's a miracle worker, so no problem!]
Overall, he feels the board needs to communicate better.[No sh**, ,Sherlock!]
"You have to take the members with you.” [Ay, there's the rub, as Warwickshire's oldest member once said]

It looks like the decisions are being delayed so that next year's schedule will be the same as this year, with any changes coming in later:
https://www.thecricketer.com/Topics/countycricket/vote_domestic_schedule_delayed_current_structure_2023_season.html

I still cannot fathom why a proud county cricket club like Warwickshire - who have done so much over the years to advance the county game including that big loan to help Essex build their ground at Chelmsford and loans to help keep Surrey afloat when their ground was all ramshackled - would countenance a massive downgrade of the championship.

Last year people commented that the championship format was a bit silly but at least Warwickshire were worthy champions as they'd been forced to perform well in 8 of their 14 matches - wins v Notts twice, Essex, Derbyshire, Yorkshire and Somerset alongside very noteworthy draws away to last years favourites Essex and this years pre-season favourites Lancashire. In 6 other games Warwickshire underperformed quite a bit including the defeats to Durham and that crazy penultimate game v Hampshire.

If as rumours suggest the championship is downgraded to just 10 games it would only take a fortnight's worth of inclement weather to reduce this allocation to 8 and then you'd have a situation where a team could win the title by only really showing up for 3 or 4 games and drawing a couple of others - especially if the new rudimentary points system is introduced.

Warwickshire need to demonstrate solidarity with the county game, the hundred's of potential future county cricketers out there (just look at the success of the SACA initiative, which on a shoestring budget of £50,000 now has sufficient players to field 2-3 sides - players all chomping at the bit to get a county contract - and those are just the more senior guys), the county members and county cricket supporters more widely.

Do we know if enough letters were sent to force an SGM?

Don't think we're far off now

People will be collecting signatures at the Somerset game so should far exceed the number required especially on Tuesday which is the day of the forum and forecast is very decent

As an aside did anyone listen to former Surrey player Mark Ramprakash yesterday who said on TMS that 10 FC games are simply not enough to produce English Test Match players.

https://www.thecricketer.com/Topics/countycricket/fin_bean_belongs_first_class_game_hard_graft_starts.html

Another retort to the idea of chopping the CC up.

Well, there are only three matches left in Yorkshire’s season, but the coaches and Bean’s team-mates will know more about their new colleague after the home game against Essex and the visit to Surrey.

At the same time, even if Bean does well, Gibson will be careful not to praise him too much too soon. It is the trickiest of judgements. Even players who have a good first season can have their games dissected six months later and their careers destroyed. And folk wonder why I become impatient with people who tell me that county cricket is soft. Overseas players, even those with burgeoning Test careers don't seem to think so.

But let's have a last look at Fin Bean's record.

The indispensable Cricket Archive first records him playing for Yorkshire Under-14s against Derbyshire Under 14s at New Rover Cricket Club, Richmond Oval, in Leeds on June 5, 2016. Sadly, though, it won’t tell you much else because these things are dependent on the information fed into them and although Yorkshire won that match by eight wickets and Bean was not out, we have no information as to how many runs he scored.

Delve deeper and you will find hundreds of matches, many of them for Yorkshire's age-group sides, a few for England Under-19s and 76 games for York in the Northern Premier League – but then they say club cricket is soft, too.

Most spectacularly of all, you will find the match played at the Nottinghamshire Sports Ground this June in which Bean made 441, the highest individual score ever recorded in the Second XI Championship, for Yorkshire against Nottinghamshire.

By the time he was bowled by Calvin Harrison, he had batted 712 minutes, faced 518 balls and hit 52 fours plus three sixes. It is the sort of achievement that will get into next year’s Wisden but it does not mean that Bean will make it as a professional.

A lot of guff is talked about at the end of the cricket season. Yes, there is a certain sadness about the game in England ending for six months – already I'm wondering where I'll be in the last week of September – but I'm also looking forward to reading and thinking about other things, in addition to my winter writing schedule.

Somehow, my summers on the circuit have always been enriched by my life away from the game. And how many of you would like to spend an entire year watching four-day cricket or anything else come to that?

Yet one of the sweetest things about the final few games of the season is seeing a young player make a good debut and wondering where his cricket will have taken him by the time the leaves on the trees are green once more. The sight of such cricketers in early autumn should seem ironic but instead, it is fitting. It serves as a reassurance that there will be another season – when other young Yorkshire cricketers will be challenging for places in the team.

And once again, without really intending to do so or even mentioning his name until now, I find that I have written a response to much that Andrew Strauss has been proposing over the past few weeks.

If the number of first-class games is reduced and if county cricket becomes nothing more than a laboratory in which England players can be tested, the number of contracts available for players like Bean will be more limited. No doubt I'll return to this theme over the next month, so for the moment all I'd like to do is wish Fin Bean the very best as he tries to cut it in professional cricket. I hope even Lancastrians would join me in that.

I heard Strauss yesterday in the Sky TV Box doing a bit of comms.

Do we know, have the other high profile 'pundits' Atherton, Hussain or Jonathan Agnew etc. made any public comment on the balmy proposals??

We're gonna be fed a lot of guff about player welfare at this forum

Warwickshire played 1 CC game in April then had a week off. Jumping forward they played just 8 days cricket in the whole of August which equates to another 2 weeks not having to play matches. Then there was last week when they had another week off.

If they lose 4 CC rounds that'll be another 4 weeks players resting.

The season used to only last 5 months - now it's been stretched out more so it lasts 6 months

The idea players suddenly need 2 months rest in the middle of an already short cricket season is preposterous.

How about they bank this additional 4 weeks rest in November and December. Bowlers in particular should have their feet up until the new year not be running about the gym fully 5 month's before cricket season

Totally agree. When I look at the fixture list and the reduced number of CC games I am so glad I relinguished my membership a few years ago. Sadly there is nothing to entice me back. Having virtually no cricket to watch in the whole of August is a disgrace.
Can you imagine the EPL deciding the number of fixtures will be reduced to 32 but still have 20 teams. Then in the middle of the season close down while a handful of franchised teams are fowmed to play game of 31 minutes each way without goalkeepers for there are loads of goals (like loads of 6's in the 16.4)

The point of these changes baffles me too. Since 2004 England's test team have regularly been in the top three in the world rankings and very rarely (just for a few months here and there) fallen outside of it

County chairs must be very wary of ‘reviews’ after away Ashes thrashings which basically are a Trojan horse for drastic domestic change.

2021 was annus horibilis covid bubbles and a shambles of a preparation for the winter Ashes
England have no divine right to be world no 1
All sorts of socio-economic and environmental reasons why other test sides can produce world class players that overwhelm opponents in unforgiving conditions like in Australia or India. Mitchell Johnson and Pat Cummins. Reducing the CC to ten games isn't going to magic England up bowlers of that calibre.

A Nathan Lyon we should be able to conjour up however. Would certainly help if we played more cricket (NOT LESS) especially in summer months to try and unearth another couple of Graham Swann's mind but also keep some games in April/May/September to mould the next Jimmy and Woakesy