westoelad wrote:Yes,ignoring the fact that England test team have been competitive over a period of 150 years with a County Championship of between 16-18 clubs.
sussexpob wrote:And ignoring the fact that the team that beat us, when things were also looking dour, also talked about limited player pools and having to expand their own game.
If I'd had more time this morning I'd have made those very points myself
In addition, in the period before the 2015 world cup shambles that lead the ECB to prioritise white ball cricket at any cost, England were the number one test team in the world
It's been blindingly obvious to even casual observers like me that demoting the county championship to the extreme margins of the season in pursuit of a 'profitable' summer would inevitably and inexorably lead to the demise of the England test team. How a self professed 'expert' like Agnew couldn't see that is quite frankly staggering.
I find it enormously telling that, given that his masters at the ECB have thrown everything they had (including all reason) into yet another, and even more spurious, but potentially lucrative white ball competition, his answer to all this is for the county championship to follow a 4 day Hundred model