CUT BACK ON FOUR-DAY CRICKET, PROBLEM SOLVED by Marcus Hook

Is it really over four months since those heady scenes at the Oval, following the championship victory over Derbyshire that sealed promotion? When Surrey clinched the title at the Oval in 1999 and 2002 we simply enjoyed a drink (or six!) and wended our way home with a spring in our step. So, for Chris Adams and the players to go out of their way and share their sense of euphoria with the members, by heading straight for the Long Room... well, anyone who was there that day will never forget Wednesday, 14th September 2011.

Driving home from Canterbury I couldn't possibly have imagined that Surrey would be taking on the likes of Lancashire, Nottinghamshire and Somerset this summer. Not since 2000 had we managed to put together a quartet of consecutive four-day victories. Our record at Chelmsford read one win from our previous 17 championship visits, plus we had to keep our fingers crossed with the weather.

I generally get to the ground about an hour before the start. If anything, the intensity of Surrey's pre-match routines shifted up a gear on the back of being skittled out for 127 and 104 by Darren Stevens and Kent. Ultimately, promotion, not to mention some silverware in the shape of the CB40 trophy, was reward for sheer hard work and determination.

After we beat Essex, Chris Adams said to me: "They're a very level-headed group of lads. They work very hard. They understand the necessity to work hard and to keep coming back feeling you've never done enough. That's one of the lines we use - if you think you've done enough, you haven't. Keep working hard and keep going to the well for a little bit more each time. The two players who represent that most of all this year have been Zander de Bruyn and Tim Linley. Zander's work ethic and routine, the work he puts in has been a great visual for young players to see, copy and follow. Tim is one of life's workers. He's the hardest working lad I can remember for a long time."

Perhaps the really hard work starts here. Staying in Division One has to be the Club's immediate focus. Sussex and Worcestershire look flaky to me, so I fancy Surrey to stay up, but, looking at the fixtures, they could do with the drought the South East continuing through to the middle of June!

For the last three years the ECB has been doing its best to kill off the County Championship, by scheduling it earlier and earlier, but, so far, they have been thwarted by the English weather. The review conducted by David Morgan is the latest chapter in what is becoming an all-too-familiar saga. Tinker, tinker and tinker again. If county cricket can be sustained by dropping two four-day games from the fixture list, one has to ask why a review was needed in the first place. Replacing eight days of championship cricket and two days of one-day cricket with four more days of T20 is not the magic wand that will guarantee the survival of all eighteen first-class counties.

As Angus Fraser wrote in the Independent on January 24: "Given a blank piece of paper the vast majority of county cricketers and coaches would produce a domestic game containing fewer days play. But very few want to trade in first-class for Twenty20 cricket. The County Championship may not be the sexiest tournament in sport but it is the competition that produces high quality cricketers. Its role is appreciated and respected by all those who play and follow the game. Members of counties prefer it to Twenty20 and in a recent poll in The Cricketer magazine 80 per cent of the players interviewed believe it to be the most important domestic competition."

One of David Morgan's proposals is that the ECB should set-up a review to ensure the financial viability of county cricket. Sorry, but wasn't that his remit? Instead, Morgan simply saw the review as an opportunity to erode the importance of the County Championship at the expense of Twenty20 cricket. His main proposal in relation to financial sustainability is reducing the salary cap. For a county like Surrey a reduction in the cap would result in a smaller squad, the loss of key players to other counties or, most probably, both - all of which begs the question why put a huge amount of time and resources into an Academy system if it's going to benefit someone else?

I can't help feeling the review was instigated by the ECB to crack the 16-game championship. Let's face it, Morgan's proposals are a straight "cut and paste" from what the ECB was advocating in 2010. It is said that Morgan met with over 300 stakeholders. Given the review's response, one has to wonder if he spoke to the right people, and, if he did, whether he had already made up his mind what the outcome would be.

In the review's primary objectives there is no mention of the type of cricket that should be played: "The core purpose of the review shall be to examine the conflict between Counties seeking to be innovative and driving revenue from the domestic programme compared with the importance of fee payments arising primarily from the international schedule and the need to develop future England cricketers. Feedback from ECB is that the board desire that the review clarifies whether Counties are seeking greater or less intervention and support from ECB. The Morgan review group's focus is therefore to define how synergy can be created between the four pillars with a common sense of purpose. The primary focus will be on the Vibrant Domestic Game including the role of ECB in supporting this important pillar."

Furthermore, of the 11 terms of reference, only two can be linked to the proposed cut in championship fixtures. Even then, the link is a tenuous one:

"1. To make recommendations concerning a holistic plan embracing the purpose, role and key measures of success for international, domestic and community cricket and the relative importance of revenues arising from domestic and international cricket to the health of the domestic game... 8. To examine what balance of revenue is received by international, domestic game and community cricket and the revenues streams which relate to each pillar." The new editor of Wisden, Lawrence Booth wrote: "To read some of the responses to David Morgan's proposal to reduce the county championship from 16 games per team to 14, it is as if the England team has forgotten its debt to the domestic game." Lawrence was referring to the reaction of Andy Flower and some of the England players, but it extended to leading journalists. By leading journalists, I'm talking about those who are rarely spotted at a county match.

I am reluctant to pick on Richard Hobson of the Times, because he holds an affection for county cricket and is an astute observer. But his remarks were representative. He wrote that Morgan had "conjured a masterwork of conciliation, a document that has a little something for just about everybody and, more crucially, nothing to foment raging dissent." Really?! Anyway, it wasn't long before Hobbo was following up his original article with pieces entitled: 'David Morgan's plans run into stumbling block with counties' and 'David Morgan plans ill-considered according to players' union.'

With the season now 169 days long, even some former players have fallen for the myth that there's too much cricket. When the fixtures were released on November 29, Mike Atherton's piece in the Times carried the headline: 'Season open to congestion charge.' As I subscribe to the Times I left the following comment on the online version: "Am I alone in wondering quite why the first-class season needs to begin on March 31 - the earliest start ever for most, if not all the counties involved? When Athers was playing for Lancashire how many days off did he get each campaign? In 2012 county players will enjoy a minimum of 70 days in-between games."

How many of us know someone, in full-time employment, who gets two days off in every five? The argument that it's impossible to fit 16 championship games, 10 one-day matches and 14 T20 contests, plus semi-finals and finals into the English summer, just doesn't hold water. Quite when the ECB will ever come to realise that remains to be seen.

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