Rob Key backs October extension and extra January Tests to combat COVID-19 interruption

The Sky Sports pundit and former Kent captain foresees a three-month white-ball season as the "best-case scenario" this summer

• Rob Key: The Hundred could be prioritised if coronavirus disrupts domestic cricket season

• Cook expresses concern over future of County Championship

Former England batsman Rob Key has backed suggestions to extend the cricket season into the autumn months and slot the abandoned Test tour of Sri Lanka into next January.

The global sporting calendar has been upended in the last fortnight in response to the coronavirus pandemic, with the ECB confirming on Friday that no professional cricket would take place before May 28 this year.

England had been scheduled to face Sri Lanka this month for a two-match World Test Championship series, but the country has since closed its borders to UK citizens as a precautionary measure.

With suggestions now circulating that the Tests could be played in January as a precursor to England's trip to India, Key has called upon administrators to get the wheels in motion and make up for lost time.

Speaking to Sky Sports, Key said: "Wouldn't you just take anything at the moment?" 

"Nowadays you have this Test Championship [as] they're trying to give it all context, so it's not like in the past where if you didn't have a Test series, there was no bigger picture.

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"You had test rankings but they didn't really matter as much as they do now, so it's about how you fit all of that cricket in. In the winter I think you'd snap people's hand off to see [seven Tests in nine weeks]."

Key was speaking during an interview from Canterbury, the headquarters of his former county Kent.

The ground had previously been due to host competitive cricket as soon as April 2 courtesy of a visit from Oxford MCCU, though the unfolding circumstances have now delayed the start of the home season by at least seven weeks.

Kent alone would miss out on six County Championship fixtures should the current calendar pick up on May 28, the scheduled start of the T20 Blast.

But Key, having previously insisted that the ECB should prioritise The Hundred's launch in any truncated summer programme, believes that the local weather could well allow an October conclusion to a 2020 season that he fears could be just a handful of weeks in length.

^{England's Tests in Galle and Colombo were called off last week}

"Normally this is pre-season time where you'd have lots of wickets out in the middle where players have been practising every single day. There is not another person at this ground," he added.

"Generally on these things, you go to the smartest man in the room, and that's generally Michael Atherton. He thinks the best-case scenario you're going to have is a three-month season [where] white-ball cricket will predominantly be what's played – but that's the best-case scenario from what we're hearing. 

"When you get to the end of our summer, with the way that things have been happening over the last few years, you could almost extend that season [by a few weeks].

"Alright, it gets darker that little bit quicker, but the start of our winters have been pretty mild so you could prolong the season and go a little bit longer.

"But it's a nightmare, really. Every time you wake up, you just can't believe that this is happening."