Geoffrey Boycott: County cricket could die in 20 years

England stars should play more, better overseas players needed and games should be in high summer

^{English county cricket is in danger, Geoffrey Boycott says}

Geoffrey Boycott fears county cricket could die within 20 years, and says its problems are even more deep-rooted than Matt Prior’s claim that players lack ambition.

Boycott, currently on a speaking tour with Jonathan Agnew, says England stars should play for their counties more; that overseas players these days are not good enough; and that the County Championship should not be relegated to the start and end of the summer.

He had heard Matt Prior tell BBC Five Live: "I think there are too many players at the moment earning their salaries, whatever they may be, floating around in county cricket having a nice life with actually very little ambition to push on."

And Boycott replied: "I can’t speak as well as him about it because I haven’t played county cricket since 1986. But when I have seen county cricket – and I was on the board at Yorkshire for seven years until 2011, and then I did the presidency until 2013, so I saw a lot – I do think the standard is poorer. So it’s very hard to produce quality cricketers if the standard has gone down.

"Since more international cricket was introduced – since seven Tests came in (we used to have five), and 10 ODIs, and two T20Is… international players have not played for their counties as much, and that must have lessened the standard.

^{Boycott wants English cricketers to face more bowlers of the calibre of Malcolm Marshall}

"When I played, we had 17 counties, 16 home and away matches, 32 three-day matches. I only missed, at the most, 10. So any England player like me played two-thirds of his cricket for his county, so the county game stayed strong. 

"Because there was also not so much international cricket, each county had two truly great overseas players, Joel Garner and Viv Richards were at Somerset; Notts had Richard Hadlee and Clive Rice; Hampshire had Malcolm Marshall, Barry Richards and Gordon Greenidge.

"The England players were playing, and the overseas players were top-notch. Today Joe Root only plays one match a summer for Yorkshire to start his season, get him going, because there is so much international cricket. 

"I can’t talk about the ambition, but the standard has gone down. You look at the overseas players – who is that player who bats for us (Yorkshire), bats like a crab? Peter Handscomb. Compare that [standard] to Wayne Daniel, Clive Lloyd, Sylvester Clarke, those players of the past. It is a different class of player. A lot of them now are borderline internationals.

"Of course there is the odd class one, like Kumar Sangakkara at Surrey, but 17 counties used to have two each like that. I think that’s the biggest problem for county cricket. There aren’t enough quality cricketers to go around 18 first-class counties. James Vince would not have faced someone as good as Marshall in the nets…

"On top of that, the ECB relegated [four-day] county cricket to right at the beginning of the season, in April, and right at the end, and gives the prime time to T20, so they are saying to everyone, it’s not important. Is it any wonder the standard is poorer? We are trying to get champion cricketers out of that…

^{Kumar Sangakarra is a rare example of class overseas players in the domestic game, Boycott says}

"There are counties in huge debt, like Yorkshire, every year struggling to make ends meet, so money is more important than the cricket.

"I don’t see what chance county cricket has got – eventually you can’t see it surviving. It might be after I have gone, 20, 30 years, I don’t know."

Yorkshire told The Cricketer last summer it had nearly 8,000 members. “When I played in the 1970s it was 13,000,” said Boycott. “In the 1960s, to be a member you had to have a proposer and seconder."

Boycott had heard about the Martin Moxon/Mark Arthur ‘masterplan’. That would see three parallel conferences of six counties, playing 10 matches, home and away; then the best performers go into three new conferences on merit, and play another five matches, the top flight producing a champion.

It would abolish two divisions, so offering a lifeline for those teams seemingly permanently languishing in the basement. It would also mean leading counties like Surrey, Middlesex and Yorkshire could not be relegated.

"It’s all right," said Boycott, "but you need the England players, the best overseas, you need to play in the summer months… You can come up with every idea you want, but if the quality isn’t there, what changes?"

The Boycott and Aggers tour has started and ends on Feb 5. They will be at the New Wimbledon Theatre on Jan 26. Aggers & Bumble are also touring; that ends on Feb 7; and Aggers & Tuffers start on Feb 15 and ends on March 6. To see all dates go to www.simonfielder.com