Mark Arthur has revealed how himself and Martyn Moxon have put forward the idea of a Conference style format to reinvigorate the County Championship.
Yorkshire’s Chief Executive and Director of Cricket have formulated a plan for three Conferences of six teams, which they believe could start in the summer of 2020.
Their plan, purely from a personal and not club point of view, would see each team play 15 Championship matches a season, one more than is presently played, and would see the overall champion county receive £1m in prize money.
It was reported yesterday that a handful of other counties are in favour of such an idea.
Arthur believes it would create more competition and interest in county cricket, not just Championship cricket, with counties playing for the title or prize money right through until the final round of matches.
“Martyn Moxon and I put it forward to the ECB a couple of months ago,” he explained, insisting that this would work hand in hand with the new city T20 competition to boost the game’s profile.
“We put it forward purely from a personal point of view, not from a Yorkshire point of view.
“We feel that it would keep everybody engaged in the game because there are certain counties that feel threatened – wrongly, in my opinion – by the new T20 city competition.
“We believe in 18 first-class counties, and this would keep everybody together.”
